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Of course scale should be taken into account; it’s a sad state that this would count as exceptionalism. Iceland and Portugal should be lessons for entities or

by jpttsn 9y ago

Of course scale should be taken into account; it’s a sad state that this would count as exceptionalism. Iceland and Portugal should be lessons for entities or similar size, like individual states of cities in the US.

marcosdumay 9y ago
Scale should certainly be taken into account. Still, differences in scale are no excuse to completely invalidate the data points without a good reason why it should matter this much. The examples we have of countries letting their banks fail recovered¹. The onus is on anybody disagreeing to show how the US differences are relevant. Just pointing at them and screaming does not make it. 1 - AFAIK, all of them. What is interesting because it includes Brazil at the late 90's (the one single time Brazil grew in recent history).
- jpttsn 9y ago
  Differences in scale are a great reason to throw data out. Past experience gives us lessons for similar cases. The onus is on anybody using a model to ensure the use case is similar to the training data. The US and Iceland are nations but it’s unreasonable to get hung up on that similarity of category. The nation is not a label for grouping economies that are comparable. I don’t like bailouts either, for the record. My gripe is only with the scale question.
jessaustin 9y ago
Is there a better word for "here's a reason that things work differently in USA than in the rest of the world, that totally legitimizes our habit of ignoring any lessons we could learn from them"? I mean, when I imagine Trump saying it, it really sounds like, "exceptionalism". This whole size thing is a silly exercise in magical thinking anyway. Money is divisible, across all relevant scales. Pick any random nation, and its economy is larger than USA's was, some number of years ago. Would you say that we weren't exceptional back then, but we are now? When did that transition occur? What happens if some other nation's economy grows to our economy's current size, sometime in future? Will we no longer be exceptional?
- jpttsn 9y ago
  The day when China is the size of the US there will be lessons to learn from China. I bet there are many lessons today. But if Iceland remains its current size, neither superpower should treat it as comparable for scenario analysis. I get a sense this is a political question for you; it’s not for me. It’s just an example. Amazon is a company. I have a company of my own. Say my servers went down, and a few days later things were alright. Would it be Amazon Exceptionalism if they refused to learn from my experience?

by jpttsn 9y ago

marcosdumay 9y ago

Scale should certainly be taken into account. Still, differences in scale are no excuse to completely invalidate the data points without a good reason why it should matter this much. The examples we have of countries letting their banks fail recovered¹. The onus is on anybody disagreeing to show how the US differences are relevant. Just pointing at them and screaming does not make it. 1 - AFAIK, all of them. What is interesting because it includes Brazil at the late 90's (the one single time Brazil grew in recent history).

jpttsn 9y ago
Differences in scale are a great reason to throw data out. Past experience gives us lessons for similar cases. The onus is on anybody using a model to ensure the use case is similar to the training data. The US and Iceland are nations but it’s unreasonable to get hung up on that similarity of category. The nation is not a label for grouping economies that are comparable. I don’t like bailouts either, for the record. My gripe is only with the scale question.

jessaustin 9y ago

Is there a better word for "here's a reason that things work differently in USA than in the rest of the world, that totally legitimizes our habit of ignoring any lessons we could learn from them"? I mean, when I imagine Trump saying it, it really sounds like, "exceptionalism". This whole size thing is a silly exercise in magical thinking anyway. Money is divisible, across all relevant scales. Pick any random nation, and its economy is larger than USA's was, some number of years ago. Would you say that we weren't exceptional back then, but we are now? When did that transition occur? What happens if some other nation's economy grows to our economy's current size, sometime in future? Will we no longer be exceptional?

jpttsn 9y ago
The day when China is the size of the US there will be lessons to learn from China. I bet there are many lessons today. But if Iceland remains its current size, neither superpower should treat it as comparable for scenario analysis. I get a sense this is a political question for you; it’s not for me. It’s just an example. Amazon is a company. I have a company of my own. Say my servers went down, and a few days later things were alright. Would it be Amazon Exceptionalism if they refused to learn from my experience?