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Comment by cia_plant | Hacker News Reader

The underlying assumption of this blog post is that only experts should ever discuss technically complex topics. I disagree strongly.

The common notion is that someone who hasn't read 1000 books about the conventional academic wisdom can't possibly make a valid argument. However, academic fields can often get into a cycle of conformance to an absurd belief. You don't have to read Aquinas to make the correct argument that belief in God is absurd from the start. You don't have to read Skinner to see the problem with behaviorism. You don't have to read all the latest analytic philosophy to see that it's all circular and useless. And you don't have to read the latest mainstream economics to see that it's based on a narrow and largely useless formalization of the difficult complexities of the actual economy.

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I don't know why everyone thinks he said that people shouldn't discuss economics. What he said was that geeks overrate their competence and therefore their discussions tend to be stupid.

Err, his overarching implication was that people should just shut up and let the experts have their way. I guess that was his implication, because it's hard to tell from all the whiny confusion:

The more interesting question is why? Why the false expertise? Why the heir of authority? Why the certainty?. The conversations tend to be extremely emotional and defensive.

I actually don't see too much false expertise, or pretenses of authority, etc. People want to discuss things so they do. If it effects their lives, well, who's to say otherwise? Oh right, some jerk with a blog.

If the treasury department issues 750 billion dollars with my name on it, I'm frankly not much a citizen if I declare my unavoidable ignorance on the matter and so devote myself to my suitable recreations of drinking beer and watching football.

The last paragraph makes it clear the real point of the article is: "People in TV and major newspapers agree with me. Only silly internet people say anything different. So shut up."

The last paragraph was a joke, meant to be ironic.

Understood, but I believe it highlights how you landed at the premise of the article. You make multiple disparaging remarks about youtube. I dare infer you don't object to commentary on MSNBC that agrees with your final paragraph. It's just an endorsement of appeal to authority.

That's pretty much complete nonsense.

First, the premise of the article is that people bring false expertise and unfounded certainty to the topic at hand. That has pretty much nothing to do with the veracity of various youtube videos, or MSNBC.

Second, the presumption that I actually hold any of the beliefs in the final paragraph is completely misfounded and can only be rightly attributed to someone who didn't really read what I was trying to say and instead decided to pigeonhole my argument. I don't know what to think. I cannot make a compelling and satisfactory argument (to my standards) for or against a gold standard and I sure as hell don't trust "dudes on the internet" to give me a reasonable argument, either. The topic is sufficiently complex that any charlatan can waive his hand, throw up some smoke and mirrors, and put on a convincing case for just about anything. That is why I don't trust so-called "expose" youtube videos, either. Or, for that matter, MSNBC, since no one who goes on "pop" news is actually interested in educated the public on the finer points of macroeconomics but instead massaging it for their own political purposes.

While none of the economic arguers on the web are convincing enough of the rightness of their views to take without multiple grains of salt, some of them are quite capable of convincing me of the incompetence of many of their opponents' arguments.

Your quote doesn't back up your point at all, nor can I see any 'confusion' there. He is saying that geeks overrate their expertise in economics. It couldn't be clearer.

To me saying "you don't have a clue" amounts to almost the same as saying "you shouldn't open your mouth in this discussion".

No, it means that you should approach things with an open minded, questioning attitude, rather than thundering on about the gold standard or some such.

Maybe... Anyway, I take it as a given that in any such discussion, there will be some obnoxious people (the ones that dismiss arguments as "obviously stupid" without even thinking about them). I just ignore their attitude and try to extract ideas, information and inspiration. Personally I tend to start all sentences with "I think that...", "Maybe..." and so on, but I seem to remember PG writing somewhere that doing so is kind of lame ;-)

The attitude suggested by "Heir of authority" [sic] is not compatible with those suggested by "defensive" and "emotional". I don't want to explicate a confused rant to show that it's confused, but:

Unlike the evolutionists, though, economists don’t have a mini-community of people making youtube videos and evangelizing their points of view to the general public.

Yes, there are economists who make youtube videos.

Programmers love to talk about quantum physics, the speed of light, and black holes. But you won’t find geeks getting all authoritative on the finer points of the event horizon? Why?

Economics is arguable because it is a soft science. We don't argue hard science because it's subject to controlled experiment. He's confusing apples and oranges.

Every, single, person in the discussion is an expert. Except, of course, they aren’t. None of them are.

Nope. Some of them are. He's confused "Some" with "None".

...blah blah. I'm picking up random sentences and they're all fucked up. If the point is to be funny, well, he failed at that as well.

Hmmm.... IMHO economics is a point that should be discussed. Of course not everyone is an economist. The problem is that people decide how the economy should be run (i.e. voting for a welfare state, limited state, etc...).

This affects people a hell of a lot (e.g. the financial+current bailout will cost every tax payer $10,000). Large groups of people already made very bad decisions on this topic earlier this century. Good decisions is the difference between S. Korea and Ghana.

Astro-physics, the finer points of quantum mechanics or the Hilbert effect do not affect people directly that much.

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