Daniel Akst

This was just sent to me — taken this morning in Sherman Oaks, one of the most Jewish neighborhoods in LA.

I am at the Board of Governors today, presenting my paper on oil tankers (especially relevant given current events), so I won’t have time to write the second part of yesterday’s post on the role of universities. That will have to wait until later this week. Meanwhile, a journalist contacted me to request more details about my Goffman study plan, so I decided to share my workflow. I want to emphasize that this workflow worked for me based on my background, interests, and the time I had available. Others will discover different approaches that better suit their needs. That’s exactly the point. The most valuable feature of an LLM as a learning tool is its ability to be personalized. A course has a single syllabus for everyone, but Claude creates one tailored for you. Time and process. I spent a little over 12 hours over the weekend, which is more than I initially planned (I had asked for a 9-hour schedule, but the material drew me in). To put that in perspective: according to the Carnegie Standard for college work in the U.S., a typical semester course requires 135 hours of student effort—45 hours in class and 90 hours outside of class. Of course, in reality, most courses demand less time, or students are not always as diligent. A master’s course on modern sociological theory might cover 10 to 12 major thinkers over 14 weeks. Goffman would typically be covered in one week, which translates to roughly 9 to 12 hours of total student effort. So, the time I dedicated is comparable to what a student in a well-structured course would spend on the same thinker. The process had three stages. First, the study plan. I asked Claude to prepare a plan tailored to my specific background. I am a macroeconomist, not a sociologist, but I have some familiarity with social theory and a strong background in game theory, information economics, and signaling. I told Claude all of this and asked it to consider my existing knowledge, focus on Goffman’s most important contributions, and make explicit connections to concepts I already understand. I’ve discovered that spending enough time preparing the prompt is essential. Tell Claude as much as you can about what you’re trying to achieve! The plan it created included a reading sequence, key themes to focus on in each text, and a set of questions designed to connect Goffman's ideas to economic theory. For example, the plan highlighted early on that Goffman's distinction between “expressions given” and “expressions given off” naturally aligns with the difference between intentional signals and involuntary information leaks in signaling models. Having that link outlined before I started reading made the process much more productive than it would have been otherwise. This is where personalization shines. A standard syllabus for a sociology course would not draw these connections, because it is not designed for an economist but for the median student in the class. Second: reading the actual texts. I want to clarify this: Claude did not replace the reading. I read The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in its entirety. I read significant sections from Asylums (the full first essay, “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions”) and from Stigma (the first three chapters). Claude chose which texts to focus on and in what order. But I sat with the books and read them thoroughly. There is no substitute for experiencing an original thinker in his own words, and Goffman is a remarkable writer. No summary, no matter how well done, can capture the depth of his observations. Third: interactive Q&A. As I read, I used Claude as an interactive interlocutor. This was the most valuable stage. I asked Claude when Goffman’s argument was unclear to me. I asked for connections to the broader sociological literature (how does Goffman relate to Mead? to Garfinkel? to Bourdieu?). I asked for links to ideas I already knew from economics. For example, I spent considerable time exploring the relationship between Goffman’s concept of “audience segregation” (the performer must keep different audiences apart because the signal that works in one room is destructive in another) and multi-audience signaling problems in mechanism design. I also pushed Claude on where Goffman’s ideas have and have not been formalized: team signaling, the cooperative receiver, frame manipulation. Some of these turned into interesting exchanges that forced me to think carefully about the limits of existing economic models. This is the difference between reading a book alone and reading it alongside a knowledgeable colleague who has infinite patience, no office hours, broad knowledge of adjacent literatures, and the ability to adjust the conversation in real time to your level and your interests. Not a perfect colleague. Not an infallible one. But an extraordinarily useful one. Were there errors? Probably. There always are. When I teach my own graduate courses in areas where I have published for two decades, I catch myself giving imprecise or incomplete answers more often than I would like to admit. Perfection is not the benchmark. The benchmark is whether the experience, taken as a whole, produces understanding. In this case, I believe it did. Can someone with a different background create a better workflow? Certainly. A computer scientist might want Claude to highlight the links between Goffman and agent-based modeling. A psychologist might focus on the connection to self-perception theory. A philosophy student could trace the phenomenological roots. That’s exactly why personalization is a major advantage. The study plan I received was designed for a macroeconomist familiar with Spence but not Garfinkel. Yours should be built for whoever you are and whatever you already know. That is the point, and it is the thing a standard university course, however good, cannot do.

BREAKING 🔴🔴 An IRGC terror group in the UK, called Ashab al-Yamin takes responsibility for torching 4 ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer EMT services in Golders Green, London last night. The terrorists are on the loose. The UK is dealing with a serious problem.

In another life I’m writing a dissertation on the side doors of New York.