Realeconomik: Using the messy human experience to drive clean theoretical advance in economics

One way to advance knowledge is to look for small improvements upon what one already holds to be true. The peer review system in modern economics rewards that practice, and we see it too in economic theories of altruism that start from the ‘accepted’ position that people have fixed ‘selfish’ preferences and hence cannot become altruistic towards something new but must already be so at birth. Outside of economics, this is viewed as absurd. Other social sciences view altruism and self-sacrificial behaviour as something that emerges, and hence is dynamic rather than fixed. Yet, within the valley of current economics, the incremental-change approach to advancing our understanding of altruism cannot escape the absurdity of fixed altruism. Retaining the minimum economic concept of the human as evolutionarily ‘selfish’, we describe how an economically tractable understanding of love can be built from a research methodology that includes introspection, participation, playfulness, and ruthless musing, all necessary to escape from the pull of the valley in which we find ourselves.