More Academics vs. Real Life

New Scientist is occasionally an interesting place for online reading. It's not quite as highbrow as Scientific American, which I find to be pretty much impenetrable. New Scientist is kind of like the People magazine of science, a bit above the Popular Mechanics genre. I used to love Popular Mechanics, though. I still want one of those jet packs, which we were all supposed to be using to get around in these days according to the magazine I read as a kid. However, I remember seeing a guy demonstrate one of those down at the Mall in DC one time, and the deafening noise dampened my enthusiasm a bit.

So here is an interesting article about how economists model income distribution.

While economists' models traditionally regard humans as rational beings who always make intelligent decisions, econophysicists argue that in large systems the behaviour of each individual is influenced by so many factors that the net result is random, so it makes sense to treat people like atoms in a gas.

When it comes to disciplines that like to think they are based on science, there really isn't much more of an unscientific field than Economics in my opinion, unless maybe it's Medicine. I once worked with a marketing guy with a degree in Economics who said he switched to marketing so he could do something more predictable.