Great Moderation
2009Edit
When Lysenkoism had to be dismantled it fell to physicists (eg, Kapitsa & Sakharov). To whom will fall the theory of the 'great moderation'?
New Topic: "What's your vision of true academic freedom?" [Asks @Philip_Girvan.]
An old joke about the diference between the Soviet and US constitutions. Both give freedom to dissent. The US gives freedom the day after.
Academic freedom is about making secure heroes out of Margot O'toole, Doug Prasher & Nassim Taleb instead of pushing them to the periphery.
Academic freedom is freedom to invite a senior colleague to self-copulate for inserting himself before your name on YOUR paper..and survive.
Academic freedom comes from the academic *obligation* to schedule lectures if you have even the possibility of strong disruptive results.
Academic freedom entails a right for a non-expert theorist of high ability to cross boundaries and live on merit without seeking permission.
Academic freedom is the insulation from threat or want to continue in good standing for *any* and *all* contributions & reasoned dissent.
What few people admit is that opposing "String Theory", "The Great Moderation", "Scientist Shortages" etc...leads to excommunication.
This was best put by @BretWeinstein: "Selection is to be feared only when just individuals are prevented from returning costs."
So @ahaspel asks what institutional reforms are needed (which was where I was headed when a birthday party occured in physical reality).
First of all, I am focused primarily on science. If universities can't provide academic freedom, science needs to move homes.
Next: Basic research in science is a public good (inexhaustible and inexcludible). Therefore we need higher levels of public funding.
To maintain academic freedom we need to move resources from what is falsely called 'scientific training' to the compensation of researchers.
To get strong individuals, our target for researchers should be something like MA by 21-22 PhD by 25-26, permanent job by 26-28 (approx.).
Graduate training is actually much shorter than assumed. Typically one is a graduate 'student' in year 1,2 of a PhD and working thereafter.
Raising PhDs should be Eusocial. Giving students to PI's in a 1 on 1 relationship is like parking choir boys with priests. Better in theory.
We must also fund entirely different sorts of people. Without Huxleys, Grossmans, & Hardys you don't get Darwins, Einsteins, & Ramanujans.
A central point: scientists are supposed to be K-selected but universities are hell bent for leather to r-select PhDs.
Yet that's insane.
Research & Teaching in Universities are as perfectly linked as Skiing & Shooting in the Biathalon: tenuously for all but Professors / Finns.
Last point for now: Freedom for academics is precisely freedom from academics. A real marketplace of ideas beats the pants off peer review.
Something occurs to me. If you've never had reason to test your own academic freedom, you may have absolutely no idea what animated me.
On May 23, 2003 an extraordinary talk at NAS called âExactly Backwards: Scientific Manpower Theoryâ was given.There is no record of this.
The talk was so extraordinary that it was repeated again at NAS 11 days later on June 3, 2003. Again there is no meaningful record of this.
The talk presented evidence to the National Academy of Sciences that NAS & @NSF partnered to manipulate markets over scientist salaries.
Now ask yourself why would @NSF be trying to weaken American scientists? Why would NAS help? How would NSF dependent scientists self-defend?
Gauge theoretic economics interest has come recently from @mathpunk @dabacon @diffeomacx @riemanmzeta @tylercowen @ahaspel etc... Loving it.
I should say that Gauge theoretic economics is also all about academic freedom, quashed as it was by the rennegade Boskin Commission idiocy.
2010Edit
T. Geithner 2010: "Welcome to the Recovery!" http://nyti.ms/aItmzd T. Geithner 2004: "Welcome to the Great Moderation!" http://bit.ly/anJ3Ax
2017Edit
Something is becoming clearer to me. Thereâs an academic âdisappearedâ class: for every massive expert failure (e.g. âthe great moderationâ, âWMDâ, dietary fat) those who best called it generally canât be fully seated at the table afterward & weâre stuck w the enabling âexpertsâ.
