Re: A physicist, and engineer and a economist are all trapped on an island...


"kProductivity.com" <Francis.Marco@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1175083187.813119.154370@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A physicist, and engineer and a economist are all trapped on an island
with a box of canned food that they cannot get open. The physicist
says, "If I build a fire and then we heat up the cans eventually the
cans will blow up from expanding gasses and then we will be able to
eat the food." The engineer then suggests, " If I can make a three to
one pulley system perhaps we can rig up a machine to open up the
cans." The economist then chimes in saying, " You guys are making this
far too hard let's just assume we have a can opener."

Besides the downgrade economists receive in this joke (always living
in an imaginary world?: not really!), we can perceive the differences
between all three on the methodologies involved in their state of
mind. Mathematicians, as well as physicists, make further use of the
theory; engineers are more practical, they make use of the theory to
accomplish the practice; economists mix this and that due to
complications of Social Sciences.
So, who's the best?. None and all: everyone of us OR colleagues should
be a little bit of everyone deppending on the job...

The debate is open!

See http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1037523,00.html - same joke.

I didn't remember the joke, but I did recall the punchline "assume a can
opener" - it is well-known.

In this blog http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=393 the contributor says that
they remember it from 40 years ago.

http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/work/economists.html contains the most succint
version of this:

"A physicist, a chemist and an economist are stranded on an island, with
nothing to eat. A can of soup washes ashore. The physicist says, "Let's
smash the can open with a rock." The chemist says, "Let's build a fire and
heat the can first." The economist says, "Let's assume that we have a
can-opener...""

Also other economist jokes. Note: This is not the stand-up comedian
well-known in the UK.

Try:

"A totalitarian head of state asked for an economist with one arm to advise
the government. Why ? Because he was tired of economists who say: "Well on
one hand ... But on the other hand ...""

Nick



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