The Limits of Predictability

[peristaltor]

Over a year and a half ago, the economics blog Calculated Risk posted this handy chart:

Comments

[a_new_machine]

Unfortunately, the video is broken.

[peristaltor]

LJ is tenaciously breaking embedded links with unworkable shortcuts. Had to fix that one three times before it stuck to the fridge. And what is with reducing all blockquoted text to italics? I take trouble to italicize where I want italics, thank you very much.

Losers.

/rant

[underlankers]

I would argue that with the rest of the world reverting to the natural order of things, economically, that the West is going to have to adjust to the end of the free ride and that this is going to complicate any recovery on a global scale.

[the_rukh]

We're going to have to bomb a lot of people to stop that from happening.

[underlankers]

We don't have the weaponry in quantity to do that.

[peristaltor]

It's gettin' simpler.

[papasha_mueller]

A skinny in a nutshell: We're up shit creek, and without a paddle.
?

[a_new_machine]

I think more accurately it's "We might be up Shit Creek. This sure looks a lot like it, but we've never been here before, so this could also be Turd River, or Excrement Lake. Either way, the boat's leaking."

[peristaltor]

Well put.

QOTD?

[rick_day]

damn...wish I said that...

did you get it off an old Moms Mabley comedy album?

[jerseycajun]

This is why I laugh whenever a politician makes a prediction over his proposed policy's impact when the policy is 'designed' to steer or direct complex systems in directions which he believes are desirable. And also whenever an elected official sees something good happen and lays his or her own claim of responsibility for it, when the good thing involves the result of complex systems.

[zebra24]

I like that answer best.

[peristaltor]

Yup.

Economists studied the most effective defensive position for a goalie during a penalty kick. It was dead center of the net. Why, then, do goalies mostly veer right or left? For the same reason as politicians; to stay motionless implies a lack of initiative, even though that might be the most effective stance.

It's more important to be seen doing something than to actually try to do something that nobody can see. If you don't move on an issue, and the issue gets volatile, you can be blamed for inaction. If you move in the wrong direction, you can at least say you tried.

[meus_ovatio]

Oh, I thought this was a post about science, but then there's all this economics stuff in it.

So I guess we're just figuring out that it's really just a bunch of pseudo-knowledge superstitious entrail interpreting?

[sophia_sadek]

Never underestimate the power of haruspicious interpretation. There are few things more certain than a self-fulfilling prophesy.

[peristaltor]

It's not all entrail interpretation. Some of it works. Sadly, the disciplines that work no one listens to.