I look forward to viewing this one. The major impressions I have from the economic meltdown, and one I hope they discuss, is how Economics need to majorly dumb down its math. Hyper complex calculus based probability theory, number theory, and point set topology is NOT whats needed, whats needed, is a much better understanding of basic arithmetic. How was a guy who made 3k a month going to afford a 2.99k mortgage once the teaser ran out? Edit:
I think it was somewhat moronic we had all these business executives making decisions based on models they did not understand.

Based off Davids descriptions of economic models it seems that the best thing to hope for atm is a sort of swiss army knife approach to models in their predictive power. X model for this phenomenon
Y model for that phenomenon No grand unified theory here. Yeah, this does not improve my confidence of any level of lay understanding of economics, too many prongs to keep track of. But maybe that is just me.
But So long as the non lay people have a better handle I guess that is what matters.
But as a lay person, I still have no clue about the in depth rationale of "why" X policy is better than Y policy. Hopefully some people do, and the rationales come down to more than opinion and political inclination.
Unanswered Questions: Will our economic knowledge ever get to the point to where we can recognize and avoid certain crises like the current banking crises? If no, what exactly is the goal of such models? To minimize damage? To speed recovery? To lessen the frequency? That part towards the end where there was acknowledgement of the current crisis happening innumerable times before in similar circumstances

Rosenberg was one of the group of 88 at Duke who rushed ahead to condemn the Lacrosse players falsly accused of rape.
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com...-brodhead.html "...Most stunningly, Rosenberg claimed that every member of the Group of 88 believed that Nifong was motivated not by the pursuit of justice but by the looming Democratic primary for D.A. If true, this breathtaking assertion means that the Duke faculty, despite recognizing that a local prosecutor was abusing his office to railroad their own institution's students, chose to go public instead with a mass statement denouncing the students targeted by that very same prosecutor. ..." "...Ironically, the most extreme manifestation of groupthink has come from one of the few Group of 88 members whose research eschews race/class/gender issues. Philosophy's Alex Rosenberg is the only signatory to have had Reade Seligmann in class. I e-mailed Rosenberg, said that I had blogged about the case, and asked whether the fact that he had taught Seligmann altered his perspective on the statement. Channeling the spirit of Ivan Tribble, Rosenberg dignified me with a reply even though, he revealed, in his opinion bloggers are cranks with too much free time on their hands. The

Hi Denville, That was a great post. Really applicable to the hour long talk I just watched. If you have any other terrific revelations that have absolutely nothing to do with anything being discussed, please, waste my time, and post away. Your posts do nothing more than expose the vapidity of your character. Nader

Hi, I found the discussion really interesting. Thought I would comment on one of the issues: the undergraduate economics education of today. I have an undergraduate degree in economics (07 graduate), no graduate degree in the subject, and am currently an entrepreneur. While I recognize that most of the theory I learned is outdated, naive, and lacks predictive power, I do derive value from using it as a structure to think about problems and decisions; to think about potential reactions of involved agents to my actions. Funnily, I think that when accompanied by a skepticism about their validity, these models are incredibly useful for someone like me. That being said, perhaps I'm not in the norm in that my undergraduate professors to some extent consciously nurtured such a skepticism within me.

Quoting halfers3: That was a great post. Really applicable to the hour long talk I just watched. If you have any other terrific revelations that have absolutely nothing to do with anything being discussed, please, waste my time, and post away.

Your posts do nothing more than expose the vapidity of your character.

A professor admits he knowingly signed a petition that may have helped result in the false imprisonment of numerous persons (not to mention students at his own school) and you say DS's character is in question? lol lolololol "The sole defenders of the lacrosse players in this case, the professor [Rosenberg] suggested, are extreme advocates of the economic status quo ..." No, they were extreme advocates of 'truthiness' as the libs like to say. How do these clowns still have jobs?

Starwatcher says: "I think it was somewhat moronic we had all these business executives making decisions based on models they did not understand." ....Kind of like politicians and policy makers making decisions about climate change amelioration based on models they don't understand.

[quote=JonIrenicus;132466 Unanswered Questions: Will our economic knowledge ever get to the point to where we can recognize and avoid certain crises like the current banking crises?[/QUOTE] It seems that we already possessed that knowledge, but chose to ignore it. Don't loan to people who can't afford to pay the loan back.
Don't be dishonest.
Don't rely on rosy predictions about the real estate market.
If you are tasked with regulating and oversight, do your job. There were lots of things we already knew and nothing very sophisticated about any of them.

Quoting badhatharry: Starwatcher says: "I think it was somewhat moronic we had all these business executives making decisions based on models they did not understand."

....Kind of like politicians and policy makers making decisions about climate change amelioration based on models they don't understand.

Disagree. The former was much more a case of people directly acting upon something of which they knew they only had, at best, a sketchy understanding, and knew (or should have known) that the models were not particularly well tested. In the latter case, you have politicians acting (ideally, anyway -- too many of them in reality are not acting) on the best advice available: the consensus view of the most expert people in the field, whose research has been going on for decades and is published in the open literature. While I will certainly agree that climatological models have much room for improvement and refinement, it is also true that we have (1) a huge collection of historical data that strongly support the hypothesis that we have a problem, and (2) a good, if not perfect, understanding of the underlying physical principles that allows us to make predictions about which we

Quoting bjkeefe: [...] While I will certainly agree that climatological models have much room for improvement and refinement, it is also true that we have (1) a huge collection of historical data that strongly support the hypothesis that we have a problem, and (2) a good, if not perfect, understanding of the underlying physical principles that allows us to make predictions about which we can be generally confident. In the AGW case, we really only lack more decimal places of precision, to recall how Alex put it in the diavlog.

Besides, as you correctly point out in your other post, prior to the financial crisis, there were many things that we already knew but chose to ignore. There is a good analogy here to the climate situation -- sure, we don't have perfect understanding, but while waiting for that state, let's not be dumb about what we do know in the meantime.

By the way, last night I happened across a pretty interesting seven-minute video (via) that illustrates the point I'm trying to make in the above. In it, the narrator describes a collection of data (observed increase in temporary meltwater lakes in Greenland), a known physical mechanism (the water

Alex needs to shove a cork in it. Really. David tried to answer questions or raise his own points throughout this dv only to have Alex break in. It's true Alex won the LSE prize for his book. It's also true that the prize is regularly awarded to others. Make a prediction on the basis of that information. Next time Alex should just come on by himself and answer his own questions. I'd be extremely pleased to see David here again soon with someone who understands and can apply the economics of shared time.

What we do know is that we are relying on an exhaustable source of energy to continue doing what we do as we are now doing it. We also know that those who own that source of energy don't like us much. If we were to go at it because of those reasons I would agree with the identification of the problem and agree that action is wise. However, to say that the climate is changing because of human activity is, IMHO as well as others, too complex an idea to act upon with any confidence or any hope of acting properly.

Levine misses the whole point of Krugman's column. Krugman was writing about power. Yes; it's always fun to call a leading figure of your profession behind the times, but there's another way of describing all of the cutting-edge economists Levine lines up to contravene Krugman: a who's who of the powerless. Maybe Krugman hasn't read an economics paper published in the last twenty years, but let's take a sampling of the 100 economists who have the most influence over economic policy in the U.S. Have they read an economics paper published in the last twenty years? Thirty? Forty? Fifty?

Quoting badhatharry: However, to say that the climate is changing because of human activity is, IMHO as well as others, too complex an idea to act upon with any confidence or any hope of acting properly.

I'm sorry, but I do not think this is purely a matter of opinion, and I suggest that you (and those "others") are not qualified to weigh in in an informed manner. You're entitled to have whatever feelings you want, but the science is overwhelmingly against them. Now, it's more reasonable to say that you think, say, rushing to implement cap and trade legislation is too hasty. On that much, there is still room for debate. But it is no longer arguable that without doing something substantial to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we're going to seriously change the planet as we know it today.

Quoting bjkeefe: In the latter case, you have politicians acting (ideally, anyway -- too many of them in reality are not acting) on the best advice available: the consensus view of the most expert people in the field, whose research has been going on for decades and is published in the open literature. While I will certainly agree that climatological models have much room for improvement and refinement, it is also true that we have (1) a huge collection of historical data that strongly support the hypothesis that we have a problem, and (2) a good, if not perfect, understanding of the underlying physical principles that allows us to make predictions about which we can be generally confident. In the AGW case, we really only lack more decimal places of precision, to recall how Alex put it in the diavlog.

Considering that it is currently believed that climate sensitivity (global mean equilibrium change for near surface per 2xCO2) is thought to be between 1.5 and 4.7 Celsius, and the doubling period for CO2 is thought to be around 35 to 80 years, the models are usually only predicting decimal changes in temperature. So saying that "only lack more decimal places

So your policy is that, anything that is complicated, is better left alone? I really hope I'm misreading you, because you are one of my favorite conservative commenters, and that is a rather dumb statement.

Quoting Starwatcher162536: Considering that it is currently believed that climate sensitivity (global mean equilibrium change for near surface per 2xCO2) is thought to be between 1.5 and 4.7 Celsius, and the doubling period for CO2 is thought to be around 35 to 80 years, the models are usually only predicting decimal changes in temperature. So saying that "only lack more decimal places of precision" is somewhat misleading, as you are implying current models have a low degree of uncertainty, which really isn't the case.

A much better measure of the model predictions would be to look at the relative error, which has been in extreme cases, over 300%.

Point taken. I was trying too hard to tie it into the diavlog. I should have said "loosely speaking" or "by analogy." Or better yet, deleted the whole sentence. Good call.

I think a much better argument for starting to take this problem seriously, does not rely on the models at all, but instead focuses on our degree of uncertainty. Considering we only have one planet, and at times we have thought that runaway climate change was indeed possible (Clathrate gun hypothesis), wouldn't it be better to play it safe?

That is another argument I make, sure. I don't know about

I really hate it when the people that are defending "my side" are pretentious, rude, narcissists. Gawd, Rosenberg is a knob, I could never sit down and talk with such a wanker. My hats off to Levine didn't reach through the receiver and slap him. I've an undergrad degree in Math and grad degrees in Engineering and I've never really understood why Krugman distrusts math in his economics. But on the flip side, I generally agree with his point of view, or at least he is more persuasive than the "other side" perhaps I should read the papers (unfortunately, I have papers to read in my own field) but I must say that what Krugman says has the "ring of truth" to it where as, this Cochrane fellow is laughably wrong (at least all the stuff that I've seen from him). I'm a little disappointed that Levine makes the bald assertion here and other places that Krugman hasn't read a paper in 20 years as I seem to remember that Krugman did a lot of work on the Asian currency crisis in 1997 and the Argentine one. I seem to remember that he is kind of an expert

Quoting qingl78: I really hate it when the people that are defending "my side" are pretentious, rude, narcissists. Gawd, Rosenberg is a knob, I could never sit down and talk with such a wanker. My hats off to Levine didn't reach through the receiver and slap him.

Sadly, I agree. I found his manner of interrupting, particularly to go on at length with poorly remembered aphorisms and homilies that everyone old enough to drive already knows, quite off-putting. He did ask some good questions toward the end, but it was a struggle getting there. I was inclined to think that his opening complaint that no one in the economics department listened to him had less to do with his ideas than he might think. I also second your take on the matter Levine v. Krugman.

Quoting Starwatcher162536: So your policy is that, anything that is complicated, is better left alone? I really hope I'm misreading you, because you are one of my favorite conservative commenters, and that is a rather dumb statement.

Whoaaa! a fan and unbeknownst to me. I suppose I should consider this just a matter of degree however, should you have absolutely no liking for other conservative commenters. No, I do not think that anything that is complicated is better left alone. However, I am skeptical that AWG is well enough understood to turn the economy of the planet upside down just in case it as serious as some say.
I also think that the partisan nature of the debate should give anyone who has an ounce of common sense, pause. Here is really truly what I think. I know the climate of the earth is changing. I also know it has always changed from one thing to another. Sometimes it has changed in such a way as to benefit human progress and sometimes it has changed in a way that has wiped out entire species.The forces which cause this change are many and varied and may include some which we may have

Quoting badhatharry: No, I do not think that anything that is complicated is better left alone. However, I am skeptical that AWG is well enough understood to turn the economy of the planet upside down just in case it as serious as some say.

False choice. Try to wrap your mind around the notion that there is something possible in between your imagined scenario and doing nothing out of the hope that nothing will go wrong if we just don't spend any time learning about it.

Hell, the supervolcano in Yellowstone may go off soon and make all of this a moot point.

Are you planning on that, to bail you out of having to learn things and make informed decisions? And so what if it does -- what will be the downside of trying to do the right thing leading up to that moment of dying in a super-volcano cataclysm? Sounds like you're saying that there's no point in taking care of your teeth because you might get hit by a bus someday. And what if the super-volcano doesn't blow up?

The Army Corps of Engineers thought they

As I'm sure a lot of you do after posting a comment, I thought of more I wanted to say after posting mine this morning. It snowed here today and we went out to get more wood for our stove before it's too late to do so. So as I was splitting and stacking I was thinking about all of the drama surrounding the climate change debate. I know this will seem trivial and partisan to some but I was thinking about the four hour meeting in Norway which necessitated the use of two jumbo jets. And I was thinking about the hypocrisy that this type of stuff shows. Our leaders are a bunch of arrogant elitists. They preach to us about conservation and thriftiness and using less energy and yet they exhibit none of these virtues. If they want us to believe and take seriously anything they say, they need to act according to their stated beliefs. That would speak more eloquently than anything which currently comes out of their mouths.

Quoting badhatharry:
Our leaders are a bunch of arrogant elitists. They preach to us about conservation and thriftiness and using less energy and yet they exhibit none of these virtues. If they want us to believe and take seriously anything they say, they need to act according to their stated beliefs. That would speak more eloquently than anything which currently comes out of their mouths.

So what if they are? (In fact it seems redundant to even say it out loud: of course tehy are.) What does that change? The best policy doesn't change based on the behavior of our leadership. What I do care about is that the people whose job it is to consider the issue seem to believe that there's a significant problem. Deciding how to confront that problem requires making choices. Your prescription sees to be assume the problem is insurmountable, so there's no point in considering a solution. That's no less a choice, and no more fraught, in the abstract, than choosing to modulate public policy to control for the effects of human energy usage - the factor that's both new (on the grand scale) and within

Quoting badhatharry: As I'm sure a lot of you do after posting a comment, I thought of more I wanted to say after posting mine this morning. It snowed here today and we went out to get more wood for our stove before it's too late to do so.

So as I was splitting and stacking I was thinking about all of the drama surrounding the climate change debate. I know this will seem trivial and partisan to some but I was thinking about the four hour meeting in Norway which necessitated the use of two jumbo jets. And I was thinking about the hypocrisy that this type of stuff shows.

Our leaders are a bunch of arrogant elitists. They preach to us about conservation and thriftiness and using less energy and yet they exhibit none of these virtues. If they want us to believe and take seriously anything they say, they need to act according to their stated beliefs. That would speak more eloquently than anything which currently comes out of their mouths.

I always find examples like that to be nothing more than a rationalization of being a denialist. You

Quoting bjkeefe: False choice. Try to wrap your mind around the notion that there is something possible in between your imagined scenario and doing nothing out of the hope that nothing will go wrong if we just don't spend any time learning about it.

Are you planning on that, to bail you out of having to learn things and make informed decisions? And so what if it does -- what will be the downside of trying to do the right thing leading up to that moment of dying in a super-volcano cataclysm? Sounds like you're saying that there's no point in taking care of your teeth because you might get hit by a bus someday.

And what if the super-volcano doesn't blow up?

That's not a dose of humility. That's an argument where you're projecting your own limitations onto everybody else; i.e., "I don't understand it, and I'm not prepared to put any effort besides navel-gazing into learning about it. Therefore, no one else can or will be able to understand these things, and there's no point in even taking the first steps."

Did you watch that seven-minute video

Quoting badhatharry: I make what I think are informed decisions every day. As far as learning, well I try to do that, too, Brendan. Whether or not I come to the same conclusions as you do after I have done that learning , does not matter in the long run because nothing I am doing is going to make a bit of difference to the climate.

