This is a personal post reflecting on a book I’m reading, but before I get into it, let me share the outcome of the coin flip simulation that Cosmos just ran for me.
Reading along with you and will order the book. Becker was my intro to Econ in high school, The economic approach to human behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1976. It's why I applied and was accepted to an econ honors program at Purdue with idea to go abroad a semester and then to law school. I did not do any of that. Because of money and oldest child family obligations. I am one of those first generation accounting majors, a woman in early 80's who picked accounting as a major as practical alternative to teaching or nursing because I had to get a job as soon as possible and get off my parents' payroll.
Becker was my entry into economics too. His Nobel prize speech specifically. I read it in 2000, one year after graduating with a bachelors in English. I’ve bled Becker my whole career. I think my history class challenged me to see there had been themes in the past that showed more diverse opinion than I thought.
But the science of economics has also a very different aim: design a social order that creates and distributes prosperity. Adlerian psychology isn’t aiming for that, though as a 49yo man, I frankly have a lot of hurts and confusions and missteps I think I need help on that isn’t coming natural to me. So for me the book is needed for me. But who knows — if I was a policy maker I would maybe not be thinking by like this. But I am just a normal person.
Becker made sense to me then but I also see the bigger picture now. Did you know that in Chicago and online there is an Adler University to take classes? https://www.adler.edu/about/
I didn’t realize that was in chicago actually. I think that’s the same website I was looking at the other day though.
ChatGPT said he had a major influence but somehow still isn’t well known. Victor Frankl for instance was allegedly heavily influenced by him, as was the psychologist Beck who helped develop cognitive behavioral therapy. I think a lot of the ideas by Adler got loosened from the broader system he developed and became things we recognize, even counseling itself.
Hi. Maybe Becker said that rationality is not necesary focusing in the core of "Crime and Punishment". I mean an infractor may jump any given limit, so the "budget line" could be unnecesary, but this line incentives, orders to decide cross it or not and bears another (the same) decisional situation, rational, good or bad. Subjetive values? Certainly is a psicological affair, Kahneman/ Tversky's asssimetrical value function. Any valoration could be irrational one by one but rational inside the colectiv (I refer the man of paradox: keneth Arrow)
Another point, first un the post, the relation trust/commitent makes me think in theory of money. Recently I realized (read) cripto money doesn't need this component (none of both).
I think there’s plenty of reasons to consider these as the natural theories of human behavior, for sure. And when it comes to organizing society, I think taking seriously these problems of trust, uncertainties and other things have to be taken seriously. This is where the policy sciences like Econ are the strongest.
Adler though is more about individual psychology, and so more about achieving happiness and peace, and less so so about creating aggregate output that can be distributed through various mechanisms like money exchange. It may even be a way that we think about living healthy inside those existing systems. Much of what I see in Adler for instance is that it sounds like we’ve confused the mechanisms for social order with the mechanism for personal thriving.
Im so happy to hear that. I’ll be rereading it soon and so will enter back in. I’m almost done. It’s not dense in the way that sounds because it’s conversational. It’s a dialogue. But it’s a bit of a roller coaster and sometimes sounds like common sense and sometimes sounds impossibly hard.
That’s what I’m thinking I’ll do, but I was thinking maybe if I just posted aloud until I finished then when I started over, interested people could jump in and have already gotten the book. It doesn’t really spoil anything to hear the ending because honestly it may even help just to hear how much of this is kind of connecting to something else anyway.
I just finished listening to the book also, having picked it up after you mentioned it a few times in earlier posts. I have a bunch of other thoughts I'll share later since it sounds like you've got a few more coming, but overall found the book inspiring and thought-provoking at the very least; in fact it motivated me to start contributing more here on Substack. The parts I was especially interested in, and found most related to economics, were only relatively briefly touched on in the back half related to the higher level motivations--journey vs means to an end, and doing things for the community. It *feels* like these could be consistent with economic models, just with a certain set of preferences and implicit gains from cooperation; but these parts were somewhat underdeveloped and axiomatic as far as I could tell, so would love to think more about them and hear your thoughts. Anyway, thanks for sharing, looking forward to the other related posts on it
Yes it seems like that to me too. On things like pro social and community, then it does seem like that isn’t at odds with anything. But when you for instance hear him talk about trust versus confidence, where trust does seem to be based on an expectation of a reciprocal relationship, but community feeling is based on something you give yourself — that’s where things seem to flip. Because there’s a sense in which it seems as though the work you do in one’s tasks doesn’t need or require any response to do it and that most of our problems is when we do think it does.
But you know one thing that I do keep thinking — Adler’s not really giving a theory of behavior is the thing. He’s giving a theory of human nature. So I wonder sometimes if that’s the sticky part.
Yeah it would get intractable pretty quickly but even the idea of confidence described there seems like it could be thought of as something beyond some kind of bounded rationality, but still a preference parameter that drives social and private long run benefit. Either way I think that’s right, it seems less about predicting and explaining behavior vs what one ought to do; which is interesting when you think about how common econ approaches to welfare analysis fits in
When I was growing up against the Vietnam War, Becker wasn't too happy a choice. However, I later learned the biological reason for class behavior. So before you get done, have a look at,
When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude
Reading along with you and will order the book. Becker was my intro to Econ in high school, The economic approach to human behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1976. It's why I applied and was accepted to an econ honors program at Purdue with idea to go abroad a semester and then to law school. I did not do any of that. Because of money and oldest child family obligations. I am one of those first generation accounting majors, a woman in early 80's who picked accounting as a major as practical alternative to teaching or nursing because I had to get a job as soon as possible and get off my parents' payroll.