2019Edit
Except that our institutional mainstream is *pure* fringe:
FreeTrade w/o Kaldor Hicks Transfers
âGreat Moderationâ
Student Loans w/o Bankruptcy
Employer Tethering of H1B
Invasion of Iraq for WMD
Multimillionaire ex-Civil Servants
Black Incarceration
Etc.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/paypal-ceo-grapples-with-fringe-groups-11551016800
I know of no truly working profession.
Medicine: broken. Law: broken. Research: broken. Banking: broken. Mgmt consulting: broken.
Youâll say âSTEM, Tech and CS FTW losers!! Woot!!â
And Iâll whisper âBro, thou dost protest way way too much.â Me thinks.
How are we still such a rich country, then? Apparently having every institution in the country be "broken" isn't that catastrophic??
I didnât know you did impressions! Not really sure. Guessing Timothy Geithner explaining the great moderation of pre-2007? Marty Feldstein on laissez faire? Greenspan on self correcting markets? Brad Delong on NAFTA? Madoff on investing? Krugman on internet commerce? I give. Who?
Câmon Noah. Enough.
People tell me that news has now become commercial and that stories are simply constructed to sell papers/get clicks. This is just nonsense.
Nothing would get clicks, boost circulation or sell papers for a NYT/CNN/NPR like aggressively getting to the bottom of the Epstein story.
As I learned uncovering an immigration conspiracy to use visas to tamper with the free market for STEM labor by our national science complex, no news organization is trying to sell us the actual true stories that move news product organically. The stories we want are held back.
News is a lot like college admissions: itâs an insiders game. We know itâs rigged but canât quite figure out how.
Why take that kid/run that story? Why do you consistently have zero interest in the most interesting kids/stories?
Weâre just now learning *how* rigging works.
Take the current totally synthetic & transparent push for âauthoritative sourcesâ. Such sources would be the ones warning in 2005 that the âGreat Moderationâ was a lie & that a crash loomed. Someone like @nntaleb. Yet they mean the opposite. They mean cheerleaders like @nytimes.
2020Edit
1/ Let me say more clearly what Iâve been intimating. I am suspecting we may risk a colossal public health disaster because we have a terrible paternalistic expert public health culture of âmanagingâ and ânudgingâ populations. And also lying to control public panic & shirk duty.
2/ In essence we developed a culture of magical thinking âexpertsâ who should have been keeping a deeper system for âbottleneck eventsâ, but who for ages have been focused on luck-based âefficiencyâ because for the longest time our luck was amazing. Hence fragility is everywhere.
3/ These folks are our expert class in all areas: finance, policing, firefighting, etc. and they donât plan for suddenly correlated needs. They donât really plan for disasters. They say they do, but they lie to themselves. And then us. Thus we donât have depth to handle crisis.
4/ These people do not generally want to level with us. So they send 2 messages mixed together:
A) Donât overreact/panic and donât blame us. Take personal responsibility and you will be fine.
B) Follow our draconian instructions as if this Armageddon. Martial law minus epsilon.
5/ So many smart agentic people are unnecessarily bewildered because the message is meant for the masses who the elites treat as children. What I surmise is that people in the know think this may be much much worse than theyâve leveled with us about. Hence the severe reaction.
6/ Many are now worried about an under focus in official communication on the threat to young people in terms of morbidity & permanent or long term loss of function. But we arenât hearing much about that yet. We are being told to take personal responsibility for expert failure.
7/ So donât touch your face or go outside and youâll be fine because we donât have close to the beds, reagents, oxygen and masks that actual experts who deal with tail risk would have *insisted* upon in a correlated need event. And do note the word ârecoveredâ. Are they 100%? Ha.
8/ I think the subtext is: âWe, your experts, massively screwed you all. But youâll panic if you hear how bad this could get. So letâs play a game called âjust use common sense and a little martial-law-liteâ and we may not lose too many of us to what is a very serious threat.â
9/ So the âdonât panicâ message disguises the âwe experts *massively* screwed up & know a lot of things that are potentially terrifying that we are not fully openly sharing w/ you yet.â just like the financial crisis in 2008. Hence the number of people saying âitâs just the flu.â
10/ This has been my message: âStop calming us down and sugar coating. You *experts* take the personal responsibility on that you dole out to us and fire yourselves if you downsized our emergency reserve requirements to make quick efficiency gains anytime in the last 40 years.â
11/ In short, we have the wrong expert class and they are likely now finally telling us through their *actions* how serious the risk may be. My advice: toughen up & stop listening to public-health-speak wherever and whenever it conflicts with drastic actions you see being taken.
12/ If youâre young, think about recovery differently. Think about partial recovery that may never come fully back. Push government for answers on what reserves we have & how we can all pitch in to get depth back that has been removed for profit under efficiency & globalization.
13/ I know many agentic technology folks who would leap at the chance to solve problems. People of deep creativity and heroic resolve. Push government to stop with the Public health BS, level with us, and call up the science & tech geeks to leap into action as a brain trust.
14/ Iâm sorry but Iâve been afraid to think this aloud. This is a second version of 2008. Same stupid mindset. The last many years have been a health version of the so-called âgreat moderationâ. Take new draconian measures as the most likely indicator of the scale of the failure.
15/ In short, start tuning out exoteric public health if you have the ability to tune in to esoteric communication between the experts now scrambling to wake up from their failure. If the mixed messages are making you stupid, turn off the audio meant to calm you & watch actions.
End/ I thank several people who I may name later for contributing. As always, my colleague @nntaleb has made versions of these points his lifeâs mission. Thatâs not called being an asshole. Thatâs called heroism. But, I grant you, sometimes they look very similar. Even to me. đ
I didnât follow âFlatten the curve!â
I canât grasp the mask instructions.
I donât grok âHerd Immunity.â
I donât follow the âItâs not the Wuhan Lab!â logic.
I donât get the vaccine target dates.
NB: I also didnât get âThe great Moderationâ, NAFTA or âThe STEM Labor Shortageâ.
The CDC has released six "decision trees" aimed at helping businesses, communities, schools, camps, day cares and mass transit decide on whether it's safe to reopen https://www.cnn.com/webview/us/live-news/us-coronavirus-update-05-14-20#h_621046cd0ac22fb4e65953265da78130
Hereâs the thing: I think this is all proxy speak. I donât think any of this is real. No one is making real sense.
Weâre simply repeating incantations to each other. This isnât science or normal public health. This is what you do when you are pretending too hard to be competent.
So women of color are above white males? And immigrants increasingly voted for Trump? And WHO lied about Masks? And the Fed Lied about The Great Moderation?
Letâs be honest: no authoritative institutions are reliably honest. There are no authoritative institutional sources left.
2021Edit
Vaccines are not 100% safe.
Climate science is not simply âsettled scienceâ.
The COVID virus may well have come from the Wuhan Lab.
Not everything @JamesOKeefeIII publishes is automatically false.
@AndrewYang was never covered fairly by @msnbc.
Masks help.
Your move AP.
Podcasts rife with misinformation remain on social platforms like Apple and Google as extremists exploit a loophole left after the tech companies cracked down on other mediums. https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-media-misinformation-social-media-b7bb0ace8a617af733357f6ee15aca03
If you want to discuss cloud formation and non-linearity in climate models, or the fact that even pure water isnât 100% safe, or the issues in determine COVIDâs origin, you are welcome to come through the âLoopholeâ that is my podcast.
You simplistic corporate sons of bitches.
@jason_pontin @JamesOKeefeIII @AndrewYang @MSNBC Ok. The âoverwhelming consensusâ on the etiology of ulcers? Economists on The âGreat Moderationâ?
I mean I thought that the idea of Pentagon videos of UFOs was total bullshit.
Life just isnât about consensus. And overwhelming does nothing for this American STEM PhD.
