u/MildDeontologist

Does a real shock (such as a weather/environmental event, public health crisis, war, port congestion due to supply chain shocks, etc.) have an impact the economy? The answer is "of course." But how do shocks, which occur randomly and themselves are non-cyclical, cause cyclicality?

I understand that one randomly occurring weather event will impact the economy, but what I have not wrapped by head around is how it can cause ongoing cycles. As an analogy, if a pothole damages my car as a one-off, unforeseen, and non-reoccurring event, then how could that pothole cause a future cyclical pattern of my car being repeatedly damaged?

Or, is the claim from Real Business Cycle Theory that business cycles are not cyclical (which I think would not make sense)?

In clinical practice, how would/does the theory of Guattari (and Deleuze?) get applied?

In concrete terms, how specifically could behavioral finance be incorporated?

Just curious about his background. I can't find what his major/minor was undergrad, or what his subject/degree was for his MS.

My understanding is that to ordain clerics, the Pope must approve unless there is a crisis. So, the legal/ecclesiastical issue with SSPX's ordination of Bishops in 1988 and recently is whether there was a crisis.

SSPX would argue there is a crisis because there will soon be no SSPX Bishops left, which means SSPX also could not ordain any new priests or deacons (since a Bishop is required for that) and therefore the whole society would just die out in a few years. But is this a crisis as "crisis" is conceptualized under ecclesiastical law? Does the Code of Canon Law define "crisis"? This seems to be the only real issue, yet no one is talking about how we define crisis.

Here is another way to phrase my question. Is it the case that everything has a pattern, but for some things (e.g. Brownian motion, genetic mutations, car traffic, radioactive decay, asset prices, weather behavior, electrical noise, etc.), humans (and computers) have not detected the pattern yet?

Here is a third way to phrase it. Is it the case that randomness/stochasticity exists only epistemically, not ontologically?

Some mathematicians think proof by induction is not a valid proof method. But why? And, are there particular mathematicians who reject this method (e.g. finitists, intuitionists, etc.)?

If so, is there an exhaustive list of them?

Edit: “Rite” as in liturgical family. For context, I am told that in Eastern Orthodox, despite there being Greek/Russian/Romanian/etc. Orthodox, only has one rite (the Byzantine Rite).

International economics textbooks take as almost dogmatic that tariffs, quotas, subsidized export credit, and other protectionist policies are generally bad because they will likely lead to retaliation, resulting in a trade war. But empirically, how often does protectionism really lead to trade wars?

If there is a proof in set theory [e.g. starting from: let x ∈ ℝ], can this proof be re-articulated to be written in the form of type theory [where x is the "type" of "real number"] or predicate logic [where x has the predicate of being a real number: ℝ(x)]. My concepts and notation might be off since I am not trained enough to know type theory or predicate logic well.

For all the smaller rites (the exhaustive list of the ones I know of, after doing research, are Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Braga, and Lyonese... let me know if there are others), is their eucharistic liturgy pre-Vatican II? Also, do they call it Mass or something else (e.g. Divine Liturgy)?

I understand that ABCT can explain crises in hindsight and give policy insight for the future (don't put interest rates too low for too long, or ever). But how would/could ABCT predict the time at which a crisis occurs? And since we always have artificially low interest rates, when should we expect a crash next?

If banks do not lend out reserves, then what would happen if the amount of reserves required to be kept liquid changed?

Here is my, possibly very wrong, understanding as a non-stem person with a sort of academic interest in (or admiration for) math: people (e.g. Newton/Leibniz, modern engineers, etc.) used/invented/discovered/developed calculus because it is practical, meaning its correctness seems intuitive and it is a powerful tool for prediction and all kinds of other things. Then mathematicians later started doing the branch of math we started to call "analysis," which is the theory of calculus, or proving why particular aspects of calculus, or calculus writ large as a body/system of knowledge, is true or false. However, analysis cannot prove calculus wrong because calculus regards approximations, and an approximation by its concept cannot be wrong (there could only be alternative ways to approximate that are comparatively more or less close).

1. what is right, and what is wrong, about the above paragraph?
2. is it possible for parts of calculus or calculus as a whole to be proved wrong with analysis?

Suppose we had no Medicare or Medicaid, but rather just gave each individual a stipend of a certain amount of cash each month. This cash has to be used for health and medical expenses (which of course would have to be defined by law), then if there are left over cash at the end of the month, you can do whatever you want with it, including putting it into a tax advantageous health savings account. Would this system be an improvement?

I see a lot of people (e.g. logicians, linguists, analytic philosophers) use the word "syntax" when I think they really mean "grammar." I have two questions to help sketch out the difference between syntax and grammar.

First, is my understanding correct that syntax is a branch or sub-category within/under grammar, and that syntax refers to the order of words, while grammar refers to all of syntax as well as other non-semantic rules and symbols (e.g. parentheses, commas, m-dashes, etc.)?

Second, could a language (e.g. formal logic, a coding language, a natural language, etc.) exist or be made with syntax but without non-syntax grammar?

A common argument for God is that there has to be some first cause, or in Aristotelian language, an unmoved mover. But this assumes that before the cosmos existed, the laws of cause and effect still existed.

So if there was nothingness (including no logic or cause and effect) before the cosmos was created, and then the cosmos was created from nothing, then isn't it possible if not necessary that the first thing to exist did not need a mover? This seems non-comprehensible, but so is the case with God's timelessness, spacelessness, omnipresence, omni-goodness, and other theological mysteries.

Society has the issue of having to insure people who are high-risk. For example, it is burdensome and uneconomical, albeit morally problematic, to sell life (health, or other) insurance to an old, sick, poor person.

What if the government had a program where if a citizen suffers from an unexpected huge loss for little/no fault of their own, they have the right to file a claim with a universal catastrophe insurance program (a program owned and operated by the government, or a private entity in a public-private-partnership); and after an investigation and/or legal proceeding, the government can reimburse the claimant (wholly or in part). One benefit of this system is that private insurance companies and government-ran insurance programs like Medicare/disability/etc. do not have to cover high-risk citizens to the same degree/extent as they currently do, because this universal catastrophe program would step in. Maybe this could make insurance markets work better since high-risk people are less of a burden on everyone else (i.e., risky insureds would have a lesser impact on the entire pool of insureds).

Of course this question is general, and may not lend itself to a closely measurable, specific economic answer. Nevertheless, is there insight on this, from theory or where a similar program has been tried?