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Is The Economist Always Wrong?

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Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#161

Post by CGMthrowaway »

CalChris wrote: post #50
reenorap wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, only since Bernanke. So it’s very recent and not something that was historically done by Fed chairs.

It started with Greenspan but ramped up under Bernanke. https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus...

Not quite.

"Notably, in 1974, Federal Reserve chair Arthur Burns felt it necessary to make clear that high nominal interest rates would need to continue “for a time” as an anti-inflation measure;"

"A later chair, Paul Volcker, having presided over a period of very restrictive monetary policy, chose in March 1982 to make an explicit indication that nominal interest rates would and should fall in the period ahead."

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2021033pap...

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#162

Post by CGMthrowaway »

Animats wrote: post #56
reenorap wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/policytools.ht...

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#163

Post by ifwinterco »

abenga wrote: post #143
ifwinterco wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth is reading any of these MSM sources on either left or right is bad imo. Before reading them you're merely uninformed, after you're misinformed which is far worse

What should you read instead?

I don’t think there’s any one thing or set of things you can read that will make you informed on all topics.

Human knowledge is siloed and you need to already be well-informed to judge the quality of information (this is the cause of the dunning-Kruger effect, if you’re really bad at something you lack the tools to understand just how bad you are).

So imo you have to accept you’ll always be ignorant of most topics and get comfortable with thinking “I don’t know”.

Within your own specific areas of competence you should be able to identify independent sources of information that add value and consume those while discarding the rest.

Also when it comes to politics and international affairs: no substitute for travel. Go to lots of places with different systems, talk to people and you will learn a lot more than you will from reading the economist

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#164

Post by [deleted] »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #41
claw-el wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, one can see it this way, therefore they don’t want to provide forward guidance. One can also see it another way that ‘their job’ is to purposely use forward guidance to impact direction. Not sure which is the right way.

imo, its purpose is to be independent, because raising rates (combating inflation) is unpopular. otherwise, its job is pretty simple, it does't take much expertise, gravitas or technology to choose the number or to say no to the president.

[deleted]

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#165

Post by PsylentKnight »

thesimon wrote: post #122
mjt91 wrote: post #98

Think of subscribing, anyone experience reading the economist on a kindle?

I would love to, but no official Kindle publishing exists and at least the open thingys out there kinda suck. It's okay, but I don't like the formatting. Maybe write a better Economist->Kindle transformation with Claude or something to make it better.

There was an official Kindle version, but they discontinued it as of a few years ago :(

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#166

Post by Joker_vD »

ngruhn wrote: post #79
Joker_vD wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a beautifully simple characterization. I've never heard of of that. What keywords do I need to find more on this topic?

Game theory? Imagine a simple game of hunter and prey. There are two locations that they need to chose from. If they both chose the same location, the hunter wins. If they chose differently, the prey wins.

Now, if the hunter can accurately predict the prey's choice, they obviously simply need to select that same choice to always win. The similar logic works for the prey; but this means they can't both be perfect predictors of the future — if the hunter predicts that the prey will choose T, they will choose T as well, but that means the the prey will predict the hunter choosing T and will choose F instead, so the hunter has actually to predict that the prey will choose F, and so they will choose F as well, but that means the the prey will predict the hunter choosing F and will choose T instead...

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#167

Post by Joker_vD »

drdeca wrote: post #106
Joker_vD wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your prediction is a probability distribution, rather than a discrete outcome label, then, assuming the distribution over the future depends continuously on your action, there should be a fixed point, I think? Like, if you output a probability distribution among n options, and then there is a continuous map from the probability distribution you describe in your output, to another probability distribution over thos…

Yes, you can predict that the outcomes of e.g. the coin flip will have 50-50 distribution instead of "the coin will land heads up" but this is a pretty useless kind of "prediction"; this trivial fixed point corresponds to "I don't know, and I won't even bother to try to know"

Also, consider the game of hunter-and-prey from my reply to the sibling comment. Again, the prediction that the prey will make some choice is arguably not a prediction at all.

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#168

Post by ahartmetz »

eru wrote: post #88
ahartmetz wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I'm not aware of any obvious contradictions tbh. What do you mean?

Re: Is The Economist Always Wrong?

#170

Post by dotancohen »

specialist wrote: post #144
dotancohen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and should never have been allowed to occupy a position of authority. He has some charming qualities This is quite the contradiction in a democracy. Democracies, at least in modern indirect democracy form, are popularity contests. I personally prefer this form of government over other popular choices. But ignoring this aspect is exactly what leads to unqualified people being elected to office.

Campaigns, for sure, are more marketing than discourse. Their infinitesimal silver lining is they serve as a veneer of social proof, their outcomes represent (to some) a form of legitimacy. From monarchs to pure direct democracy, decisions have to be made. But how? I see "government" as a kind of consensus algorithm. Policy work, adjudicating, record keeping, legislating, appropriations, etc. It's all just one big da…

  > How do you think we've done so far?
Not so bad, all things considered.
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