Noah Smith asks for
Economists to release their inner nerds -
Every field of study has its own peculiar conventions of how "very smart people" are supposed to act. If you're in physics, you should have unkempt hair, juggle or do some other unusual hobby, be sexually promiscuous, and try to make your intellectual achievements look effortless (i.e. you should do a Feynman or Einstein impression). If you're in computer science you should talk like a character out of a Neal Stephenson novel, use hacker jargon, and know every XKCD joke by heart. If you're in math, you should either act genuinely crazy (like Grothendieck or Perelman) or very soft-spoken and mild (like Fefferman or Tao) - i.e., you should convey the impression that you have a lot of very powerful software running in the background of your brain. I'm not sure what biologists act like, but it seems to include wearing a goofy grin all the time.
But all of these disciplines share some common markers of nerdiness. One of these is enthusiasm for new technologies. Another is a love of - appropriately enough - science fiction. the "gee whiz" attitude is an integral part of being a science nerd.
Economics is different. Very few economists read a lot of sci-fi (or, at least, are reluctant to admit it openly). At social gatherings, economists tend to discuss sports, politics, and money rather than augmented reality or driverless cars. They tend to be better-dressed and better-coiffed than natural scientists. In other words, they are a little bit like MBAs. In this way, economists show that they are about Business; that they are worthy of consulting gigs and Congressional testimony.
Personally, I've always felt that it was all about the hair. You can
always picture geek hair - it ranges anywhere from
full-shaven to
full-on-mad-scientist, with stops inbetween for
bad-haircut,
inappropriate-product-usage, and
holy-shit-what-happened-to-your-eyebrows. But economists always,
always have CEO level hair. And thats just wrong...
Comments