Your side apparently has all the power at this point so decisions will be made in favor of what your opinion on this matter is. That should make you very peaceful and happy. Planet saved! despite the grumblings of insignificant persons such as I.

Victim cloak noted. And I don't believe that you're doing anything constructive to learn about AGW. I believe that to the extent that you're looking into it at all, you're basically reading crap from NRO and other conservative opinion outlets that serve up more of what you want to believe; e.g., "doubts remain about the existence of the problem," and "even if there is a problem, we can't fix it without wrecking everything else," and also, "Al Gore and Barack Obama are arrogant."

Quoting badhatharry: ...

Your side apparently has all the power at this point so decisions will be made in favor of what your opinion on this matter is. That should make you very peaceful and happy. Planet saved! despite the grumblings of insignificant persons such as I.

Were you happy four years ago? Things change pretty quickly, none of us should get to be too complacent. I don't think "planet saving" is a good model for the point of view Brendan [and me, too, of course] is expressing. It's about implementing what we believe to be rational policy, not so much about "fixing" things.

Quoting AemJeff: I don't think "planet saving" is a good model for the point of view Brendan [and me, too, of course] is expressing. It's about implementing what we believe to be rational policy, not so much about "fixing" things.

Correct. The planet will be fine no matter what humans do. The question is, can we figure out what to do that will stop us from fouling our own nest? That will prevent changes that would be disagreeable to us from happening, or at least reduce the magnitude of those changes? I believe the best answer, right now, is: maybe, but we sure as hell ought to try, because the consequences of doing nothing seem pretty bad.

Quoting bjkeefe: Your anecdote about chopping wood illustrates a real problem in trying to think about AGW without any real knowledge: people notice weather, not climate, and certainly not climate changes. It takes sophisticated data collection and analysis to extract the signal of AGW from the noise, and contemplating the long-term effects of these small changes requires an appreciation of time scales that are beyond normal individual human concerns.

What you're doing, in short, is looking for things that will help you feel better about wanting to believe that there is no problem. And, you're demonizing the people who are telling you that, in fact, there is a problem and it has to be addressed. Neither of these things is rational.

Your psychoanalytic powers are astounding. Here you are again telling me why I am thinking things. Are you a real doctor or do you just play one on BHTV? My anecdote about chopping wood had nothing to do with my knowledge of climate change. I think I have demonstarted that I do not equate weather with climate. I have a real live appreciation of time scales in my life. I happen to live in a place which makes it

Quoting badhatharry:
My anecdote about chopping wood had nothing to do with my knowledge of climate change. I think I have demonstarted that I do not equate weather with climate. I have a real live appreciation of time scales in my life. I happen to live in a place which makes it quite clear to anyone who asks and thinks about it that it was formed billions of years ago and is still being formed.

I recall you stating in an earlier thread that you lived in the Eastern Sierras.
Where and how much snow have you had already? (what elevation?). I'm heading that way next week and wondering if the Yosemite pass will be open?

Quoting badhatharry: [...] Don't tell me what I know.

Convince me that you know something different, then. If you want to discuss something that is scientific in nature, then stop presenting everything in terms of how it makes you feel, who you don't like because they're "elites,' and how it all has to be cast into "sides." Despite what Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck tell you, the problem of AGW is not a Democrat vs. Republican or a liberal vs. conservative thing. I don't like having to work at reducing my personal energy consumption and I'd like nothing finer than the IPCC to come out next week and say, "False alarm, folks! Nothing to worry about, after all." But there comes a point where we have to set aside selfishness and child-like behavior. And I will continue to call you on yours as long as that's all you keep displaying. Because, really, I'm not telling you what you know; all I'm doing is telling you how you're coming across. So I'm too impatient to type "it seems like" before every sentence. Add it in yourself, if it's that important to you. ========== [Added]

I happen to live in a place which makes it quite clear to anyone

From another forum : The Tioga Pass Road closed at 6:45 am this morning. I tried to drive over at 7 am and there was heavy snow sticking in the Crane Flat area and rangers were turning back traffic. The expectation is that the pass will reopen, though things will be weather dependant from here out.
* Your mileage may vary and probably will.

