Freakonomics takes on the Bible

Those of you who have looked at my links to favourite blogs will know I am an avid reader of the Freakonomics blog. They produce a large quantity of posts, many of which I never read (I have yet to understand what the Yale Book of Quotations has to do with "the hidden side of everything"), but they have some very well-respected bloggers and their posts are usually non-technical and high quality.

But I have been puzzling for a few days now over a curious post by Daniel Hamermesh about game theory in the Bible. Maybe someone who is more knowledgeable about religion can help me out with this.

Dalai Lama blames inequality for suffering

His Holiness the Dalai Lama tweeted a thought-provoking sentence on Twitter yesterday: "Economic inequality, especially that between developed and developing nations, remains the greatest source of suffering on this planet."

It's a loaded statement for 140 characters or less, and I was left pondering whether the Dalai Lama is correct. Certainly it's easy to accept that poverty — a lack of being able to afford basic necessities — can cause suffering. But it's not clear to me that economic inequality — a big variance in individual incomes — also causes suffering. I decided to try and test the Dalai Lama's theory.

The Invention of Lying and discount rates

I recently rented The Invention of Lying. I was pleasantly surprised: the scriptwriter must have been an economist at heart because the comedy was loaded with undertones of incentives and game theory.

Spoiler alert: I'm going to give away details of the movie now, so stop reading if you don't want to know the plot.