A weird way to describe String Theory, Neoclassical Economics, Critical Theory, The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, Public Health, Trust & Safety, Mainstream Media, The Fed, Peer Review, The Great Moderation, Cancel Culture and Political Polling...but ya know what? Heâs right. It works!
Evidence you might be in a Cult::
When you stop thinking for yourself and youâve empowered a select few others in your group to do your thinking for you.
Student Debt, PATRIOT Act, Diversity & Inclusion Oaths, Rollback of Mandatory Requirement, Epstein Suicide, Andrew Yang primary coverage, 1619 Project, Coordinated Bans by Tech Platforms, University Tuition Hike Explanations, STEM worker shortages despite wage mechanism..
#GOLD!
Thanks for the invitation. I can try to explain my concern.
There really *is* a problem w MAGA, Trump, Qanon & conspiracy theories running rampant. And it will result in death & destruction if it spins out of control.
However it is being fueled by those who claim to fight it.
The entire war over fact checking is a war of 2 low resolution teams.
One team wants absolute freedom to spread wild eyed theories that just about everything is a psyop or a false flag.
The other team wants to impose institutional consensus reality on everyone via media & tech.
Unfortunately, I canât live under either. So each of the warring parties thinks Iâm against them & for the other team. In their mentalities if you arenât on their simplistic team you are, de facto, working for the other side. Thereâs no basic concept of *responsible* heterodoxy.
No the Freemasons do not run everything on behalf of pedophile reptilians who faked Sandy Hook with crisis actors.
Yes there are/were conspiracies behind Epstein, H1B, @MSNBC, PPE, climate science, the âGreat Moderationâ, Great Reset...everywhere institutions want a âconsensusâ.
Having spent a good portion of my 20s at Harvard, I know *exactly* how this game works. Our betters sit down and try to figure out how to control others behind closed doors. They see themselves as the intrinsically enlightened people who need to do the thinking for all of us.
When they wanted to cut our Social Security payments & raise our taxes they opted to try to change the CPI rather than pass legislation. When they wanted to pay less for scientists they knew to keep *silent* about NSF Labor Shortage claims even though such shortages donât exist.
These are the folks who tell you âmasks donât workâ rather than âsave masks for doctors as we forgot to restock them and moved all manufacturing to China like moronsâ. They will then spin on a dime to tell you âOnly bad dumb people donât wear masksâ. This is the worst of Harvard.
So I donât want Alex Jones and Qanon nor do I want @TwitterSafety, @msnbc and @Harvard. I see them as very different forms of the same thing: people who want to take away our ability to see clearly.
And, I assure you, @Harvard tries to paint anyone it canât control as dangerous.
So, my belief is that anyone who rejects/questions Davos, Consensus Reality, Institutional Narrative, Public Health Campaigns, High Immigration, Peer Review, Primary Election Coverage, Trust & Safety...will be treated as Alex Jones sooner or Later.
This is Managed Reality â˘.
I cannot live in Managed Reality ⢠because I think it defeats the purpose of being a human being. It negates being an American. It abdicates responsibility for our children.
I have defeated Harvard about half the times we have fought. How? Because they just arenât that good.
Managed Reality ⢠has a weak spot. Itâs not run by our A-team anymore. Fauci isnât Francis Crick. Biden isnât Elon. Janet Yellen isnât Satoshi.
In general, the A-Team is going independent because tech/media/Ed are enforcing way too much conformity through personal destruction.
So why am I worried?
Well, Iâve been trying to save the institutions. Itâs probably doomed, but almost no one is trying to do what I do: rescue the institutions from their death spiral by reinserting their critics in positions of prominence (eg Chomsky at MIT).
Hence my fear.
If I were a tech guy Iâd retreat into wealth. If I were a professor Iâd shut up and collect my salary with job security. If I was a politician or journalist Iâd follow the other sheep.
But Iâm a science guy, an American and a dad. And I want my kids to have a particular future.
Thanks.
