Liber Amicorum in Praise of Amfiteatru Economic My testimony for its 25th anniversary
Did you know that...
...there is a scrupulous difference in style between a mass media article and a scientific research article, and the certificate of performance of the latter, vaguely analogous to print runs (somehow too coarse, too holistic), is given by biblio-/sciento-/metric indicators (digitally-maniacally calculated for every journal, paper, author)? There are common sense criteria valid for any written text, which then align readings, citations, quotations. They are still necessary, however, a bit insufficient today.
Did you know that...
...scientists and journalists (and with them all professionals involved in research/investigative activities) have to answer a set of six basic questions, namely: who / what / why / when / where / how? Of course you knew. Just as we also know that, although it is consistent with the ethos of the search for truth, ironically, the former are obliged to scrupulously reveal their “sources” (risking, otherwise, accusations of plagiarism), and the latter, to protect them fiercely (otherwise putting them to existential risks).
Did you know that...
...there are scientific works that support what Nassim Nicholas Taleb summed up as: “we [humans] are not rational enough to be exposed to the media [news]”? Why? Because we are prisoners of two inclinations, the combination of which is explosive: a “negativity bias”, through which the bad things jump into our eyes faster than the good, and an “availability bias”, through which if we see something too often, be it outrageously uncommon, we willy-nilly participate to its communization.
Did you know that...
...news and science (especially that part of science juicy for news purposes) cultivate, perhaps since always, the image that human being is inclined towards (or ingrained with) evil – either (s)he is born evil, only governments can keep him in control (Hobbes), or, being born good, in solitude, (s)he is embittered by coexistence, in society (Rousseau)? And if the economists, the slaves of “dismal science” (in T. Carlyle’s inerasable label, inspired by T. Malthus), did not increase the sensation, who else?
Did you know that...
...there is also scientific evidence that “most people are, deep down, really decent”? But is such a dry truth worth spoiling so much good (actually bad) news?! The “Left-ish” psychologist Rutger Bregman, in his recent book, Human Kind: A Hopeful History, thinks so. For that, we might only need to overcome our moral, material and... methodological blindness. And we also possess “Right-ish” sociological arguments, from Adam Smith to Friedrich Hayek, confident in human “sense and sensibility”.
Did you know that...
...Amfiteatru Economic [Economic Amphitheatre] turned 25 years old? If you read the title, you surely got it. It’s not… news anymore. In any case, science journals rarely produce news. Although economic academics are the doomsayer-champions (aka the raw material in the mass media). But hardly are they inspired and inspirational in problem-solving (otherwise, we would live in Cornucopia). If I had to make a wish for this publication, it is to struggle to remain a... readable, quotable, fair “source”!
P.S. I shared the above thoughts before and they have already been printed in the pages of the book that tells the story of the most appreciated Romanian magazine of economic science. I also recommend the other testimonies collected between the covers of the volume edited by Professors Vasile Dinu and Laurențiu Tăchiciu, Amfiteatru Economic și dimensiunea colectivă a prieteniei intelectuale [Economic Amphitheater and the collective dimension of intellectual friendship]. Because, yes, beyond any metric, writing-for-communication endures only when it becomes writing-for-communion.
