A couple months ago Evan asked that readers avoid anonymous commenting, and resorting instead to at least a pseudonym for the purposes of attribution and accountability.
I want to reiterate that plea and impress upon anonymous commenters that when you write things addressed to me like: "PS: You really need to brush up on your economics", and you do it anonymously, you really come across as juvenile. It's also just not the kind of environment we want to promote here. Facts and Other Stubborn Things is not a blog like Brad DeLong's, where we attract attention by insulting other people and their views in our posts. And we don't want it to become like Cafe Hayek, which both attracts attention by insulting other people in their posts and has a comment section where rudeness and attacks substitute for substantive discussion of the post. When I get told I need to brush up on my economics, that's obnoxious, but fine. Sure I do - who doesn't. I know putting yourself up in this kind of forum means opening myself up to crap like that. I'm concerned these comments are going to start getting hurled at other commenters, though - and that's something I don't want to see.
We don't like to delete comments (to my knowledge we never have, have we Evan?), so please (1.) try not to post anonymously - if you have trouble with the the comment interface, just end your comment with your name or pseudonym, and (2.) don't be petty or rude.
And if you violate my first and second request simultaneously, here's some unsolicited advice: you look incredibly childish and no one is going to take you seriously. We all occasionally feel the need to get sharp with others. I have, on occasion, featured it in posts. But if you feel the need to get sharp, at least man up and identify yourself when you do it.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
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Hello Daniel,
ReplyDeleteIt is me who gave you that advice and I stay by it. It is really a vote of confidence: I really think someday you will have a better grasp of the subject you are trying to study.
I don’t want to provide a long criticism of your blog, but you really use a lot of word torture and weird logical constructs in order to prove your points. My post, from my point of view, is very correct: New Classicism started as a correction of Keynes and stumbled on some rudimentary ideas found in the Classics, but it only tries to correct Keynes. But that’s me, I might be wrong.
And it was a good advice none the less. Another unsolicited advice: try to stay on things you know, your excursions in philosophy are not very promising. But who knows, maybe you’ll become better with time …
you really use a lot of word torture and weird logical constructs in order to prove your points.
ReplyDeleteCould you give four or five examples of this? I'm having some trouble identifying this characterization with Daniel's stuff here.
I also wonder... and I hate to bring up this sort of thing, because it engages in exactly the sort of one-upmanship rhetoric that I think is unhelpful... but you speak here of Daniel "someday" having a better grasp or becoming "better with time". Are you saying this as someone with graduate degrees in economics or philosophy? Or do you think this sort of education will come in time just by personal reading? Do you consider yourself studied enough to judge Daniel on these matters?
As I said, it's pretty lame that I bring this up, but I find that a good deal of blog commenters who make these sorts of criticisms are often young, self-taught or still in school, or are quite committed to a particular stance/theory/camp and view anything outside of this as so much nonsense. I'm suspicious of people who make comments on how "smart" as big a margin as "70%" of a professional field is. This sort of thing strikes me as sophomoric and really pretty cantankerous. Whenever I run into this sort of statement I want to ask the person whether reasonable and well-trained people can disagree reasonably about basic principles, interpretation of basic historical matters, etc. I get the sense from you that you don't think so. But shouldn't the initial assumption be that others have come to their (perhaps wrong) conclusions by perfectly reasonable means, and that we can't make a judgment about how "smart" they are simply from such a superficial assessment of what analyses they value as contrasted with us?
Perhaps some clarification of your rather ambiguous and under-elaborated criticisms of Daniel will help me to understand better, though.
Niko -
ReplyDelete1. Well of course New Classicism is a rejection of Keynes! That's what I've been saying all along. You're the one that said there's not much difference between them.
2. I should hope I improve... it would be pretty sad if I stay the same or get worse. I agree with Evan, though. I'm at a loss on specific shortcomings, which makes me think you've identified a disagreement with me, rather than an insufficiency on my part.
@Evan:
ReplyDeleteIf I would value "degrees" I would not emphasize "better with time" since it implies improvements after some graduation, Phd and so on. So yes, I value self improvements, by personal reading, intelligent and not so intelligent conversations with all kind of people and so on. After a while someone has to learn to think, not only to learn.
We could go on an endless discussion on what "educated" and "studied means", but I think someone said (I think Kant) that you can, through education, make a person erudite, but not intelligent. So I don't have a problem with Daniel's formal education, but only with what he writes.
