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ComradeCosmobot posted:Not for the banks! It's certainly better than high inflation or mass defaults because of deflation.
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Dec 25, 2015 15:39
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Merry Christmas you filthy animals.
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Dec 25, 2015 16:21
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Listening to "The Night Santa Went Crazy" by Wierd Al, reading Pope Francis' speech, and making chocolate chip pancakes (coconut syrup) as we speak. I think I'm the gooniest USPol goon at the moment.
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Dec 25, 2015 16:30
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berzerker posted:Reminder that economics is an intellectual bankrupt voodoo rainmaker discipline that just uses mathematics instead of literally divining with cast chicken bones or entrails. We give them huge power and tons of money because we sure wish they knew what they were doing but let's not go crazy and pretend they do, just because a farmer knows even less. There's a strange parallel between the view of economics on the left and the view of biology (evolution, etc) on the right. I wonder if it has anything to do with the dominant narrative being against those with that viewpoint.
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Dec 25, 2015 16:50
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Radbot posted:Merry Christmas you filthy animals.
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Dec 25, 2015 16:56
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Boon posted:Listening to "The Night Santa Went Crazy" by Wierd Al, reading Pope Francis' speech, and making chocolate chip pancakes (coconut syrup) as we speak. I think I'm the gooniest USPol goon at the moment. Some digital cable channel called Chiller is running crappy horror movies all day. Right now Killer Klowns From Outer Space is finishing up. Next up is Jack Frost. Here's a screenshot:  Sadly no Silent Night, Deadly Night.
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Dec 25, 2015 16:58
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Quote of the day, "Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. I don’t know. Seriously. I don’t care. By the way: That’s the end of that lease. But who cares? Who cares? Who cares? But today a big story — Starbucks is taking Merry Christmas off — no more Merry Christmas. I will tell you, lots of big things, lots of little things, but if I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas again.’ That I can tell you."
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Dec 25, 2015 16:59
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Joementum posted:Quote of the day, "Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. I don’t know. Seriously. I don’t care. By the way: That’s the end of that lease. But who cares? Who cares? Who cares? But today a big story — Starbucks is taking Merry Christmas off — no more Merry Christmas. I will tell you, lots of big things, lots of little things, but if I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas again.’ That I can tell you." It's great how I know exactly who this is without needing to see a name attached. Or maybe it's depressing?
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Dec 25, 2015 17:03
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Joementum posted:Quote of the day, "Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. I don’t know. Seriously. I don’t care. By the way: That’s the end of that lease. But who cares? Who cares? Who cares? But today a big story — Starbucks is taking Merry Christmas off — no more Merry Christmas. I will tell you, lots of big things, lots of little things, but if I become president, we’re all going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas again.’ That I can tell you." Who gave everyone's "self employed" uncle media access?
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Dec 25, 2015 17:05
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computer parts posted:There's a strange parallel between the view of economics on the left and the view of biology (evolution, etc) on the right. I wonder if it has anything to do with the dominant narrative being against those with that viewpoint. The problem with economics isn't that it's right wing, it's that it predicts basically every possible scenario and then cherry picks its victories (and has politicians cherry pick ideologically useful models) pretty much no matter what happens. It cloaks its emptiness and build authority through opacity behind silly use of complex mathematics, but ignores the fundamental problem that if a model predicted the future, it would be taken into account until it doesn't. Here's Krugman on that basic point for just one of many articles pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, but basically no one caring because it's more useful and easier to pretend he does: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2013/08/27/the-real-trouble-with-economics/ while also demonstrating economists' ongoing self delusion that retroactively being able to say my theory was okay somehow justifies the power economists have.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:13
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comes along bort posted:Some digital cable channel called Chiller is running crappy horror movies all day. I was just tipped off to this little gem. Here's a summary: quote:It's the eve of Christmas in northern Finland, and an 'archeological' dig has just unearthed the real Santa Claus. But this particular Santa isn't the one you want coming to town. When the local children begin mysteriously disappearing, young Pietari and his father Rauno, a reindeer hunter by trade, capture the mythological being and attempt to sell Santa to the misguided leader of the multinational corporation sponsoring the dig. Santa's elves, however, will stop at nothing to free their fearless leader from captivity.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:14
