They aren't great on transgender topics I hear
I don’t know what person reads The Economist to learn about trans topics (whatever you mean by that)
Is The Economist Always Wrong?
51–60 of 189 posts
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#52The tricky thing about predictions made by public entity or persona is that, the fact that they are making public predictions creates a major influence on the outcome itself. People react to predictions made by them.
Yep. That's why predicting the future of a system you're a part of is sometimes literally impossible; it boils, fundamentally, to the fact that logical negation doesn't have a fixed point.
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
A major reason why the new Fed chair is refusing to provide forward guidance, in a major departure from all(?) previous Fed chairs and will likely require textbooks to be rewritten.
Alan Greenspan (fed chair from 1987-2006) was famous for deliberately confusing forward guidance. Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen are the historical anomalies for clearly communicating their intent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedspeak Quote from Greenspan himself: > As Fed chairman, every time I expressed a view, I added or subtracted 10 basis points from the credit market. That was not helpful. But I nonetheless ha…
I think the better Greenspan quote is from one of his earlier congressional testimony sessions: "Since becoming a central banker, I have learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said."
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#54I'd love to know if "the pink" has the same problem because I used to find the editorial very good. As a non-investor, left leaning voter, it interested me that I found much to agree with in "the financial times" while still finding much to disagree with in "the times" and "the daily telegraph" and "the spectator" -as if money was more neutrally stanced on left-vs-right.
[deleted]
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The pink is also wrong more often than not when they're talking about non-European issues. When they talk about Europe they lie. Subtle difference.
The view amongst the economically literate left (the LSE?) when I was in the UK, was that lying about money to money-makers was counter productive. I tend to think this is true. The economist doesn't project into quite the same mindset of outcome, so I still think (despite your polemic) it's less likely the fin randomly lies about things, but I'm prepared to consider it on it's merits if somebody gives me better reas…
Chomsky makes the same point in his book "Manufacturing Consent": Economic papers report more truthfully than most because the truth is what their readers need to make decisions in the real world.
I find that pretty convincing and I do check out such papers occasionally for that reason.
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
A major reason why the new Fed chair is refusing to provide forward guidance, in a major departure from all(?) previous Fed chairs and will likely require textbooks to be rewritten.
No, only since Bernanke. So it’s very recent and not something that was historically done by Fed chairs.
The Fed is tasked with keeping inflation down and employment up. But they only have one knob.
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#57After subscribing for 15 years or so, I noped out after their "walker" cover. The world has enough "both sides" journalism, and I had thought them somewhat immune from that.
For me personally, seeing the phrase "both sides" used pejoratively is a red flag telling me I don't need to read any further. When people disagree about something, hearing from both sides is important. Can this ideal of openmindedness be cynically abused by strawmanning one side while steelmanning the other? Yes, but in that case the appropriate response is to criticise the specific ways that one or both sides were…
This explains the problem with it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
It's fine if you're talking about something where there are a broad spectrum of fairly reasonable policy positions. It's not fine when you have a TV segment that's like "here's Christina, an astrophysicist from Stanford, explaining how we measure the circumference of the earth, and up next we'll have Bob from the flat earth society"
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#58After subscribing for 15 years or so, I noped out after their "walker" cover. The world has enough "both sides" journalism, and I had thought them somewhat immune from that.
Just because Fox News crowed about it doesn’t mean it’s bad journalism. Arguably toeing the party line is what resulted in Democrats being in that situation (fielding a weaker candidate against Trump) in the first place.
Framing someone who supports democracy vs someone who tried to overturn a free and fair election as a 'weaker' candidate is kind of the problem though. In any sane world, you'd support a literal corpse over a guy who does not want there to be free and fair elections.
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#59After subscribing for 15 years or so, I noped out after their "walker" cover. The world has enough "both sides" journalism, and I had thought them somewhat immune from that.
yeah imagine thinking biden was too old and infirm
And now we have a guy with dementia, which got kind of ignored by the media while they hyped up the other guy's decline.
People did actual research on how much the 'old!' thing was very inconsistent in narrative and framing:
https://css.seas.upenn.edu/new-york-times-a-case-study-in-in...
Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?
#60I'd love to know if "the pink" has the same problem because I used to find the editorial very good. As a non-investor, left leaning voter, it interested me that I found much to agree with in "the financial times" while still finding much to disagree with in "the times" and "the daily telegraph" and "the spectator" -as if money was more neutrally stanced on left-vs-right.
If you’re a left leaning voter the Speccie is almost _never_ going to have an article for you.
And the “almost” is simply because often the articles are very well written and a pleasure to read even when the actual topic and argument are deeply deranged. Amazingly this was especially true when Boris was the editor!