I don't have time to list specific points, but I don't really need to. I could probably choose any post from the blog and find that I don't like it.
1. I think Evan values self-education. A lot of what I blog on is actually derived from self-education, not from formal education. I don't even have a graduate degree in economics, although the graduate degree I do have involved about half the course were in the economics departmetn at the graduate level. But like I said - I rarely blog on the stuff I learned in those courses.
ReplyDelete2. Evan is a machine when it comes to self-education, I don't think he's denigrating it. I think one of the problems with self-education is that people can tend to self-educate in a way that is plagued with confirmation bias. This may be what he was getting at.
3. The fact that you don't like our posts is unrelated to your prior assertion that there is something insufficient about them. I do think there's obviously some insufficiency in everything I write. But what I write can be completely sufficient from a scholarly viewpoint, and still dissatisfying for you and many, many others. The fact that we have a large Austro-libertarian readship virtually guarantees that even good scholarship is going to be critically received, and that's fine.
@Daniel:
ReplyDelete"one of the problems with self-education is that people can tend to self-educate in a way that is plagued with confirmation bias."
This is the only reason I read Krugman, Mankiw, DeLong, Cowen and the guys from econlib. From time to time there is an interesting problem that requires some thinking to see if it's correct or not.
Also JEP is a good read. One has to know what the others are saying if he wants to prove them wrong (or not).
"one of the problems with self-education is that people can tend to self-educate in a way that is plagued with confirmation bias."
ReplyDeleteThat's a problem with education generally actually; it is not a weakness that self-education holds alone in other words.
I'd disagree, Xenophon, for the simple reason that self-education doesn't involve other warm bodies in the room... teacher, fellow students, etc.
ReplyDeleteCertainly it's a general problem of education, but self-education is particularly liable to this sort of problem.
Think of a foreign name that you've only ever read, but never discussed with others or lectured to about. Have you ever had the experience of mis-pronouncing the name in your head, and being embarrassed in an interactive setting when it rolls off your lips incorrectly? The danger of self-education is analogous to that. There's no outer checks, sounding boards, criticisms, etc. That doesn't mean one can't teach oneself, it just means that there are difficulties to the task.
I've never heard of a person of today self-educating in a vacuum like that. I mean, yeah that seems like a plausible scenario in say the late 19th century (think of Jack London), but not today.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of a person of today self-educating in a vacuum like that.
ReplyDeleteLike what? I'm unclear about the intended referent.
I'm creating a person to fit what you describe; and I don't see that sort person actually existing today. I don't accept your definition of self-education in other words.
ReplyDeleteXenophon - again you implement a botched extremism to make your point, only demonstrating that you don't understand Evan's point. This taking statements to the extreme is a regular habit of yours. Why?
ReplyDeleteNobody defined "self education" as no human contact except for you. We've been discussing it here as self-initiated, informal, reading-based education. You're the one that brings in Jack London. You're the one that brings in the vacuum. Nobody else in the conversation is talking about that except for you. So don't expect your arguments to score many points.
And the fact is that everyone's education is a mixture of informal, self-initiated, introspective self-education and formal, pre-fabricated, tutelage. Both extremes of that mix have different liabilities. To the extent that self-education occurs, you become liable to potentially confirming your own biases, because ultimately what you interact with is chosen by you. If you avoid that, then you're good at self education. Niko reads and interacts with people he disagrees with. I make a practiced point of doing that too. Good for us. Confirmation bias is a risk, not a certainty. And in more formal education, you risk getting material that is biased by whoever is providing the instruction. But since you have the liberty to challenge that instructor, since it is (hopefully) that instructors wish to share knowledge rather than push an agenda, since you are likely to be in a classroom with people of other perspectives who will challenge you or the instructor, since a faculty in all likelihood will try to guarantee that your instructor teaches a broad canon rather than a narrow literature, you are at least somewhat safe-guarded against at least that sort of bias, although you may open yourself up to other biases.
That's the only point. Your Jack London vacuum completely misses it.
Daniel,
ReplyDelete"Xenophon - again you implement a botched extremism to make your point, only demonstrating that you don't understand Evan's point."
