Thursday, May 12, 2016
Thanks, Ralph 385
A classic example of reliance on PROCESS instead of FACTS. The author notes the obvious fact that pundits are fucked. The Trump thing brought it out in living color. How do you improve the accountability of pundits?
The author thinks that bets will help.
The problem with bets like these is that they are far too simple to settle the complex debates that underlie them. A handful of metal prices cannot settle a sprawling Malthus vs. Cornucopia argument, just as a single data point for unemployment cannot be the final word in the dispute between Cowen and Caplan. And yet it would be a shame to abandon bets altogether. Doing so would leave only the squalid food fights into which so many important debates devolve. The solution is to take bets far more seriously, to expand them, and to design them to be capable of settling debates to the satisfaction of most reasonable observers.MOAR PROCESS! MOAR COMPLEXITY! Shit. Totally irrelevant. Only Parkinson matters. No amount of added PROCESS will improve accuracy because the people who pay and publish pundits do not want accuracy. The people who pay and publish pundits want to reinforce the power and status of the people who pay and publish pundits. This is a good thing, because it means that readers who understand the real world can DISMISS ALL PAID PUNDITS. No need to waste time and blood pressure. Just observe the world and draw your own conclusions. Trust yourself. You'll be right most of the time. Guaranteed.
Labels: Emersonian justice
¶ 1:05 AM