Becker was my entry into economics too. His Nobel prize speech specifically. I read it in 2000, one year after graduating with a bachelors in English. I’ve bled Becker my whole career. I think my history class challenged me to see there had been themes in the past that showed more diverse opinion than I thought.
But the science of economics has also a very different aim: design a social order that creates and distributes prosperity. Adlerian psychology isn’t aiming for that, though as a 49yo man, I frankly have a lot of hurts and confusions and missteps I think I need help on that isn’t coming natural to me. So for me the book is needed for me. But who knows — if I was a policy maker I would maybe not be thinking by like this. But I am just a normal person.
Becker made sense to me then but I also see the bigger picture now. Did you know that in Chicago and online there is an Adler University to take classes? https://www.adler.edu/about/
I didn’t realize that was in chicago actually. I think that’s the same website I was looking at the other day though.
ChatGPT said he had a major influence but somehow still isn’t well known. Victor Frankl for instance was allegedly heavily influenced by him, as was the psychologist Beck who helped develop cognitive behavioral therapy. I think a lot of the ideas by Adler got loosened from the broader system he developed and became things we recognize, even counseling itself.
Hi. Maybe Becker said that rationality is not necesary focusing in the core of "Crime and Punishment". I mean an infractor may jump any given limit, so the "budget line" could be unnecesary, but this line incentives, orders to decide cross it or not and bears another (the same) decisional situation, rational, good or bad. Subjetive values? Certainly is a psicological affair, Kahneman/ Tversky's asssimetrical value function. Any valoration could be irrational one by one but rational inside the colectiv (I refer the man of paradox: keneth Arrow)
Another point, first un the post, the relation trust/commitent makes me think in theory of money. Recently I realized (read) cripto money doesn't need this component (none of both).
I think there’s plenty of reasons to consider these as the natural theories of human behavior, for sure. And when it comes to organizing society, I think taking seriously these problems of trust, uncertainties and other things have to be taken seriously. This is where the policy sciences like Econ are the strongest.
Adler though is more about individual psychology, and so more about achieving happiness and peace, and less so so about creating aggregate output that can be distributed through various mechanisms like money exchange. It may even be a way that we think about living healthy inside those existing systems. Much of what I see in Adler for instance is that it sounds like we’ve confused the mechanisms for social order with the mechanism for personal thriving.
I just purchased the book and am excited to read along with you.
Im so happy to hear that. I’ll be rereading it soon and so will enter back in. I’m almost done. It’s not dense in the way that sounds because it’s conversational. It’s a dialogue. But it’s a bit of a roller coaster and sometimes sounds like common sense and sometimes sounds impossibly hard.
Maybe you should start a book club where we read 1 chapter together each week and you post your thoughts on the chapter on a certain day.
That’s what I’m thinking I’ll do, but I was thinking maybe if I just posted aloud until I finished then when I started over, interested people could jump in and have already gotten the book. It doesn’t really spoil anything to hear the ending because honestly it may even help just to hear how much of this is kind of connecting to something else anyway.
Added the book to my wish list.
I just finished listening to the book also, having picked it up after you mentioned it a few times in earlier posts. I have a bunch of other thoughts I'll share later since it sounds like you've got a few more coming, but overall found the book inspiring and thought-provoking at the very least; in fact it motivated me to start contributing more here on Substack. The parts I was especially interested in, and found most related to economics, were only relatively briefly touched on in the back half related to the higher level motivations--journey vs means to an end, and doing things for the community. It *feels* like these could be consistent with economic models, just with a certain set of preferences and implicit gains from cooperation; but these parts were somewhat underdeveloped and axiomatic as far as I could tell, so would love to think more about them and hear your thoughts. Anyway, thanks for sharing, looking forward to the other related posts on it
Yes it seems like that to me too. On things like pro social and community, then it does seem like that isn’t at odds with anything. But when you for instance hear him talk about trust versus confidence, where trust does seem to be based on an expectation of a reciprocal relationship, but community feeling is based on something you give yourself — that’s where things seem to flip. Because there’s a sense in which it seems as though the work you do in one’s tasks doesn’t need or require any response to do it and that most of our problems is when we do think it does.
But you know one thing that I do keep thinking — Adler’s not really giving a theory of behavior is the thing. He’s giving a theory of human nature. So I wonder sometimes if that’s the sticky part.
Yeah it would get intractable pretty quickly but even the idea of confidence described there seems like it could be thought of as something beyond some kind of bounded rationality, but still a preference parameter that drives social and private long run benefit. Either way I think that’s right, it seems less about predicting and explaining behavior vs what one ought to do; which is interesting when you think about how common econ approaches to welfare analysis fits in
When I was growing up against the Vietnam War, Becker wasn't too happy a choice. However, I later learned the biological reason for class behavior. So before you get done, have a look at,
When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude
Hidehiko Takahashi, et al.
Science 323 , 937 (2009); DOI: 10.1126/science.1165604