http://www.mises.org/story/2289
The Economics of Groundhog Day
By DW MacKenzie
Posted on 8/30/2006
***Begin Quote***
In Groundhog Day Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a man who relives a particular day — Groundhog Day — many times. In the first instance Phil Connors lives through this day quite imperfectly.
***AND***
The lessons we learn each day are at best only partially valid for the next day. Consequently we can at best hope for only a gradual improvement in our lives as we keep pace with but never overtake changes in our surroundings. Our reality is to live our lives as Phil Connors did the first time he lived through Groundhog Day, not the last time. We are all speculators and our every action is innovative.
***End Quote***
This fellow helped me understand why I like this dumb movie so much. It works in so many dimensions.
(1) We don’t get to do life over. First time thru is our only time thru.
(2) How many times do we get to know what someone really thinks is important? In one the iterations, he discovers what the girl likes to drink. Next integration, he passes that hurdle only to fail on French Literature. It reminds me of the JoHari window. A ton of information is in the two quadrants we can’t see.
(3) Perfect information is NEVER available. So, now we have to recognize that not only are there no silver bullets (i.e., easy solutions), but we probably can’t even see the targets, nor recognize the bullets.
(4) We can deduce a good method from the film. The power of iteration gets you where you want to go. If we can “run the hand twice”, like the poker pros do on tv, then we can get a Phil Colling “do over” . It certainly makes objective setting, followed by small rapid iterations of quick improvements to approach our goal in measurable steps. It ignores the “Hail Mary” pass of breakthrough discoveries method.
(5) It certain argues persuasively that we need to focus on values and process which maximize our ability to make good decisions.
And, it made me laugh.
Posted by reinkefj 
Reinke Faces Life 