It is commonly accepted as a premise that the body is wise: it knows when it needs something. For example, one might be craving an apple or even chocolate. Why is it however that often, the body is misguided? In terms of diet, many times we crave things which end up compounding for malnutrition: we can't eat junk food all the time. Some argue that due to evolution it made sense to accumulate fat for the days when we wouldn't have abundance. Still, this argument implies that the adaptability of the body is somehow limited. Most notably, when going to the doctor, many times the body does not crave the medicine or the remedy, whether it is because of the discomfort of wearing a cast or because of the taste of the medicine itself. This is further true with naturopathic medicine, which is typically an unprocessed substance. All these examples point at some sort of flaws of the body, or rather, at a fault in the premise that the body knows. There are aspects of human behavior that are incredibly difficult to understand with traditional economic theory. This pushes us towards contending with the complexity of a brain. The subconscious, as psychologists have studied, is capable of processing information at a faster pace than the conscious mind, and potentially picks up on hundreds if not thousands more of elements. For example, when greeting someone, the subconscious is reading on queues regarding the trustworthiness of a person, the mood, and so on. How can we, then, incorporate this into Economic Theory? One answer would be that it is already incorporated, as the subconscious is not necessarily irrational, in the sense that it does not defy completeness or transitivity of preferences. However, it seems to be the case that there are aspects of human experience that are not simply captured by binary models of reality, and that is why, perhaps axiomatically, some philosophers have defined religion as the most fundamental structure of reality. The problem is that hard Science seems insufficient to express or contain concepts like Motherhood or Justice, which are at the core of human experience. On the one hand, it is possible that AI takes over our capacity of developing, creating and solving complex models. On the other hand, we have encountered multiple instances where our computational ability has reached its limit due to research and models that not only push the boundaries but also suffer from some form of curse of dimensionality. In my own work with networks and other topics, I have many times encountered that the computational cost (in time) really bears a burden on what can be done or studied. In this regard, it will be interesting to observe the interplay of computers and Economic Policy. At any rate, the question of why we don't always like medicine remains open. Perhaps it is in a way that we are meant not to be eternal. What do you think?

Below there is a picture of a recent sunset in Philadelphia: