Chipping the web: September 16th
September 16th, 2008 1:00:05 pm pst by 
Sterling Camden
- Chrome Debugger
A much needed explanation of Chrome's JavaScript debugger
Tags: chrome google javascript debugger - Quoted
Religion evolves, slowly
Tags: religion evolution science darwin - An epidemic of fear – or, why terrorism and witchcraft are surprisingly similar
Spot on, Paul: "what we fear is a function of the culture we live in."
Tags: fear terrorism witchcraft - Dilbert Survey of Economists
Scott Adams conducted a survey of economists to get their opinion on which of the two major party candidates would be best for the economy.
I fear that the truth sides with all those Independents who think neither one will make much difference.
Tags: economics economists scott-adams dilbert obama mccain - How To Blog
That about sums it up. Thanks, Mark.
Tags: blogging howto writing - U.N. agency eyes curbs on Internet anonymity
Something that NSA and the Chinese government can agree on.
Thanks, Doug.
Tags: privacy surveillance nsa china unitednations internet
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Re: Dilbert survey of 500 economists.
Most of the economists surveyed there are from academia.
I contend that academic economists know nothing about economics!
Proof : None of them are multi-millionaires.
QED
I can’t argue with that logic.
I can.
See, a lot of academic economists know a lot about economics — but they don’t know anything much about government. The fact that they’re academic economists means that they are focused on the core fields of economics, and not so much on other fields of study that pertain to other aspects of life that can interfere with economic laws. As a result, academic economists have a tendency to fail to accurately account for the manner in which people’s actions are motivated by matters outside of the strictly economic.
In fact, the academic economists are generally pretty bad at accounting for their own motivations outside of strictly economic matters, from what I’ve seen — and this can prove disastrous, as they may subconsciously undermine their own analyses and efforts to suit some motive so ulterior they are not necessarily aware of it themselves. Economists, after all, are not usually psychologists.
Furthermore, economists tend to be good at modeling complex systems in their heads and reasoning about things like emergent phenomena. This in no way suggests that they know how to get from zero to rich, since there are a lot of steps involved in getting there from here that aren’t related to the strictly economic matters of market participation. For instance, an economist might be able to tell you if your business plan is any good, but can’t tell you whether the core product is worth a damn, how to go about getting investors (or whether you should have outside investors at all), or what legal hurdles you’ll have to navigate on the way to riches.
This is why I, for instance, am not yet filthy rich — though, in a truly free market, maybe I would be.
If I may attempt a summary, you’re saying that economists focus on concerns that are too narrow for building personal wealth. I’d have to agree, and add that interpersonal relationships comprise the single most important non-economic factor (i.e., “who you know”).
Actually, I would postulate that the market is a random (chaotic?) process, which is why it’s hard to predict well enough to become rich
As Romeo said “I’m set on Julia”
Good point. If there were a formula for the market, however complex, someone would have exploited it long ago.
Ah, Julia set. You almost lost me there.
Chaotic? Perhaps. Random? Certainly not.
There are basically two types of policy economists:
There are those who advise on policy based on their personal preferences, proclivities, and pet theories. Let’s call them “Advisers”.
There are those who observe policy and comment on its efficacy, practicality, and soundness. Let’s call them “Observers”.
Of course, that’s a very black-and-white view, and at least 98% of policy economists are closer to the middle than to the extremes, but let’s ignore the centrists on this matter for a moment and focus on the extremes:
Because they tend to have too narrow a focus, most Advisers make glaring errors in their policy advice — errors that don’t take into account things like the actual possibility of getting certain policies enacted, and treating the economy like a computer model so they can test pet theories.
This tends to result in making economists look stupid, especially when they advise someone who takes about two percent of their advice but pretend they took all of it — because the economists then end up feeling like cornered rats and try to defend that person’s policy decisions, even though such decisions ignore 98% of their advice. It doesn’t help that they often believe they’re being listened to substantively, as in the case of the so-called energy deregulation in California a decade or so ago, when what really happened was not deregulation but increased pro-corporate regulation, which of course led to disaster and everybody blamed economists and the people who (inaccurately) parroted their words on the subject of deregulation.
There’s also a practical (one might say “rational economic”) side to this; if the economists spend all their time disclaiming the stupidities of the people who hired them to advise in the first place, they’d never get asked to advise again.
On the other hand, Observers tend to be right a lot of the time. That’s because they assess the policy decisions of politicians, realize how insanely stupid they are in terms of economic laws, and are not constrained as much by job security concerns to defend the indefensible — so they open their mouths and out comes the truth.
Unfortunately, this tends to result in economists being discounted and ignored as doomsayers and whiners, when the truth is that they’re more like Cassandra, accurately predicting the future when they examine the stupidities of governmental economic policy but never believed because what they’re saying isn’t politically expedient.
It’s not like economists haven’t predicted the current financial crisis, with various major financial organizations folding up left and right, requiring government bailouts, because of the way they have been subsidized and propped up over the years, allowing them to engage in all kinds of stupid behavior. Even Ron Paul was able to predict this, and proposed a bill to head off the consequences we’re now seeing about five friggin’ years ago — but, like economists, he was ignored.
The economy is complex, and requires people with a strong capacity for abstract thinking and grasping the nuances of complex systems design to be able to understand and even predict trends. One might call it “chaotic”, depending on the definition of “chaos” one uses. Random, though? No, not really — not on the scale of an entire economy.
I take it all back. Most economists are idiots who don’t even know their own fields worth a damn.
I forgot to account for sample bias. The economists I read are all good at what they do. That’s why I read them. They are not the majority, however.
The good never are.
I don’t think the UN has actually done anything to advance the causes of human rights and peace in the world since about the ’50s at the latest. What a fucking waste of time and money. . . .
Not just a waste, but a threat to liberty.
Indeed.
Most people seem to think we’re getting something in return for that threat to liberty, though — and are simply unwilling to examine the facts in enough detail to recognize how unproductive the UN has been as a factor in trying to reach those goals for which such people value the UN.
There are those who will never recognize that basic individual rights and liberties simply should not be sacrificed to other (typically collectivist) concerns and, while I disagree with them on that subject quite strongly, I know there’s just no getting through to many of them. If they’d wake up to the fact that a lot of what they support to achieve the supposed ultimate goals of their collectivist aims is unproductive, or even counterproductive, they might eventually figure out that doomed efforts (such as the UN) aren’t giving them anything in return for the loss of rights and liberties.
I know — it’s like I’m living in a dream world when I say stuff like that. The fact I realize the futility of my attempts to educate people about the flaws in their thinking on such matters doesn’t stop me from trying, though. I’d rather go down fighting.