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berzerker posted:The problem with economics isn't that it's right wing, it's that it predicts basically every possible scenario and then cherry picks its victories (and has politicians cherry pick ideologically useful models) pretty much no matter what happens. It cloaks its emptiness and build authority through opacity behind silly use of complex mathematics, but ignores the fundamental problem that if a model predicted the future, it would be taken into account until it doesn't. So your problem is just "they make every possible scenario and don't weight them according to probability"? Because a lot of scientific fields generate a lot of models that may or may not be accurate until it actually comes to pass.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:17
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computer parts posted:So your problem is just "they make every possible scenario and don't weight them according to probability"? Because a lot of scientific fields generate a lot of models that may or may not be accurate until it actually comes to pass. My problem is they lack any ability to predict anything, yet still take on the pretense of being a predictive "science," with all the authority and cultural weight that implies. There are ways of knowing things that are valuable and not scientific (history, art, religion, etc. are all valuable forms of knowledge that aren't scientific), but economics isn't satisfied being one of those, so it fetishizes mathematics and physics-y terminology and physics metaphors. Then despite its tremendous lack of ability to predict or provide a strong consensus to deal effectively with major economics issues (the Great Recession being an obvious case), everyone still pretends like they're the people to turn to. If you want economists to be historians of finance, explaining why things turned out as they did, they're very well equipped and useful. If you want them to guide policy, they're incapable of doing so with any kind of rate justifying the money and power that gets hurled at them.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:23
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Boon posted:I was just tipped off to this little gem. Here's a summary: Rare Exports is really good, I caught it at a film festival a few years back. It's not super scary or anything, though.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:35
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berzerker posted:My problem is they lack any ability to predict anything, yet still take on the pretense of being a predictive "science," with all the authority and cultural weight that implies. There are ways of knowing things that are valuable and not scientific (history, art, religion, etc. are all valuable forms of knowledge that aren't scientific), but economics isn't satisfied being one of those, so it fetishizes mathematics and physics-y terminology and physics metaphors. Then despite its tremendous lack of ability to predict or provide a strong consensus to deal effectively with major economics issues (the Great Recession being an obvious case), everyone still pretends like they're the people to turn to. If you want economists to be historians of finance, explaining why things turned out as they did, they're very well equipped and useful. If you want them to guide policy, they're incapable of doing so with any kind of rate justifying the money and power that gets hurled at them. Is there anywhere outside of currently established science where anything is predictive? What I mean is that the scientific method is itself a process of guessing which is then to be continuously proved false until it cannot. When it comes to new areas of study it's just as much of a dart at a board as economic models are. If the standard is to 100% predict the future then the standard is hosed up not the study/science. Physics and chemistry tend to follow defined rules, but biology? There's a lot of change there that constantly needs to be evaluated as to why something was supposed to happen but didn't. I see economics pretty akin to biology. You make a good point about the outsize weight on cherry-picked models and theories though.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:37
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It's less a problem with the discipline itself than the fact that it's incredibly useful for people pushing agendas to bankroll some bullshit study/whole University economics doeatmwnts/departments to shill for them. It's just a very politically relevant field.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:52
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computer parts posted:I'm not able to find statistics from this year, but the most recent ones seem to indicate that unemployment did not increase relative to whites. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/28/these-seven-charts-show-the-black-white-economic-gap-hasnt-budged-in-50-years/ quote:A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) notes that this gap hasn't closed at all since 1963. Back then, the unemployment rate was 5 percent for whites and 10.9 percent for blacks. Today, it's 6.6 percent for whites and 12.6 percent for blacks. Now this might not factor in people previously dropping out of the job markets subsequently coming back in, but it is what it is.
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Dec 25, 2015 17:57
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Do people unjustly in prison count as unemployed or not?
