Spinoza, Descartes and suspension of disbelief in the ivory tower of economics

Suspension of disbelief

The core of my argument will come from James Montier, now at the fund
manager GMO. As a strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson in 2005, he
wrote a timeless piece on the debate between two 17th century
philosophers René Descartes of France and Baruch de Spinoza of the
Netherlands. Descartes was of the view that people process information
for accuracy before filing it away in memory. Spinoza made the
opposite claim, that people must suspend disbelief in order to process
information. The two competing ideas were put to the test; and it
appears that Spinoza was right about the need for naïve belief,
something that has grave implications for investing, the subject of
Montier's essay.

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