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Those lines in the sketches of character are not intended as elements of an economics thesis.
Trade did not begin with economic calculation. Debt did not begin with borrowing money. Marriage is not about love or even procreation. Humans had babies for a million years before marriage was invented. Marriage, debt, and trade are all about social status. (Marriage is about property; and property defines social status.)
In my office, Benchmade is the "everyday carry." If someone needs to borrow a knife, you hand over a Schrade or a Gerber you don't care about. But when it comes to opening a bag of cookies, they are all pretty much the same...
It is observably true that division of labor and exchange improve our lives. An algebraic proof of that unites practice with theory.
The alleviation of boredom phrase reminded me of how I've heard people with very specialized high tech jobs take a week off to paint their house. It would be more efficient for them to do their high-tech work and pay someone else who does painting every day and is good at it. My thought is they want a break from their work. Maybe they want a task they do with their family that, unlike a vacation, will not be a loss if they don't really enjoy it because at least they got their house painted.
The upshot is that we do not stop to calculate based on information, but make intuitive or emotional assumptions. You see a woman reading The New York Times. Is she more likely to have a Ph.D. or to lack a high school education? Scientists and others who actually work with statistics are no better than the rest of us at this when outside their own fields ... and sometimes within them.
What I find interesting in Comparative Advantage is that even if one person is better at both tasks, it is still in their respective interests to specialize and trade. The more capable person needs the less efficacious just as much, perhaps more, in order to benefit.
Assuming, of course that "specialization" produces a superior product or outcome; but, in an intense field...being a one trick pony can have it's drawbacks...not to mention, doing a thing or not due to boredom, simply needing a break but also doing something else that just might get you to integrate, building new connections in your brain, allowing one's mind to grow and explore...Then!... go back to your specialty and make an even better product or superior outcome. (yes, by that I mean that integrating just might be better than specialization or at least...integrating specializations together.
Scientist, understandably, are one trick ponies but almost always fail to see beyond their specific radar scope, therefore fail again to see how their work fits or doesn't fit in the greater scheme of things.
This is why, I established a better, more comprehensive definition to Frank Wallas's and Mark Hamilton's: "Wide Scope Accountability".
When I noted that even scientists have poor intuitions about statistics, I meant only to underscore the thesis from Kahneman and Tversky that we all need to stop and calculate when it comes to numbers, and not rely on the same intuitions that we use for facial recognition of emotions.
In that vein, it is easy to tout the virtues of this career or that. We all like engineers; we all distrust scientists. Engineers are cool because they make things. Scientists are mad dreamers. But the reality is different than that, and I rest on statistical samplings of the self-reported mental habits and world views of engineers versus scientists. Engineers are more likely to be religious fundamentalists, which is why they are over-represented among jihadi. Scientists, in particular, are less likely to be "one trick ponies."
We disparage university "liberal arts" majors, confusing them with humanities majors, but, in truth, surveys reveal that those are the people more likely to share your own preferences for acquiring new learning, widening their radar scopes, avoiding boredom, and building their brains with different kinds of tasks.
And in terms of this study of Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage the fact remains that specialization and exchange are more productive for everyone - the less capable no less than the highly skilled. Autarky gave us the hand axe. (Great invention!) Comparative advantage gave us the iPhone.
Sometimes engineers think people see every success is a scientific achievement and every disaster as an engineering failure.
"Engineers are more likely to be religious fundamentalists, which is why they are over-represented among jihadi. "
This is so odd to me. My perception is my engineering view gives me a moderate, big-picture view. I think of myself and my colleagues as the opposite of extremists. It seems like the world is fired up about President Trump or President Obama, and we're in the background keeping things running. People ask me how I cannot see Trump and Obama are promoting radically different ideologies. I don't see any significant influence of ideology on their part. I see gov't as a conditionally stable system, a control scheme with some positive feedback. By that I mean with certain inputs can cause the outputs to oscillate or increase without bound. The "system" is the Constitutional framework.
I'm calling this view a "moderate, big picture" view, but that may only compared to other engineers. Maybe the average citizen would call this an ideology. In my little bubble, though, it feels like the world gets all jihad-like fired up about stuff, and engineers are the cooler heads.