Thanks. I'll be watching the Yosemite website.

Quoting harkin: A professor admits he knowingly signed a petition that may have helped result in the false imprisonment of numerous persons (not to mention students at his own school) and you say DS's character is in question?

lol

lolololol

"The sole defenders of the lacrosse players in this case, the professor [Rosenberg] suggested, are extreme advocates of the economic status quo ..."

No, they were extreme advocates of 'truthiness' as the libs like to say.

How do these clowns still have jobs?

I did not comment at all on the Professor's character. I would say that his action on that matter, given the benefit of hindsight, was ill-advised and unsound. What I was commenting on, that you tried to deflect wholly unsuccessfully, is the complete inanity of a comment alluding to the Professor's actions on a matter that has no relevance to the discussion at hand.

No, they were extreme advocates of 'truthiness' as the libs like to say.

Wow!! Big surprise, you manage to turn this into a con/lib issue!! Dont worry, your republicans will regain office one day, then the dems after them, then the republicans again ... blah blah blah blah. Get over it.

Quoting halfers3: I did not comment at all on the Professor's character. I would say that his action on that matter, given the benefit of hindsight, was ill-advised and unsound. What I was commenting on, that you tried to deflect wholly unsuccessfully, is the complete inanity of a comment alluding to the Professor's actions on a matter that has no relevance to the discussion at hand.

and Roman Polanski should not be put in prison for raping a child, right? The crimes and wrong doings of our intellectual and artistic betters should be excused. Yeah, I thought the 2nd half of the diavlog was interesting and educational. But there is plenty of evidence that the Duke 88 don't think they did anything wrong. Has Rosenberg ever apolgized for his part in the lynching of the Duke lacrosse players? I doubt it.

Quoting halfers3: Dont worry, your republicans will regain office one day, then the dems after them, then the republicans again ... blah blah blah blah.

I hope not. I think republicans are weary of governing or being governed by all these opportunistic democrats. The way they are hanging the American soldiers out to dry in Afg, without reinforcements when they come under attack, is horrifying. Better for the republicans that the federal government be dismantled.

Seems like if you were so put-out by someone saying something irrelevant, you could have simply ignored it. I mean, surely that would have been the best course if trying to stay on topic was the goal. I mean, really, it's hard to imagine you getting so seriously personal if someone had said, "How bout those Yankees!" and invoking what you saw as the vapidity of their character and what not. But now that the cat is already out of the bag, I thought the charge here (and I have no idea whether it's true, because all I have is second hand info) is that the person in question engaged in verbal behavior that should have been seen as unwarranted *at the time,* not only in hindsight. As for the petition, my understanding is, again, that the actual guilt or innocence of the accused was a concern that was shoved aside; surely we don't need hindsight to be turned off by that. EDIT: The petition I refer to is the one surrounding the Duke case.

Thanks to bhtv for arranging this one. This was a very interesting, high-level discussion. Levine did not read the Krugman piece very carefully. Krugman goes on at some length towards the end of his piece to defend new work in behavioral economics and talks about some other ongoing work that he thinks is promising. Levine’s characterization of Krugman is that Krugman is completely in thrall to an outdated, completely qualitative, and unintelligible Keynesian model. I don’t have to know anything about the work for which Krugman won the Nobel Price to know that this characterization is utter nonsense. Also, it is my understanding that Krugman still teaches graduate courses in economics at Princeton, or at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, I’m not sure which. Now, just ask yourself, would that be possible in a field like economics if he failed to read any contemporary technical literature? So, I think there is very strong prima facie evidence, namely this diavlog, that Levine has a serious bug up his ass about “Paul.” Is Krugman less immersed in the technical literature than he was twenty years ago? Almost certainly, probably substantially less. If you read Krugman’s

Quoting Starwatcher162536: I think it was somewhat moronic we had all these business executives making decisions based on models they did not understand.

As opposed to policymakers making economic policy decisions on tax, fiscal spending, trade policy, agricultural policy, energy policy, competition policy, etc., etc. based on models they've never even heard of? c.f., John Maynard Keynes: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”