What happens when a doctor defects to economics and the humanities — and then asks an AI whether doctors are a tad boring? The answers, from both Claude and Google AI, reveal something deeper than professional stereotypes. Claude argues that medical training, by design, rewards convergent thinking — getting the right diagnosis — over the exploratory, question-generating mind that the humanities cultivate. Years spent in a closed intellectual world produce a certain narrowness, though brilliant exceptions like Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande remind us it is medical culture, not doctors as people, that deserves the critique. Google AI, characteristically, opts for balance: doctors are not boring, merely exhausted. But perhaps the most honest insight lies in the afterthought the questioner himself appends — that his intense dislike of medicine may be colouring his perception of those who stayed. Self-knowledge, as ever, is the beginning of wisdom.
Tag: Economics
A “Love-Thy-Neighbour” Economy (LTN): a model for growth, flourishing, and enoughness
What if economics were grounded not in endless growth or class struggle, but in the simple command: “Love thy neighbour as thyself”? A “Love-Thy-Neighbour Economy” would place human dignity, solidarity, and stewardship at the centre of production and exchange. Rather than chasing GDP alone, it would measure success through health, education, meaningful work, and community trust—closer to Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness than to Wall Street’s indices. Growth might appear slower on paper, but the gains in resilience, fairness, and joy could be far greater. Thinkers from Aristotle to Amartya Sen, Marx to Martha Nussbaum, Gandhi to E.F. Schumacher, all in different ways gestured toward such a vision: economics as a means to human flourishing. It is not utopia; elements already exist in cooperatives, wellbeing budgets, and community care systems. What remains is the will to weave them together around love as our moral compass.
My Brush with Two Nobel Prize Winners in Economics
When I was a PhD student in Economics at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1990s, I was lucky enough … More
The Rational-Economic Man
This world is a rotten placeIts redeeming features fewLove also always asks this“What’s in it for me?”Scarce are the resourcesVery … More