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A quote that currently hold resonance with me:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
This quote is often misattributed to Voltaire – in fact, before I fact checked it today I thought it was a quote from Voltaire.
This quote helps me find peace in the face of different value judgments that I don’t agree with or don’t understand.
Personally, I hold an interest in social sciences outside of economics. The only problem is that I have even less knowledge about these other social sciences than I do about economics.
As a result, I was glad to see this post on the four major “traditions” of sociology:
I especially like the ordering – from the most holistic to the most reductionist.
Economists strongly work with the fourth category – but have been known to dabble in (or at least understand the value of) the third category. However, many modern economic theorists keep clear of the first two categories, and the idea of a “social reality” (as we fundamentally believe that society is reducible to the incentives of individuals). Are we missing anything by ignoring this concept?
Dani Rodrik’s blog can be found here. I found this quote insightful:
“The problem wasn’t with the economics but with the economists.” Theories and models are tools, but “we have fixated on one of the possible hundreds of models and elevated that above the others,” he said, referring to free market theory. “We form a narrative of the moment, which fits the zeitgeist.”
From the New York times (ht The Big Picture).
Like we have said a million times – the economic method is awesome for framing issues. But picking a model (which involves picking a set of value judgments) is not necessarily our strong point.
Previously, I have felt that economists could focus on setting up the framework and letting other people throw in the value judgments – but this process has not described the way economists have acted. As a result, it also shouldn’t describe what people judge economists on.
The economic method is great for making value judgments transparent – but it appears (some) economists seem more interested in clouding their models for political purposes than making full use of the framework. This is the message I gained from Dani Rodrik’s quote 🙂
There has been talk of the US performing a “stocktake” of free trade agreements – a stocktake that will likely end with New Zealand still being stung by quotas and tariffs when American citizens and New Zealand citizens want to trade.
This does not seem consistent with the platform of change that President Obama promised, not just the US, but the entire world. Please President – now is the time to show that you are a world leader that believes in freedom, that believes in a brighter day for all men, irrespective of their race or creed.
Please Mr President – show the world that you have the power to strike down the lobby groups, and fight for the liberties of both your own people and the people of the world. Give the citizens of our nations the freedom to trade for mutual benefit – and for the betterment of all.
Kiwiblog, Homepaddock, and the Standard express similarish sentiments.
With the advent of iPredict, New Zealand has jumped on the prediction market bandwagon. But now a paper suggests that, for election results at least, polling data is more accurate than at least one popular trading market:
The market price is superior to a naïve reading of the polls. For instance, if the
incumbent leads 60-40 in the polls in May while the market says the incumbent will win with
55 percent, the market price is likely to be closer to the Election Day vote division. But this is
not the appropriate test.
…
We could ask … what an analysis of polling history would show to be the odds of the incumbent winning in November given a 60-40 lead in May, and whether this prediction based on polls offers greater certainty than the May … price.
…
Based on our analysis, an investor with a modest knowledge of how … polls translate into Election Day outcomes would reap handsome profits from the … presidential market. The implication is that where candidate market prices depart from where the polls project that they should be, these deviations contain more noise than signal.
Overcoming Bias’s new sister site, lesswrong, has a new post up that tries to make me feel better about going to school:
We are interested in developing practical techniques of rationality. One practical technique, used widely and successfully in science and technology is formalization … We will reason better about the correctness of the form if we hide the subjects of the argument … [so] renaming primitive notions to meaningless symbols is a reasonable first step in formalization.