"It is not a case of choosing those [faces] that, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those that average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees."
and
"Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be."
and
"Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be."
-Keynes
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By the way - the picture on the last post is from the newest AEA calendar. I can identify all but two of them... (the two in the top left corner), and one of them looks familiar. How does everyone else do? What about that cutoff nose and mustasche in the top right? Anyone know who that is?
"Often, even, everything is done without any apparent cause, in a manner entirely at variance with the opinions that have been expressed, or that, indeed, are really entertained; so that sometimes the people marvels that that has been done which has been done, as if it were not itself that has done it. Nothing is more uncertain than the common people, —nothing more obscure than men’s wishes,— nothing more treacherous than the whole nature of the comitia." - Marcus Cicero, _Pro Murena_
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