蕾亞語錄

1. 咦？天已經黑了。不過[路]燈還亮著，那我們假裝天還亮著，好嗎？

2. 我不是小美女，我已經四歲了啦！我是中美女。

3. 我已經幫弟弟取好名字了，叫作Leon。(據懷孕的蕾亞媽媽說，她堅持不肯要別的名字。)

4. 我還是比較想要妹妹。因為男生臭臭的。

5. ...(蕾亞由哭轉笑)...對啦，我忘記帶我的書了，所以我才在哭。

6. 妳去我家幫我拿書，我留在這裡，外面很冷，我的外套不好。...(幾經說服後，終於露出真面目)... 妳去我家就好了，因為我很懶惰，我不要出去。

7. 我畫卡片給Alia，她是我的copine，她的生日已經過了，我要把卡片給她。...(???)... 生日過了才可以送卡片啊。

8. ...(蕾亞在畫另一張生日卡)... 這是給我自己的卡片，我的生日已經過了，所以才要卡片。

Assumptions

It's easy to make fun of this story. Nobody, not even Nobel-winning economists, really makes decisions that way. But most economists—myself included—nonetheless find Economic Man useful, with the understanding that he's an idealized representation of what we really think is going on. People do have preferences, even if those preferences can't really be expressed by a precise utility function; they usually make sensible decisions, even if they don't literally maximize utility. You might ask, why not represent people the way they really are? The answer is that abstraction, strategic simplification, is the only way we can impose some intellectual order on the complexity of economic life. And the assumption of rational behavior has been a particularly fruitful simplification.

The question, however, is how far to push it. (......)

From: "Who was Milton Friedman?" by Paul Krugman
(the following responses to this article can be found at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20015)