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Re:Economics education can shift people in a selfish direction? by dang on Sunday August 31, 2014 @03:32PM (#8250156)
No, the author does not completely fail to understand the quote. He's casting doubt on the reduction of co-operation to self-interest suggested by Smith—or rather by a simplistic interpretation of Smith—because (the claim goes) there is evidence that studying economics makes people less co-operative. The quote is apropos and there's nothing embarrassing about it.

What's embarrassing are instant middlebrow dismissals of entire research programs because of ideological and tribal identification.

I'm not defending the article's claims and have no idea if they're right, but HN threads can be and need to be better than this.

Re:Economics education can shift people in a selfish direction? by baddox on Sunday August 31, 2014 @04:55PM (#8250350)
If you're implying that I am identifying myself with some tribe and therefore immediately dismissing the entire research program, I disagree and regret giving that impression. If this is your impression, I am curious what about my comment gave you that impression, because I genuinely do not see anything in my comment that hints at a specific ideology or tribe, or an instant middlebrow dismissal of an entire research program. I am not a "Smithian" or whatever tribe is being hinted at here, and I did not dismiss the entire research program. I only pointed out what I think is a misrepresentation of that well-known Adam Smith quote.

I find the research quite interesting, although I don't believe that we can conclude anything about the validity of any belief based on attributes of the people espousing the belief. That's the ad hominem fallacy.