如何自我介紹?

From Cheap Talk:

Most economists dread these moments when someone asks you what you do and you have to tell them you’re an economist and then prepare to deflect the inevitable questions and/or accusations “what’s going to happen with interest rates?” “when’s the economy going to turn around?” Usually I just mumble and wait for the person to get bored and go on with her reading. For some reason I was talkative today.

I told her I was a game theorist. “What’s that for?” I told her I was working on a theory of torture. She looked horrified. “How do you make a theory of torture?”

I told her that using game theory is a lot like screenwriting. Imagine you were a film-maker and you wanted to make a point about torture. You would invent characters and put them in the roles of torturer and torturee and you would describe the events. You would depict how the torturer would plan his torture and how he would the torturee would react and how this would lead the torturer to adjust his approach. If the film was going to be effective it would have believable characters and it would have to show the audience a plausible hypothetical situation and what happens when these characters act out their roles in that situation. In short, its a model.

當你是學生時就沒有這麼好辦了。因為大家問的是: "你念什麼系?" 而不是: "你作什麼研究?" 因為沒有賽局系，所以你只好乖乖的回答 "經濟系"。每一次我一回答經濟系，尤其是這一年半，就會有人眼睛發亮猛問我覺得經濟什麼時侯才會好轉? 或是政府應該怎麼應付? 或是消費卷是不是好的政策? 等等問題都會讓我發冷汗，雖然我可以回答一些問題，但是我的答案也大多是從報章雜誌所看到的，應付一下而已，應該不會比一般人了解的更多。

我會通常補一句說: "經濟學蠻廣的，我喜歡研究的是個體經濟學，尤其是賽局理論的應用。" 這時就會有人說: "賽局理論喔! 那你玩撲克牌一定很強!" 不然就是覺解釋一下後，就覺得這東西"太深奧"，就不繼續追問了。

對我而言，我也覺得我在做的工作像是再寫一齣劇。所以我完全同意 Jeff Ely 的看法。我可能以後會直接講說我是劇作家。這樣以後可能會有更話題。