As you all may remember, this past Tuesday's lecture involved Professor Coppock discussing the first part of Caplan's book that he assigned to us. During the lecture, he discussed the concept of rational ignorance and the miracle of aggregation, for which he provided an example with two candidates named Buttigieg and Putin, respectively. As some of you may noticed, Professor Coppock wasn't sure how to pronounce either of the candidates names, something we all innocently joked about. At first, I was kind of surprised that Professor Coppock didn't know how to pronounce "Buttigieg" and "Putin" given that a lot people know how to. I wondered why this was the case until I realized the answer was in the material we were being taught that day: rational ignorance.
I don't know if any of you have noticed, but Professor Coppock is pretty good at the whole teaching economics thing (I'm really trying for that 5 on this blog post, if you couldn't tell), meaning that the opportunity cost of his time is extremely high because the cost of educating himself on these pronunciations is significantly higher than the expected benefit of doing so. The cost is so high because learning how to pronounce "Buttigieg" and "Putin" takes time away from Professor Coppock's schedule that he could be using to do things related to teaching economics (i.e. lesson planning, grading, etc.) — something he is good at and therefore would derive more benefit from (ex: if he spends more time perfecting his lectures, his teaching/economics skills will become more apparent and he may win an award, perhaps) than he would doing virtually any other activity (assuming that teaching economics is what he's best at). As a result, it is rational for Professor Coppock to be ignorant about how to pronounce these politicians' names because it provides such little benefit to him than doing teaching-related things would, therefore it is not worth his time to do the former. So, all of this to say: sorry for silently judging you for approximately five seconds this past Tuesday, Professor Coppock. I totally get it now!
I don't know if any of you have noticed, but Professor Coppock is pretty good at the whole teaching economics thing (I'm really trying for that 5 on this blog post, if you couldn't tell), meaning that the opportunity cost of his time is extremely high because the cost of educating himself on these pronunciations is significantly higher than the expected benefit of doing so. The cost is so high because learning how to pronounce "Buttigieg" and "Putin" takes time away from Professor Coppock's schedule that he could be using to do things related to teaching economics (i.e. lesson planning, grading, etc.) — something he is good at and therefore would derive more benefit from (ex: if he spends more time perfecting his lectures, his teaching/economics skills will become more apparent and he may win an award, perhaps) than he would doing virtually any other activity (assuming that teaching economics is what he's best at). As a result, it is rational for Professor Coppock to be ignorant about how to pronounce these politicians' names because it provides such little benefit to him than doing teaching-related things would, therefore it is not worth his time to do the former. So, all of this to say: sorry for silently judging you for approximately five seconds this past Tuesday, Professor Coppock. I totally get it now!
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