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Is The Economist Always Wrong?

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Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#181

Post by gumby »

skrebbel wrote: post #69
gumby wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Why is that amazing? For all his faults, Boris Johnson is an excellent writer.

His ability to focus and execute has been haphazard. But as you say he is a good writer and was apparently able to force his will upon most of the writers in the stable

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#182

Post by gumby »

aswegs8 wrote: post #119
ggm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an amazing write up[0] of somebody who was present when Boris gave some apparently "impromptu" speeches who absolutely pins him to the ground on his technique for appearing haphazard, off-the-cuff when it's patently clear its a rehearsed schtick. The man is literate. The problem is he is also almost amoral, and should never have been allowed to occupy a position of authority. He has some charming qualities,…

https://archive.is/WGJJO

Every time I encounter this story I read it again because it’s so great

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#183

Post by culi »

erg0s4m wrote: post #179
papaver-somnamb wrote: post #61

After reading their newspaper (their label, not mine) for years, I've come away with three revelations: A) More than gaining insight and staying abreast of events, what I was really purchasing was the /feeling/ of being in-the-know. B) Whenever I met with "certain" people, they were likely to also read The Economist which turned out to be another, tremendously handy means of anchoring conversation. C) The trade balan…

The economist is the only paper I read where articles on topics I know about are fair, balanced and grounded in science. The opposite of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

You'd probably enjoy the Financial Times

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#184

Post by SanjayMehta »

cman1444 wrote: post #171
SanjayMehta wrote: post #19

[flagged]

Wow, I find economist to be one of the best publications to read about global events. Can you say more about what you think they lie about?

Just take their cover pages on China over the last decade. Every prediction has been wrong. The same story for India or any of the BRICS nations.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2015/08/29/the-great-fall-...

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-04-01

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2023-05-13

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2024-04-06

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#185

Post by eru »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #156
Yizahi wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That obituary will be on the cover.

and if its on the cover chances are you won't need to even see the mag since everyone everywhere will be talking about it

The obituary is not for learning who has died, but for getting to read an interesting article about them.

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#186

Post by eru »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #135
eru wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's somewhat funny that the rest of Chomsky's ideology doesn't seem to really take that insight serious.

Just look at how wrong Chomsky was about his core subject with the rise of LLMs. He basically invented a whole field that turned out to be a very wrong direction.

Yes, though I wouldn't hold it (too much) against him when he was young and the field was even younger. In the 1950s and 1960s and even later, it wasn't clear that LLMs would eventually win at all yet alone win so hard. And Chomsky's early work is genuinely useful. It's just that it's useful formal languages, like programming languages, and has only limited applicability to natural human languages.

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#187

Post by eru »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #142
doodlesarefun wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but despite that they work pretty good lately if what you're asking is verifiable, like searching for the name of a book.

If you think of it as lossy compression algorithm that makes sense. "There is a book about a boy in a magical school, with friends, who fights a big bad and its called ..." should have Harry Potter as the highest possible response. But that is not the answer based on a truth model, just a statistical average. You could have been looking for Earthsea series. Or it could have the heat turned up and decide to go for a h…

> If you want a verifiable answer your best options would be to have the heat turned to 0, [...]

I don't see how that helps? If you just want the same answer multiple times in a row, you could just write down the seed of your pseudorandom number generator?

> And one shooting your answer and hoping its the bell curve answer is going to have decent results but its also proveably going to fail in a non insignificant number of cases

Setting the temperature to 0 doesn't guarantee you get a good answer either.

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#188

Post by jambalaya8 »

carabiner wrote: post #63
ggm wrote: post #10

I'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.

Chomsky said it was the only newspaper that told the truth.

Chomsky said that a long, long time ago. The newspaper and news businesses have almost in common with their old selves now. Though I kind of think The Economist, FT and WaPo are some of the least worst news sources remaining, once in a while. Looking at old newspapers is a good way to be reminded just how opinionated and not news news from the last few decades is.

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#189

Post by zimpenfish »

next_xibalba wrote: post #172
zimpenfish wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people were probably offended by the lack of such covers relating to Trump's diminished mental acuity when it was on display for all to see in the brief period of 2015-present. (Not just The Economist, mind; almost every MSM outlet has mostly ignored Trump's mental inadequacy from the moment he came down the escalator. If they'd reported on it honestly from the start, there would be no Trump presidencies.)

Surely you don't think the two are equivalent, right? Biden was clearly experiencing major cognitive decline over the course of his presidency. Trump was/is not. I've not seen any serious argument or evidence that Trump has experienced a cognitive decline, whereas the evidence for Biden's decline was his every public appearance. Are you being facetious, or is this your actual belief? If so, what is the evidence?

> I've not seen any serious argument or evidence that Trump has experienced a cognitive decline

I don't know what to tell you if you can't see it from literally every public appearance he makes.

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