I understand his point perfectly; I simply don't agree with it. And yes, Evan has described what looks to me to be a vacuum. Look at his description:
"Have you ever had the experience of mis-pronouncing the name in your head, and being embarrassed in an interactive setting when it rolls off your lips incorrectly? The danger of self-education is analogous to that. There's no outer checks, sounding boards, criticisms, etc. That doesn't mean one can't teach oneself, it just means that there are difficulties to the task."
See, vacuum. I mean really; how many people have you ever met who have "no sounding board," etc.? Very few if any I would assume. No one lives like that.
"You're the one that brings in the vacuum."
Just because no one uses the term "vacuum," doesn't mean that isn't what is being described in Evan's statement.
"Your Jack London vacuum completely misses it."
No, it is exactly on point for illustrating just how lacking in reality the definition is.
Anyway, what is always amusing about you is how you and you alone get to define what is the "middle ground," when in fact all you are is a common, garden variety liberal who has sack full of very pedestrian viewpoints. If you don't like my "extreme" viewpoints fine; but using that sort of reasoning as a constant crutch to prop up your positions is lazy. The fact that my viewpoints fall outside the "mainstream" (and goodness, the mainstream included a thousands year old defense of slavery at one point in human history!), says nothing about their merits.
If you don't like my "extreme" viewpoints fine; but using that sort of reasoning as a constant crutch to prop up your positions is lazy.
ReplyDeleteYou never expressed an "extreme viewpoint" at all, and that wasn't what I was criticizing. What I was criticizing was your fumbling attempt to use a reductio ad absurdum approach to Evan's point. Your position wasn't that crazy. The problem is you were criticizing something that no one here was even talking about, because you always see other people's arguments through such an extreme lens.
It's like the George Orwell post the other day. The issue at hand was a very specific type of political violence during a transition of power, and you completely switched gears to violence in general as if I was somehow claiming that states aren't violent.
It gets tiring to repeatedly have to lead you back into the actual discussion at hand.
So to repeat - the problem here wasn't that your views are extreme at all. The problem is that you put an extreme spin on everything that anyone else says. To quote Jay Rosenberg (HT Brian Leiter), your comments regularly "commit genocide against an entire race of strawmen".
"Anyway, what is always amusing about you is how you and you alone get to define what is the "middle ground," when in fact all you are is a common, garden variety liberal who has sack full of very pedestrian viewpoints."
ReplyDeleteWhat's amusing about that? Well, the first assertion (that I define the middle ground) is just inaccurate - but I am pretty conventional in my views. Liberal may be fair - I don't personally think of myself as a liberal but in a lot of ways I am. And I suppose I'm "pedestrian" in the sense that a lot of my views are fairly unshocking and somewhat common (I like to think they're more critically thought through than usual, but who knows).
What's the joke? Was this considered a great secret to anyone? What's funny about that.
A few ideas of mine, I'd suggest are not very mainstream, but overall it's a decent enough assessment.
Have I ever criticized anyone for being "extremist" here? I regularly entertain and even highlight value in ideas that are less conventional than my own.
"What I was criticizing was your fumbling attempt to use a reductio ad absurdum approach to Evan's point."
ReplyDeleteThat's fair and accurate except the problem is that this wasn't my approach.
"The problem is that you put an extreme spin on everything that anyone else says."
No, the problem is that you take the conventional view of something as the only appropriate view.
"...and you completely switched gears to violence in general as if I was somehow claiming that states aren't violent."
There's no way I could be claiming that you; the quote was by Orwell after all. Anyway, the problem with Orwell quote (and the one by Keynes you paraphrased) was that they were (a) so snobbishly British (even British anti-colonials were colonialist in their viewpoints) and (b) so dead wrong historically.
"What's the joke? Was this considered a great secret to anyone? What's funny about that."
The flourish by which you present yourself.
Xenophone, would there be any problem with saying this? -- "Insofar as one is self-educated, the problem of confirmation bias is presents itself more strongly"
ReplyDeleteI don't think it matters whether any such autodidactic vacuum actually exists. I imagine you're right, and that it doesn't. The point, however, is that any education that is more insulated... by being self-taught, or by being ideologically driven, etc. ...will also be more in danger of these sorts of problems.
I don't see why this has become such a point of contention. This whole exchange seems pretty pointless to me, and I'm missing what exactly is worthwhile in what you've said.
Although I will agree with you on one thing... Daniel does have flourish.