The End of Theory Quotes

“Baron Rothschild quipped that there are “three principal ways to lose your money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far more certain.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“We can use the same model for pedestrians. The rules will be similar, in that movement will be dictated by the space available, but there is more freedom of movement because, unlike cars, which have defined lanes and tend not to push around and over one another, people in a crowd are less constrained. That is why you can have crushing stampedes emerge from pedestrian congestion while cars patiently wait in line.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“A sheet of paper has the words “The statement on the other side of this paper is true” written on one side and “The statement on the other side of this paper is false” on the reverse. The conflict isn’t resolvable. Or, closer to the point, the following assertion: “This statement is unprovable.” 5 You cannot prove the statement is true, because doing so would contradict it. If you prove the statement is false, then that means its converse is true—it is provable—which again is a contradiction.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which of two alternatives is more probable? A. Linda is a bank teller. B. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“Alan Turing’s halting problem: you can’t know if the cells will all die off without running the game until they do die off. Thus, Life, a two-state process governed by four rules, is computationally irreducible. Von Neumann designed the universal constructor with the objective of self-replication; Conway designed his cellular automaton without any specific objective in mind. But he observed, “If you couldn’t predict what it did, then probably that is because it is capable of anything.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“The three-body problem illustrates how easy it is to run into computational irreducibility. It is a problem that borders on the trivial, yet it seems that it cannot be solved analytically. There is no apparent shortcut, no mathematical equation that can tell you the trajectory.5 In general, if you want to know where the planets will end up at some time down the road, you have to ride along with them as they trace their paths, either in practice or in simulation. If we want to know whether the planets crash, whether one of them will fly off into space, whether they will be periodic or chaotic, we have to follow them over the course of their travels. We can’t plug coordinates or a time period into a formula and crank out the answer.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“Mathematics works only with computationally reducible systems. Axioms and deductive logic are intended to provide shortcuts, to give general results that can compress a problem and provide insight into its workings so that it can be solved without having to take on the tedious task of running things through step by step. For example, the math behind ballistics tables allows an artillery gunner to calculate where the shell will land before it is fired. By contrast, there is no precalculated table to consult to determine the best path through rush hour traffic.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“on March 28, 2007, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, stated to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress that “the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.” This sentiment was echoed the same day by the U.S. Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, assuring a House Appropriations subcommittee that “from the standpoint of the overall economy, my bottom line is we’re watching it closely but it appears to be contained.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“One of the most important axioms is that as the quantity of any commodity, for instance plain food, which a man has to consume increases, so the utility or benefit from the last portion used decreases in degree.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction

“The term railway was to Victorian England what atomic or aerodynamic were to be after World War II, and network and virtual are today. When it came to investments, the romantic appeal of being a party to this technological revolution often dominated profit considerations.”
― Richard Bookstaber, The End of Theory: Financial Crises, the Failure of Economics, and the Sweep of Human Interaction