Comment by ahashakeheartbreak
George, I don’t completely agree. You really need to subscribe to an ideology whenever uncertainty is involved. The only ideology free people are absract mathematicians (meta-mathematicians – what a concept, category theorists, people whose job it is to categorise abstract mathematics – does it get more Laputa than that?). Even then not entirely. Everyone wants to see things go a certain way if there are different paths to choose from. A perspective they feel comfortable with, a formulation that they ‘like’. And if this ideology is to spurn mathematics in favour of discursive analysis, then I am not so sure. Godel showed that when it comes to consistent formulations of the world, intuition and clarity are weak reeds to lean on.
The kind of Economics I do (if it is Economics at all) cannot answer why the Kyoto protocol never got signed (for its 50 years and space-age mathematics game theory is hopeless at questions which involve more than the thinnest heuristic constructions). And given this, the best way is to take questions like this into the realm of common sense and some canny verbal reasoning. This comes with its baggage of rhetoric and confusion. The Sophists have had 3000 years to make matters clear. Hilbert has had 150. Do the people who attack the so-called orthodox mathematical economics actually believe that at every university in every university ‘orthodox’ econometricians are going at each problem without imagination, creativity or differentiation mathematising economics automata-like? They try very hard to draw conclusions that are relevant and usable. But why are we in such a tearing hurry to get there?
But more importantly than any of this, you cannot make money off descriptive finance.
I am not really sure what I am trying to convey except that you realise what your ideology/allegiance is so that you know what pitfalls to avoid. For me I have to avoid poorly designed Monte Carlo experiments. What is your dysfunction?
Also, in my very feeble opinion, I think that Krugman should stop writing his blog. It gives people a chance to attack his economics (which is really *very* duifferent from what he writes on his blog; not that I agree with everything he says) without understanding any of the caveats or uncertainty even the simplest prescriptions have or the frameworks they are nested in. I believe that if you are really interested then learn to read the Latin, than wait for someone to translate it into the simplespeak that everyone thinks it is their right to expect. These are not the dark ages, Latin has never been this simple to learn.
Although I think that Krugman writes his blog for a reason which is called Type III error in statistics (sic), viz. rejecting the wrong conclusions for the wrong reasons. Sometime the wrong objections is quite useful really.
Comment by The Millennium Hand on February 10, 2008 10:30 pmLongest comment I’ve ever seen.As far a ideology goes, Slavoj Zizek says that the absence of a conscious ideology is the surest sign of the existence of one. And I tend to agree. You guys should see Adam Curtis’s documentaries on Google Video: especially “The Century of the Self” and “The Trap.” Even the notion that a person’s clothing reflects his or her personality is an artifact of advertising and marketing strategies, which were informed by a quasi-Freudian understanding of human motives.Thundering typhoons and Billions of billious barbecued blue blistering barnacles!
People are getting serious here.
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For a person with clarity and insight, P is one of the most peace-loving people I know. Millennium, if you should like a (humble) suggestion as to how to hold onto your opinion without compromise or confrontation, P is the ideal.
I say all this because on the economics blog, P wrote this:
“Thanks a lot Salil.
My personal suggestion is to start by asking questions.. It always works.For instance I may know some physics but a simple qustion like why is the sky red at sunset may lead me on to a good investigation by first looking at light, the properties of light and refraction and so on (I think!)
Also when it comes to any science, before we get to the nitty gritty’s of derivations and proofs, we have to be certain that the platform we chose to study it is right. I’ll explain my approach with an analogy.. You hear some noise in the forest and want to know about it. you come to some cross-roads and choose one road among them based on what people have told you or what has happened in the past. Now, established economists have travelled quite far down that road and so now have to contend with only minor distractions.
I don’t plan to study further and so this is just a personal philosophical endeavor and as such I have the liberty of choosing my path. I’m still at the cross roads and am trying to see if some other roads too lead to the noise.
So I think that having the freedom to choose my own set of questions and explore them in my own way is a good approach. This may not be scientific and may lead to many dead-ends, but it’s way more satisfying.
That’s why this post started off with the questions. Thankar knows a lot about the work that has happened in many of these areas I’ve mentioned and so may help clear obstructions that come along.”
What an excellent excellent reply to what we were discussing in the last post. You can choose to look at the big picture or the small picture, but so long as it is done with integrity and passion, it cannot be held to fault.
Is this a post?
He he, one line questions all around Millennium. Indeed Navin took a comment and made a post out of it.
And it is Salil’s blog. Since he will not publicize it himself, I thought I might.
Brilliant. Now I can poke more fun at my earthy friend. Might get a fistfull of mud in my face for the effort though.