The Year is 2005. A tiny number of heretics are yelling that the entire economics profession & all major central bankers are wrong.
âThere is no Great Moderation. All the âExpertsâ are wrong. They have built a financial time bomb.â
Q: Would Twitter ban & downrank the heretics?
I was one of them. So was @nntaleb. I remember Nassim being publicly ridiculed by the most prestigious people in finance at Cannes.
@jack: Would @TwitterSafety know that everything was flipped? That the bad guys were the Fed and the Professors. The good guys were the gadflies??
Jack: your team is failing. You are endangering us all by confusing dissenters with safety concerns. Wake up. You donât have the wisdom for Twitter to play god with our ability to talk to each other and suppress heterodox dissent.
This isnât Twitterâs right as a platform.
My 1st paper on Mortgage Backed Security Valuation problems was peer reviewed in 2001. After 4-5 years of constant âchicken littleâ style ridicule at conference after conference, I gave up.
Thank god @nntaleb did not. @jack: your team is out of control.
https://risk.net/sites/risk/files/import_unmanaged/risk.net/data/Investor/pdf/june/technical.pdf
Sadly, My tweets reach my detractors but not as much my colleagues. But no one knows why certain tweets are hidden. Please RT
Cc: @BretWeinstein @esaagar @joerogan @SamHarrisOrg @jordanbpeterson @MsMelChen @benshapiro @clairlemon @cvaldary @seanonolennon @PiaMalaney @timurkuran
2022Edit
"I've never seen anything as bad as the determination of a lot of people to say it's a recession," Krugman said. "It's above and beyond anything I've ever seen." -@paulkrugman
Would you like to talk about the Boskin Commission & the @BLS_gov pretending to move to a COLA for CPI?
Even top economists are struggling to explain perhaps "the weirdest economy" Americans have ever lived through, CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter said. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/31/media/economy-paul-krugman-reliable-sources/index.html
Would you be interested in discussing an entire field of economic experts laughing for 5-8 years at those of us who tried to warn the world about the impending danger of Mortgage Backed Securities during the âGreat Moderationâ?
Would you be interested in discussing the treatment of George Borjas by economists for pointing out that Immigration actually carries costs & redistributes wealth rather than a miracle free lunch that simply cannot do anything harmful?
Etc. Etc.
Because that is all much worse.
Youâre not being truthful about economics.
Iâm sorry. But at a purely technical level, you are just not being truthful about markets, economics and economists. I say this without an axe to grind as a huge promoter of your earlier work when you were trying to understand the đ.
2023Edit
We had no experience in having 4 planes simultaneously highjacked by suicidal jihadis. So it wasnât worth worrying about.
We hadnât had a worldwide pandemic w/ lockdowns for ages so it wasnât going to happen.
We banished volatility in the Great Moderation so that wasnât a risk.
Putin has *never* used nukes (or other unconventional WMD weapons) in war before. In my estimation, thatâs very important to remember when trying to figure out to whom we now should turn for our analyses. As per the above. #MSM
Which is why we got:
Low Energy Spacetime Supersymmetry
Superlative Index Numbers replacing the Konus Index
Contradictory directives on Masks
âThe Great Moderationâ before 2008
Labor Shortages claimed in Market Economies
Vioxx
Anti-Biological Redefinitions of Gender
The Reproducibility Crisis in Peer Reviewed Literature
Citation Cartels
An admonition to ask no questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology
The Death of Sociobiology at the hands of Marxists
40 yrs of modern String Theory
70 years of Quantum Gravity
The food pyramid
For people not in the scientific world: âdebateâ is not something that generally happens. Instead, scientists give talks, present posters at conferences, and publish, all of which offer opportunities for peer review, critiques, and discussion of the data or its interpretation.
Related PagesEdit
- CPI
- Consensus
- Early is another name for wrong
- Mortgage Backed Securities
- The Idealism of Every Era Is the Cover Story of Its Greatest Theft
- What is Occupy Wall Street about?
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