Welcome to our community!¶
Alex Stomper, HU Berlin, 2021
Quellen:
W. Deresiewicz, 2014, Excellent Sheep, Free Press.
B. Flyvbjerg, 2001, Making Social Science Matter, Cambridge University Press.
D. MacKenzie, 2002, An Engine, Not a Camera, MIT Press.
A. Rubinstein, 2012, Economic Fables, Open Book Publishers. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/136
H. Uhlig, 2012, Economics and Reality, Journal of Macroeconomics.
Willkommen an der HU Berlin¶
Die HU ist der Prototyp der "research university", d.h. einer Universität, an der Lehrende und Studierende als "Forschende" betrachtet werden.
- ProfessorInnen sind "selbstständig Forschende", Studierende sind "geleitet Forschende".
- Wenn wir wüssten was wir tun, dann wärs nicht Forschung.
Die HU ist ein Erbe der Aufklärung.
- Zentrale Ideen der Aufklärung: Autonomie des Individuums und Weltbürgertum.
- "Enlightenment Now" - Pinker, 2018, Penguin Books.
On the beaten path¶
Betriebswirtschaftslehre ist seit Jahren das beliebteste Studienfach in Deutschland.
Zahl der BWL StudentInnen in Deutschland, nach Geschlecht, jeweils im Wintersemester.
Warum sind Sie hier?¶
Warum ein Wirtschaftsstudium?
- Berufsorientierung oder Interesse an der Sache "for its own sake"?
- Interesse oder Desinteresse an den Alternativen?
- "Because I can?" "To get to the top?"
Deresiewicz (2014):
Learning for its own sake means exactly what it says: learning is the only reason that you're doing it, because learning is what matters. Wanting to be at the top involves a rather different set of motivations, and you need to look that in the face. Can you get there anyway, simply as an accidental outgrowth of your efforts? Maybe, but do you really mean accidental, or are you trying to sneak behind your own back?
Geleitet Forschen¶
Ich werde Ihnen nun einige "Forschungsthemen" vorschlagen, die Sie selbst, uns und unsere Wissenschaft betreffen. Das erste Thema ist die Selbst-Erforschung:
Deresiewicz:
The first thing that college is for is to teach you to think. [...] There's something in particular you need to think about: yourself.
Why college? College, after all, as those who would like to denigrate it often say, is "not the real world." But that is precisely its strength. College is an opportunity to stand outside the world for a few years, between the orthodoxy of your family, and the exigencies of career, and contemplate things from a distance.
Studieren braucht Zeit, sonst ist es Zeitverschwendung.
Die HU erlaubt Ihnen ungewöhnlich viele Freiheiten bzgl. Zeitmanagement. Ein freies "da"-sein!
Selbst-Erforschung¶
Ist Ihre Entscheidung für ein Wirtschaftsstudium eigentlich rational?
Ariel Rubinstein in seinem open-source Buch "Economic Fables":
I consider myself a very rational man [...]
The rational man has preferences regarding the consequences that are likely to result from choosing various alternatives. When he is required to choose, he:
- asks himself what alternatives he has;
- clarifies to himself the consequence that would follow upon choosing each of the possible alternatives;
- chooses the alternative that leads to the best consequence (as expressing in 2) in accordance with his preferences, from among all of the reasonable alternatives in the situation (as expressed in 1)
This means, for example, that a default option - if one exists - does not influence the decision [...]
[...] we view a decision maker as an independent decision making unit whose choices are not influenced by other decision makers.
And do I want to be rational? I refuse to answer this question rationalistically. That would require me to grapple with the meaning of life, to define the goals of my life, [...] I prefer to not go down that route.
Forschung muss riskant sein¶
...und das gilt auch für die Selbst-Erforschung!
Lernen Sie die eigenen Begeisterungs-Potentiale kennen. Studieren Sie nicht zu effizient, riskieren Sie Ihre Zeit zu "verschwenden". Effizienz setzt Ziele voraus, aber Ziele machen auch "blind". Erforschen Sie Ihre Wahrnehmung!
Nehmen Sie in den ersten Semesterwochen auch an Lehrveranstaltungen teil, die sie erst in einem späteren Semester besuchen wollen.
Manche Lehrveranstaltungen werden Ihnen zu schwierig sein. Geben Sie nicht gleich auf. "Fail better" (S. Beckett).
Nutzen Sie den Überfachlichen Wahlpflichtbereich auch um an Ihren Schwächen zu arbeiten.
Finden Sie heraus ob Sie selbst Wissenschaftler werden wollen.
Lesen Sie Memoiren/Erfahrungsberichte anderer Ökonomen!
Ariel Rubinstein's Selbst-Erforschung¶
"Economists do it with models."
Rubinstein (2012):
The word model sounds more scientific that the word fable or tale, but I think we are talking about the same thing.
What is the connection between an economic model and reality? According to one view, a model is supposed to serve as a basis for making predictions [...] According to another view, the objective of economic theory is to sharpen perception. [...] I would like to advocate another approach [...] an economic model is not essentially different from a model in logic. [...] I contend that economics studies the logic of life, but does not engage in predictions or recommendations.
Modelle dienen der Wahrnehmung.
Alex Stomper's Selbst-Erforschung¶
Mein persönlicher Weg in die Wissenschaft startete mit einem Interesse an der "Fabrikation der Erkenntnis" (C. Knorr-Cetina, Suhrkamp, 2002).
Als "Erkenntnisfabrik" sind die Wirtschaftswissenschaften besonders interessant weil ökonomische Theorie (und auch Empirie!) oft performativ wirkt.
Ein Beispiel für Performativität (MacKenzie (2002)):
Financial economics, I argue, did more than analyze markets; it altered them. It was an "engine" [...] an active force transforming its environment, not a camera passively recording it.
Modelle werden wahr(-gemacht).
Der "blinde Fleck"¶
Rubinstein (2012):
I think of the choice of economic policy in the same way as I think of the childhood choice of which game to play. [...] Some economic games benefit the workers and some benefit the wealthy; some are benefitial to the eldery and some to the young, [...]
A society must decide which economic game it will play. Economics, as an academic field, has little to say about the question of which game to play.
Economic models generally ignore the aspiration of individuals to gain power and control over other people.
Der "blinde Fleck"¶
Flyvbjerg (2001):
Our education was based on the Baconian dictum that “knowledge is power”, knowledge is important.
Today we would say that our education lacked reflexivity on this point.
I concluded that knowledge about the phenomena which decide whether economic, social, geographic, or other knowledge gets to count as important is at least as important as that knowledge itself. If you are not knowledgable about the former, you cannot be effective with the latter.
Ihr Beitrag...¶
Sie stehen nun am Anfang eines "Denkprozesses". Wir werden Sie beeinflussen. Leisten Sie Widerstand!
- Welche Motivation treibt Sie an? "Learning for its own sake?" "Are you trying to sneak behind your own back?"
- Welche Motivationen treiben uns - als forschende Ökonomen - an? Nur Erkenntnisgewinn? "Are we trying to sneak behind our own back?"
- Welche Wirkungen haben Modelle?
- Welche anderen Fragen werden zu selten gestellt?
Wir brauchen in der ökonomischen Forschung und Lehre mehr Reflexion. Dazu können Sie - gerade auch schon in Ihrem Studium - einen wichtigen Beitrag leisten (wenn Sie viel "da" sind).