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Dec 25, 2015 17:58
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Rygar201 posted:It's less a problem with the discipline itself than the fact that it's incredibly useful for people pushing agendas to bankroll some bullshit study/whole University economics doeatmwnts/departments to shill for them. It's just a very politically relevant field. I think that is true for the hard sciences too. See: climate change.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:01
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berzerker posted:http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2013/08/27/the-real-trouble-with-economics/ : quote:Yet obviously something is deeply wrong with economics. While economists using textbook macro models got things mostly and impressively right, many famous economists refused to use those models Krugman believes Economic theory works and those who refuse to heed it are charlatans.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:03
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Boon posted:Is there anywhere outside of currently established science where anything is predictive? What I mean is that the scientific method is itself a process of guessing which is then to be continuously proved false until it cannot. When it comes to new areas of study it's just as much of a dart at a board as economic models are. If the standard is to 100% predict the future then the standard is hosed up not the study/science. Physics and chemistry tend to follow defined rules, but biology? There's a lot of change there that constantly needs to be evaluated as to why something was supposed to happen but didn't. I see economics pretty akin to biology. The standard isn't anything like 100% predictive. But if we just say "well science isn't 100% predictive and guesses wrong sometimes," that can as well be said for fortune-tellers. They say a bunch of predictions, and if they're right it's because of their deep insight into the future, and if they're wrong it's because you didn't listen to them hard enough / actually in retrospect we see it's obvious that my warning about someone new in your life wasn't THAT guy it was this OTHER guy / if you give me more money I can do better next time. Economics has a fundamental circularity problem that's not true of any science: it's describing/predicting economic behavior that in part is decided by how we describe/predict economic behavior. If our models tell us a massive recession is coming, we'll act that way regardless of whether or not one was coming. It's why history is fundamentally unpredictable: people make history every day in part try to mimic or avoid the past. Biology doesn't change because we think we understand it in a new way. Genes don't stop working as they do because we think we understand how genes work. Rygar201 posted:It's less a problem with the discipline itself than the fact that it's incredibly useful for people pushing agendas to bankroll some bullshit study/whole University economics doeatmwnts/departments to shill for them. It's just a very politically relevant field. JeffersonClay posted:Krugman believes Economic theory works and those who refuse to heed it are charlatans. berzerker fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Dec 25, 2015 |
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Dec 25, 2015 18:04
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fishmech posted:Do people unjustly in prison count as unemployed or not? Unemployment numbers, at least in part, come from people applying for unemployment insurance. So no, they don't. Having prison records certainly doesn't help things though. EDIT: As someone who's background is in the social sciences, economic arguments for things as varied as anthropology and psychology is pretty ubiquitous. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Dec 25, 2015 |
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Dec 25, 2015 18:12
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berzerker posted:He believes in the economic theory in the textbooks he likes. Meanwhile he doesn't believe in the also-widely-accepted economic theory of other leading economists with huge amounts of power and authority in our culture. That's some false equivalence you have there. You're blaming economists for the problem of selection bias by the actual policy makers.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:20
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Typical Pubbie posted:That's some false equivalence you have there. You're blaming economists for the problem of selection bias by the actual policy makers. I'm blaming economists for the selection bias of economists.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:29
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Waving your hands and declaring economics to be made up fantasy numbers doesn't change how economies work. Just because there are multiple competing theories and models of how economies function does not invalidate the validity of studying the underlying mechanisms of economies.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:33
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There are many processes that are predictive (in the sense of classification, regression, or time series forecasting) that most people wouldn't consider to be "conventional science". The existence of such is the foundation of many statistics and operations research departments around the world. The issue with economic and financial forecasting (and particularly, in reading about such models and forecasting) is that there is a highly unstable positive feedback loop. Any time someone discovers some predictive model for the financial markets, it loses forecasting power as soon as it's known (e.g. if you're able to read about it, it almost surely won't work) because everyone else will then incorporate it into their own models and their own decision making. You need to take them into account in order to match market performance in expectation, but those predictive models can no longer be used to profit (again, in expectation). Likewise, economic predictions affect current decisions made by governmental bodies that decide on economic and monetary policy, which affects the predicted future, which affects current decisions ad infinitum. It's not that the idea of financial and economic predictive models are rubbish, it's that we don't have adequate models for how humans respond in the presence of such a strong positive feedback loop, and that so many things outside of a tractable (and realizable) financial and economic model have the ability to effect economies and markets (at which point those effects are amplified by the feedback process). But there are many systems where the feedback is negative rather than positive, or we have accurate models of the positive feedback process etc. The world in general is very predictive, we just lack the necessary data for many problems. Arcanen fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Dec 25, 2015 |
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Dec 25, 2015 18:34
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GalacticAcid posted:Sanders also skipped Netanyahu's address to Congress, and you can find his reasoning here. I'm not sure I'd call that a policy difference ... Seems like a matter of optics, no? Tactically anyone not physically in the chair is going to read a transcript anyway.... I guess you could say the policy is ignoring right wing bullshit while negotiating? Like Clinton did when they were demanding she not moderate peace talks without ridiculous pre-conditions in 2012 and she held them anyway? Radish posted:I think that Sanders might be slightly more inclined to criticize right wing Israelis while Clinton will agree with whatever Bibi says he has to do. I'm not sure if there is an actually difference in how we interact with Israel since they both seem to totally support the country. Agree in a substantive way with action attached or a diplomatic/bless-your-heart way where you keep people you don't like/agree with on speaking terms by being polite when they are being stupid? Tatum Girlparts posted:So, basically, people see his most recent shifts and think he's making some dramatic leftward shift, but in reality he's still massively to the right of where he used to be, Huh. Him flipping abruptly seems reasonable to me in that up until now he has never been in a position where he might have any impact at all and thus was free to be largely ignorant of the details and free with opinions/armchair generalling. Now that he is a contender he has to bone up on foreign policy issues and can't just ignore depressing and disturbing things. So he has probably learned a poo poo ton about the conflict that he didn't know before. New knowledge often leads to shifts in opinion.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:41
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berzerker posted:I'm blaming economists for the selection bias of economists. That makes even less sense. Special interest groups fund political cranks who call themselves economists, ergo all economists are political cranks? I'd hate to hear your thoughts on climatology.
