Only 5 days left...

I spent too many days on a hopeless proposal for a fellowship I know I will no get. Living in the denial is the ultimate self-handicapping strategy, and I am a master at it.

I did learn though, that when S and I study together we have a better chance for reaching a global maximum of knowledge--as opposed to being stuck at a local minimum. Scott Page has mathematically proven that if you want a group of the ten best lawyers, or the ten best doctors, etc., you need to bring people in who are not ranking as high on your selection scores but are diverse. They bring a different problem-solving perspective and so kick the group out of the local maximum.

Also, Marxism is no longer part of the PE mainstream because when formal modelers deconstructed it to its smallest elements, the pieces did not add up together.

Unfortunately, I cannot use any of those two pieces of information on the prelim... in 5 days!

-R

STILL in the dark waters of realism

R is not kicking ass. She is getting her ass kicked... by the very pessimistic realist tradition. Hopefully liberalism will give me a more optimistic outlook on my (now official) major field.

On a happier note, I am finally getting the hang of writing useful summaries thanks to S's insistence on us using tables to set a common format. So, I first write out my notes in my usual long unstructured form, and then box them into the four categories of the table. Not the most efficient process.

-R