Blindspot

A BLOG ABOUT LAW, POLITICS, AND CULTURE

Max Stearns

Aug 21, 2018
5 min

Terminological Conflation and the Behavioralist-Neoclassical Divide

Many disagreements implicating economic analysis arise from terminological misunderstandings. For example, a challenge when teaching Law and Economics is persuading students not to fight theorems or games. Unfamiliar students sometimes treat theorems or games as if they were hypotheses or theories. A similar phenomenon explains sometimes profound disagreements between scholars relying upon neoclassical economic theory, including first generation law and economics scholars, o

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Max Stearns

Oct 23, 2017
6 min

Emma Stone: Game Theorist

Emma Stone played brilliantly in a movie subtly depicting the nuances of what game theorists call a battle of the sexes. More recently, she played Billie Jean King, who famously defeated Bobbie Riggs in a 1973 match in the Houston Astrodome. Both movies have game theory implications. The titles keep us in suspense. La La Land: Everyone knows La La Land. If you don’t, or if you don’t think it’s flawless (check), you might just get arrested. See here. Aspiring singer and actor,

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Max Stearns

May 3, 2017
7 min

Cycling, Consciousness, and Humanity (part I): General Framing

Our minds wander. We lose focus, or we focus on things that distract from what we intend to be doing. Our minds also cycle, taking us on emotional or cognitive loops, perhaps in ways that merely distract, and perhaps in ways that help define us as conscious, sentient beings, or more simply as human. In this initial post on the topic, I propose something audacious: emotional or cognitive cycling helps to explain consciousness, and perhaps what it means to be human. Opposite ex

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Max Stearns

Apr 19, 2017
5 min

Dimensionality and its Discontents

In 1930, Sigmund Freud published his masterwork, "Civilization and its Discontents" (available here: http://tinyurl.com/lpnthbh). Freud explained that although our happiness critically depends on living in a society empowered to limit how we all manifest our most basic urges and behaviors, personally subjecting ourselves to the resulting societal constraints ironically limits our happiness. Freud's critical insight corresponds to what game theorists cast as a prisoners' dilem

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Maxwell Stearns

I have been teaching law for twenty-nine years, and I am the Venable, Baetjer & Howard Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. My core areas of interest are Constitutional Law and Law & Economics, which I view as critically interwoven. My most recent book is titled Law and Economics: Private and Public (West Academic 2018, with Todd Zywicki and Tom Miceli). In this poster, recently created by the Maryland Carey Law Thurgood Marshall Law Library, I am pictured with several wonderful books that I've recommended to friends, family, and students.