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Dec 25, 2015 18:42
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One of the leading economic schools of thought did predict the crisis and did proscribe a set of policy responses which were effective when and where they were implemented. There's a lot of politicians who don't believe in climate change, and few places have implemented the appropriate policies to combat it, but that state of affairs doesn't make global warming a hoax. I'll concede that there is significantly less consensus in economics than physical sciences, but that doesn't make economics useless. An example where the field has a strong consensus. http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel/poll-results?SurveyID=SV_5bfARfqluG9VYrP
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Dec 25, 2015 18:47
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Typical Pubbie posted:That makes even less sense. Special interest groups fund political cranks who call themselves economists, ergo all economists are political cranks? I'd hate to hear your thoughts on climatology. I think it's tremendously disingenuous to say that economists Krugman disagrees with are not economists at all, and are exclusively political cranks. Many of them are at least as much leaders of their field as he is. There's no "true" economics that's being twisted, unless you're defining "true" economics as that with which Krugman agrees. There are very different ideas of economics, many of them fundamentally incompatible, yet accepted by substantial parts of the economics discipline. In any field (including but not limited to sciences) disagreements are decided through social processes: who runs which journal and asks for which reviewers, who's on hiring committees and who gets hired at top places, who's has the ear of policymakers relevant to the field. Social processes define what is the "true" physics of the day as much as any other area (hence the old adage that "science advances one funeral at a time"). If there are major factions predicting substantially different things, then you don't have a meaningful predictive power. Krugman says econ textbook principles could have predicted things, but he's clearly not talking about classical economics principles that contradict his Keynesian favorites. None of that means econ is really useless, but it's far, far from the state where it's crazy to doubt economists as being particularly reliable for political-economics decision-making. My argument is that economists get too much power, authority, and relative resources, not that they should get none. Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about macroecon almost exclusively. Microecon is in better shape. berzerker fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Dec 25, 2015 |
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Dec 25, 2015 18:52
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Somehow I doubt deeply diving into the substance of Israel Palestine dispute would cause him to double down on Israel. It's probably a recognition that anyone doing differently wouldn't get within sniffing distance of the nomination.
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Dec 25, 2015 19:07
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Rygar201 posted:Somehow I doubt deeply diving into the substance of Israel Palestine dispute would cause him to double down on Israel. It's probably a recognition that anyone doing differently wouldn't get within sniffing distance of the nomination. But he was supposed to be ideologically pure... he was supposed to be the chosen one!
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Dec 25, 2015 19:19
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fishmech posted:Do people unjustly in prison count as unemployed or not? unless they are medically barred from working or in a SHU, they have jobs and receive (slave) wages, so why would they 
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Dec 25, 2015 19:20
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Rygar201 posted:Somehow I doubt deeply diving into the substance of Israel Palestine dispute would cause him to double down on Israel. It's probably a recognition that anyone doing differently wouldn't get within sniffing distance of the nomination. Then again, being a self described socialist supposedly wouldn't get you within sniffing distance of the nomination.
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Dec 25, 2015 19:22
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computer parts posted:Then again, being a self described socialist supposedly wouldn't get you within sniffing distance of the nomination. I 100% believe that between the two issues, "Not supporting Israel" would harm him more.
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Dec 25, 2015 19:28
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Someone tried to torch Bill Clinton's childhood home overnight. http://news.yahoo.com/arson-suspected-bill-clintons-birthplace-165137181.html
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Dec 25, 2015 19:32
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I kept on telling myself I'm gonna do that to Robert E. Lee's house when I lived in Alexandria
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Dec 25, 2015 19:33
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:I kept on telling myself I'm gonna do that to Robert E. Lee's house when I lived in Alexandria Can't say I'm a giant fan of destroying historical sites, no matter how terrible the people involved were.
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Dec 25, 2015 19:36
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berzerker posted:He believes in the economic theory in the textbooks he likes. Meanwhile he doesn't believe in the also-widely-accepted economic theory of other leading economists with huge amounts of power and authority in our culture. Out of curiosity, what are the widely-accepted economic theories Krugman doesn't believe in, and who are the leading economists who promote it?
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Dec 25, 2015 19:36
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:I kept on telling myself I'm gonna do that to Robert E. Lee's house when I lived in Alexandria OK General Sherman
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