
A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man - breck
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/upshot/paul-romer-burning-man-nobel-economist.html
======
mopsi
A comment I saw yesterday on Reddit did a good job explaining what Burning Man
is:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/confusing_perspective/comments/d0wr...](https://old.reddit.com/r/confusing_perspective/comments/d0wrno/a_shot_of_burning_man_that_looks_like_a_solar/ezfbloy/)

~~~
Stratoscope
Thank you for the link, that is a great comment. I thought I knew a bit about
Burning Man from talking with some friends and neighbors who are Burners, but
I learned a lot in the last five minutes.

------
kgwgk
“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I
would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-
control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for
approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met
to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much
more satisfying (for me) if they found out on their own. Like I would have
normal chats with them about the weather every day, and then one day they
would say “oh hey someone told me the other day that you had a Nobel Prize, I
didn’t know that, that’s amazing, why didn’t you tell me!” And I’d be like “oh
that old thing, yeah, it’s not really a big deal, I never think about it.”
Look, I do not know if I could pull it off. Would I occasionally drop cryptic
references to Stockholm to try to help them along? Sure, of course, I am only
human. But I really do think that I’d mostly be able to delay gratification,
because when they did figure it out it would be extra sweet.

“On the other hand, in addition to never winning a Nobel Prize, I have never
been to Burning Man, and it’s possible that if I spent a week in the desert
with weirdly dressed strangers almost all of whom are either tech founders or
hedge fund managers, I might just end up wearing my Nobel medal around and
taking “Alfred” as my playa name. I assume Burning Man is mostly a weird form
of charades where everyone dresses up as a hippie and tries to get you to
guess what app they invented. I don’t know. All of this feels far enough
removed from my actual experience that I am kind of groping in the dark here.”

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldman-
wants-to-be-cool-again)

~~~
H8crilA
From my experience it is usually not so easy to tell that someone is
wealthy/influential, not least because of the unusual clothing often including
face masks. Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and
beautiful costumes that just amplify their hotness.

For example - this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man, whom I admire a lot, and
I have no idea if I bumped into him or not by accident (probably not due to
the scale of the event). On the playa he'd mostly look like a generic
Caucasian old man.

~~~
foldingmoney
>Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and beautiful
costumes that just amplify their hotness. For example - this year Ray Dalio
was on Burning Man

That reads oddly.

~~~
H8crilA
Added a paragraph. Please Take Another Look. Although it may have been better
with the unintended comedic element.

------
beerdoggie
Matt Levine did a hilarious piece on this earlier in the week!
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldman-
wants-to-be-cool-again)

~~~
rcpt
> Burning Man is mostly a weird form of charades where everyone dresses up as
> a hippie and tries to get you to guess what app they invented

This is great

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kinkrtyavimoodh
What bizarre style of writing, as if Burning Man is some thoroughly alien
concept and is being described as seen by the curious eyes of an awestruck
anthropologist.

Yes, it's believable that this professor found something of interest in the
way Burning Man organizes itself but did we real need paragraphs upon
paragraphs of this woo-woo style writing?

~~~
perl4ever
The cumulative attendance of Burning Man since 1986 is around 1 million
people, so that's about the maximum number of people that could have
experienced it, if nobody went more than once - but of course, people have, so
the real number of unique attendees is lower.

...that means more than 99.7% of the US, and 99.99% of the world has never
gone and it is thoroughly alien to them. So a bemused anthropologist seems
like the appropriate POV for a general audience.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> 99.99% of the has never gone and it is thoroughly alien to them

Bit of a false dichotomy.

Surely there's a bunch of people who are familiar with Burning Man from photos
and videos online but haven't attended personally.

~~~
perl4ever
I imagine you could argue the opposite just as easily.

I first heard of it many years ago, but seeing a few photos doesn't mean
someone is "familiar" with it from an anthropological perspective. Especially
since presumably it's changed a lot over the years.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Right.

I just meant that if you’ve read about it, it probably ain’t _thoroughly
alien_ to you.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Not conceptually, but certainly experientially.

~~~
perl4ever
I've read about Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn (and seen pictures)...I
would say they're still thoroughly alien to me...

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tim333
The idea that you should provide a basic layout and some support and then
trust the market is interesting. I wonder if people will try it on a real
city.

~~~
H8crilA
It's a little more than that. All the BM principles are there and necessary.
In particular there's no typical "market", as BM runs neither on any form of
money, nor on bartering, but instead on unconditional gifting.

~~~
soneca
From what I read (never been there), _" unconditional"_ does not seem the
right word. There seems to be a social rule that a camp is expected to gift.
So everyone there is gifting on the condition that everyone else is gifting
too.

~~~
H8crilA
Some camps don't gift much, and that's fine. But yeah the whole setup only
works because so many people are giving things. For starters there would be no
artwork if people didn't give - artwork set up in the playa or on a mutant
vehicle is also a gift.

It is unconditional in the sense that you just give without asking for
anything in return.

~~~
chachachoney
Drastic oversimplification. Many of the showcase playa art pieces are funded
by grants supplied by the org. Also, while it contradicts the codified
principles, there are no shortage of attendees who believe that the gifting
thing is reciprocal/transactional and not unconditional.

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chachachoney
Another reason to increase nytimes' Gell-Mann amnesia score.

The word "placement" isn't found once in the article, nor is there any mention
of the actual significant and broad machinations that the org goes through to
plan the city every year.

However, the word "Nobel" appears nearly a dozen times.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
NYT has become absolutely terrible about these things. Everything is written
in a subtle propaganda style writing.

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hndamien
There is no Economics Nobel prize.

~~~
hndamien
For the down voters, it is "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences
in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It is distinctly not a Nobel prize.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences)

~~~
soneca
I would assume that most of downvoters know this. They are not downvoting
because they think you are factually wrong, they are downvoting because your
comment was just pedantic and doesn't add anything to the conversation.

~~~
hndamien
The entire intention of the mentioning of the "Nobel winning Economist" is to
convey an authority that doesn't exist. I feel anybody relying on this should
also have it pointed out that such implied authority is false.

~~~
detaro
The "authority" of the money originally coming from a different source?
Because according to the wikipedia article you linked, that's the main
difference.

~~~
hndamien
The authority coming from the Nobel name, which the money is co-opting.

"The interest is to be divided into five equal parts and distributed as
follows: one part to the person who made the most important discovery or
invention in the field of physics; one part to the person who made the most
important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who made
the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one
part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most
outstanding work in an idealistic direction; and one part to the person who
has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition
or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace
congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry are to be awarded by the
Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical achievements by
the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in
Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to
be selected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that when
awarding the prizes, no consideration be given to nationality, but that the
prize be awarded to the worthiest person, whether or not they are
Scandinavian."

~~~
Gibbon1
Tells you a lot about economists that they made themselves a fake Nobel Prize.

