tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post3377180038900877952..comments2024-03-29T18:16:16.530+11:00Comments on The Social Pathologist: Revolt of the Masses. IIIThe Social Pathologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927698533626086780noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-19861636811375706322013-07-26T23:20:43.173+10:002013-07-26T23:20:43.173+10:00@SP
The problem is your looking at someone like K...@SP<br /><br />The problem is your looking at someone like Krugmen and assuming he wants to get the question correct. In reality he wants to get other people to think he's correct(because of the increase in status). Or even being generous he wants his theories to be correct not because they are correct but because he would prefer a world in which they are correct. There can off course be a crossover here, where people want him to produce theories they like and he does so while convincing himself as well because he would also like them to be true.<br /><br />Bruce recently described this quite well:<br /><br />http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-head-girl-syndrome-opposite-of.html<br /><br />Certainly IQ is a strong determinate of "success" in the modern western mold (money, status, etc) holding other factors constant. Moreover, IQ specialization, whatever its effects on the mind more generally, is correlated with climbing the societal ladder.asdfnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-9865031157195607302013-07-26T09:04:25.776+10:002013-07-26T09:04:25.776+10:00@Bob Wallace
They are indeed hi-IQ idiots. What I...@Bob Wallace<br /><br />They are indeed hi-IQ idiots. What I like about Gasset, though, is that he describes the mechanism of their idiocy despite their high IQ. Specialisation compartmentalises I.Q.<br /><br />Guys like Roissy seem to see IQ as the overwhelming determinant of success, yet there appears to be lots of evidence that suggests the high IQ is no protection against outright stupidity. I was perusing the Times Higher Education supplement the other day, looking at the rankings of the world's best universities. The U.S has an inordinate amount of these institutions so you would expect that it, as a country, would be the best run in the world. Germany, for instance, has very few universities which make the top 50 yet, at least from my experience, life in Germany seems a lot better than life in the U.S for the average citizen.<br /><br />@Drew. <br /><br />Agreed. The GFC was a result of a whole host of systemic errors in the system. What irks me about the economics profession, is instead of admitting they don't understand the subject, or that their models are wrong, they attribute it (the GFC) as some sort of black swan event.<br />This explanation has the pernicious effect of both psuedo-plausibly explaining their failure to predict and thus absolving them of any guilt.<br /><br />September 11 was a black swan event, the subprime crisis wasn't,The Social Pathologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927698533626086780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-58783517599321580912013-07-26T07:18:55.795+10:002013-07-26T07:18:55.795+10:00I refer to people like Krugman as "high-IQ id...I refer to people like Krugman as "high-IQ idiots."Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16046202647270439670noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-1589594950269411802013-07-25T12:55:29.154+10:002013-07-25T12:55:29.154+10:00@SP
4 substantial posts in a span of 1 week. Who a...@SP<br />4 substantial posts in a span of 1 week. Who are you and what did do with The Social Pathologist?<br /><br /><br /><br />@mdavid<br />Your argument would have been stronger if you used weather systems instead of pool table.<br />Pool is the typical example used for Newtonian deterministic philosophy of the universe.<br />Weather is the science discipline that caused the development of chaos theories arising out of a few simple sub systems.<br /><br />Sticking with the weather example. Even that can be predicted roughly accurately with the right simulation tools. Except modern economics doesn't use chaos theory, and dynamic systems modeling. They are still stuck in the 1930's with overly simplified equilibrium equations.<br /><br />Go read the meeting minutes of Fed Res from 2008 that were released a few months back. I did, and I can tell you these mainstream economists didn't know which way the wind was blowing even while they were standing outside and watching the tornado touch down right in front of them. They had not a single clue.<br />Drewnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-15652085245641826132013-07-23T13:55:14.636+10:002013-07-23T13:55:14.636+10:00@Inane Rambler
My second choice was Dawkins.
@md...@Inane Rambler<br /><br />My second choice was Dawkins.<br /><br />@mdavid<br /><br />Sorry, disagree.<br /><br />The GFC was not some Black Swan event. The non-Mainstream, particularly the Austrians, saw it coming miles off. It's the economics profession who, in the main, thought that all things were hunky-dory. The Black Swan argument has been a convenient excuse for the economics profession in explaining why they missed the greatest economic comedy since the Depression. The argument implies that no one saw the wreck coming and yet many did.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/james-cook/the-legacy-of-kurt-richenbacher" rel="nofollow">Those who did see the wreck coming saw it a mile away. </a>Rapidly rising debt, rapidly rising house prices, uncorrelated with any commensurate rise in productivity, negative savings rate. Such data does not allow you to predict the date of the crash but it does allow you to determine that the system is weak and prone to collapse.<br /><br />Greenspan's comment on not being able to identify a bubble was an unintentional self-indictment of his cognitive limitations. The fact that so many of the profession agreed with him is a self indictment on theirs.The Social Pathologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12927698533626086780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-2101502064764200452013-07-23T10:37:57.113+10:002013-07-23T10:37:57.113+10:00SP, Given its size and systemic origins, the profe...SP, <i>Given its size and systemic origins, the profession's failure to predict it is akin to the science of astronomy failing notice the moon. (Some of the guys on the list made lucky guesses!)</i><br /><br />This statement is simply wrong. <br /><br />The economy cannot cannot be predicted with meaningful accuracy, period. Failing to predict it is guaranteed, not a "failure". Like the weather, if you get it right very far out at all, you merely got lucky. <br /><br />The lack of predictive power on complex systems, even with lots of data and brainpower, has been known by educated people for thousands of years, but Mandelbrot and others recently proved it mathematically. For some reason, this isn't taught much in schools.<br /><br />A good read on this is Nassim Taleb’s <i>The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.</i> Taleb explains how predicting the future in economics (and other complex systems) is mathematically impossible no matter how much computing power or data you have.<br /><br />Taleb's pool table analogy explains: if one knows the location of every ball + the speed & accuracy of the cue ball, a person might predict the second, third and fourth degree movements. But by the 9th movement the gravitational pull of the person shooting alters the trajectory of the ball. So the slightest error in knowledge of initial conditions destroys the prediction very far out. After 56 movements a particle on the outer edge of the universe will effect the trajectory. And economics is much, much more complex than a pool table. <br /><br />The bottom line is this: There are simply too many factors to consider to make predictions in economics. And we are not even talking about free will, how a changed mood by Warren Buffet or Putin change history. We are merely looking at mechanical systems.mdavidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-25504161318505820352013-07-23T06:54:19.145+10:002013-07-23T06:54:19.145+10:00Great choice of Krugman as the pic.
The worst thi...Great choice of Krugman as the pic.<br /><br />The worst thing about him is that he's completely dishonest, and totally inconsistent. Yet he's been held up as this groundbreaking economist that knows everything.<br /><br />People go on and on about how he won the "Nobel Prize in Economics", but 1. That's not even its proper name, and 2. it's presented by the Swedish Central Bank. But any chance him or his supporters get they like to throw this in everyone's face as though he's some sort of visionary scientist.<br /><br />Dawkins is more of a scientist than this hack.Inane Ramblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29137904.post-80855410980775937062013-07-23T02:39:47.967+10:002013-07-23T02:39:47.967+10:00Hand a little red ball over to a Mathematician, a ...Hand a little red ball over to a Mathematician, a Physicist, and an Engineer - ask them the volume.<br /><br />The Mathematician will measure the radius, multiply by 4/3xpixr3.<br /><br />The Physicist will dunk it in water, and record the displacement.<br /><br />The Engineer will pull out his Big Book of Little Red Balls and look up the serial number.Aurinihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11326304664495981809noreply@blogger.com