While I’m training to become an economist by trade, there are many other topics that interest me.  These span different fields and a spectrum of personal knowledge – ranging from topics that I fervently read about despite my incompetence, to topics that give me joy to discuss with my friends, to topics that I plan on researching heavily and writing a dissertation on.  I secretly wish that I majored in philosophy and (if I had the skills) cognitive science.

Here’s a list of ideas (as specific as possible), and in no particular order:

• The emergent origins of consciousness
• Psycholinguistics & the relationship between language and consciousness
• Language and the mind as a social institution
• The origin of the first States (and their connection to organized religion)
• Social & religious prejudices that influence values & beliefs
• Biblical criticism; arguments for god’s existence/nonexistence; comparative mythology
• Meta-ethics, the function, and ontology of morals
• Nihilist, existentialist, and absurdist philosophy
• Evolutionary psychological explanations of human motivation
• The limits of rationality
• The extent to which we can have a priori knowledge
• Methodological & epistemological foundations of economics
• The extent to which markets fail
• Non-State provision of public goods & solutions to collective action problems
• Money, banking, & the business cycle; especially alternative currencies & free banking
• The evolution of the common law
• Alternative legal institutions
• Historically “stateless” societies
• String theory/M-Theory and the fundamentals of theoretical physics

Last Updated: 4 November 2011