This is a bit of LML jargon that we felt is worth promoting, even though it’s terribly unfair to a great mathematician. So please, you admirers of Laplace, don’t take offense. What’s the story?
In 1738 Daniel Bernoulli wrote his famous paper that introduces expected utility theory and thereby defines the basis of neoclassical economics — macro and micro. Since you ask: this paper is famous for its treatment of the St. Petersburg paradox. The “paradox” goes like this:
This post is about mindset, culture, implicit assumptions. The big assumption in neoclassical economics is ergodicity, or equilibrium, or stationarity, or stability — basically the idea that nothing ever changes fundamentally. Things may fluctuate but they always return to some state of normality. Naively, that doesn’t fit with the idea of a growing economy, innovation, and change. So something’s up. I’ll explore what that is by replacing the mental image of stability with something that doesn’t return to normality: a nuclear explosion.
