A Quote by Gary Becker
Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications.
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Adam Smith had one overwhelmingly important triumph: he put into the center of economics the systematic analysis of the behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interest under conditions of competition.
Like many great ideas in biology, the idea implicating infectious causation in chronic diseases, though simple, has far-reaching implications. It is so simple and so significant, that one would think it would have been recognized by many and would be the starting point for any discussion on the causes of disease. Not yet.
Analysis Is the Critical Starting Point of Strategic Thinking
People still make all sorts of assumptions about me. I've just gone past the point of caring.
That economic decisions are made without certain knowledge of the consequences is pretty self-evident. But, although many economists were aware of this elementary fact, there was no systematic analysis of economic uncertainty until about 1950.
Since we have emphasized that analysis will lead to a positive conclusion only in the exceptional case, it follows that many securities must be examined before one is found that has real possibilities for the analyst. By what practical means does he proceed to make his discoveries? Mainly by hard and systematic work.
Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument.
In short-to overstate the point only slightly-because people don't really know why they do what they do, they give explanations of their own behavior that are about as reliable as anyone else's, and in many circumstances actually less so.
Lulled into somnolence by five hundred years of print, literary studies have been slow to wake up to the importance of MSA (media-specific analysis). Literary criticism and theory are shot through with unrecognized assumptions specific to print. Only now, as the new medium of electronic textuality vibrantly asserts its presence, are these assumptions clearly coming into view.
Sometimes we make assumptions about influence when similarities between two writers' work are so strong, but they're still just assumptions. Some things are sort of zeitgeist-y. There's a collective consciousness and we're all drawing from it.
Research is not a systematic occupation but an intuitive artistic vocation.
Intersectionality has made an important contribution to social and political analysis, asking all of us to think about what assumptions of race and class we make when we speak about "women" or what assumptions of gender and race we make when we speak about "class." It allows us to unpack those categories and see the various kinds of social formations and power relations that constitute those categories.
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We all make basic assumptions about things in life, but sometimes those assumptions are WRONG. We must never trust in what we assume, only in what we KNOW.
We have a tendency to make assumptions about everything! The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking-we take it personally-then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison in our word. That is why whenever we make assumptions, we're asking for problems. We make assumptions, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.
The virtual suppression of ethical discussion after 1845 produces the semblance of purely descriptive analysis, dressed in the mantle of positivist objectivity, analysis which is, in fact, strung to a framework of crude, because unexplicated, moral assumptions.
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