Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Cyborg Agonistes
- 2 Some Cyborg Genealogies; or, How the Demon Got Its Bots
- 3 John von Neumann and the Cyborg Incursion into Economics
- 4 The Military, the Scientists, and the Revised Rules of the Game
- 5 Do Cyborgs Dream of Efficient Markets?
- 6 The Empire Strikes Back
- 7 Core Wars
- 8 Machines Who Think versus Machines That Sell
- Envoi
- References
- Index
4 - The Military, the Scientists, and the Revised Rules of the Game
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Cyborg Agonistes
- 2 Some Cyborg Genealogies; or, How the Demon Got Its Bots
- 3 John von Neumann and the Cyborg Incursion into Economics
- 4 The Military, the Scientists, and the Revised Rules of the Game
- 5 Do Cyborgs Dream of Efficient Markets?
- 6 The Empire Strikes Back
- 7 Core Wars
- 8 Machines Who Think versus Machines That Sell
- Envoi
- References
- Index
Summary
It takes a war to make an industrialist out of a physicist.
Merle TuveWHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY?
It is quite the spectacle to observe how postwar economists, those hard-boiled beady-eyed realists, so eager to unmask the hidden self-interest lurking behind every noble sentiment, undergo a miraculous transubstantiation when the topic turns to their own motivations. When summoned to reflect on their personal successes, they regularly cite such lofty goals as the alleviation of pain, the augmentation of the general welfare, the abolition of injustice, and the advancement of human understanding (Szenberg, 1992). It is on its face a singularly amazing accomplishment, as if some new Augustine had unearthed the philosopher's stone capable of conjuring agape out of avarice, leaving him alone zaddick in a non-zero-sum world. It would be too much of a distraction from our present itinerary to inquire exactly how the prestidigitation is accomplished in every case, or indeed to even ask whether the individuals in question truly believe it deep down in the recesses of their psyches; but, nevertheless, it will serve to explain one very striking lacuna in the modern treatment of the history of economics. No one seems to want to ask the quintessential economic question about the modern economics profession – Who pays? Qui bono?
In this respect the historians of the physical sciences have been simultaneously more bold and more incisive.
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- Information
- Machine DreamsEconomics Becomes a Cyborg Science, pp. 153 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001