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This! People on hacker news have called 45 of the last 1 recessions! Having a finance background I can't stand finance related discussions on HN anymore. Any at

This! People on hacker news have called 45 of the last 1 recessions! Having a finance background I can't stand finance related discussions on HN anymore. Any attempt at science immediately goes out the window and it just gets me so tilted. Too many armchair economist, not enough people willing to admit what they don't know and learn.

chewz 7y ago
> Too many armchair economist Isn't that the beauty of economy and meteorology? That everyone is an expert?
- EGreg 7y ago
  Obviously the markets can’t go up forever without a correction, and overleveraging will happen and add up in the financial system. Negative interest rates are a sign of this insane stimulus. The difference in the US this time around is that the public will have no say in bailouts of banks. It will be done all hush-hush with the world dollar reserves and demand for the greenback as the final backstop: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XRQecD-Gopg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XRQecD-Gopg Not sure what the other federations would do though.
  - jhoechtl 7y ago
    To many nay-sayers and short sighted in here.
- kpmcc 7y ago
  Yeah and even the 'experts' can't often see the cliff until they've fallen off it.
- Frost1x 7y ago
  It amuses me when relatively new branches of study with poor to non-existent predictive modeling capability criticize "arm-chair" experts on accuracy/predictive aspects. Criticize methodology, data, or conclusions, not authority. This should be applied even in very well established domains. The fact is, there really are no good predictive models yet. There are a lot of very good and legitimate reasons why there are no good predictive models dealing with complexity, scale, and an inherent connection to human behavior. Now, this doesn't mean we throw our hands up and anything goes: we should still provide rationale and people should continue to study these systems methodically as they can. At this point, much of professional economics vs armchair economics isn't too far separated from chemistry:alchemy or astronomy:astrology hundreds of years ago. Obviously, there was great merit in the work early chemists, astronomers, etc. took on since we can now stand on their shoulders. Economics shouldn't be belittled, yet at the same time, it should be recognized for what it is: still not very predictive.
  - pmayrgundter 7y ago
    Not sure your fact is correct. I saw this linked on HN recently: "We find that financial cycle measures have significant forecasting power both in and out of sample, even for a three-year horizon. Moreover, they outperform the term spread in nearly all specifications. These results are robust to different recession specifications." https://www.bis.org/publ/work818.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/work818.pdf
    - Frost1x 7y ago
      The authors of that paper are not nearly as convinced in overall applicable recession predictability using their proxy measures as the abstract excerpt that lures the reader in: "These results suggest that financial cycle proxies may be another indicator that could be useful to policymakers, professional forecasters and market participants more generally." Emphasis added is mine. That's double the coverage of uncertainty propogation. Unfortunately, I suspect, like most working in modern research and academic settings, papers have to inflate success as much as possible or the researchers lose future funding even though this type of work is high risk of failure. This is partly to blame for the reproducibility crisis we're encountering across the board. I don't blame the authors (I feel their pain), but I do blame the poorly structured incentive/disincentive system creeping ever-further into academic research.
- Humdeee 7y ago
  Even 'experts' aren't experts. In fact, it's a running joke in my city that the top senior meteorologist has made the exact wrong prediction every year for the last decade on winter weather. That's very hard to do. Flip a coin and guess the right (or wrong) side back to back nearly 10 times. Mind blowing. It is very good pay as a glorified fortune teller. It is too complex a problem right now.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
I feel the same whenever the article relates to neuroscience...its just not the discipline of many in the HN crowd, but because everyone has a brain, people frequently think they have something insightful to contribute about how the brain works. Contrast this with computer related ropics and the HN expertise shines.
- mncharity 7y ago
  Not my field, but perhaps fear of embarrassment is important? Feynman's snark that (something vaguely like) good cocktail party topics are those where no one present has expertise. I've seen a biology professor, writing a biology children's picture book, with unusual care, who seemed in part motivated by not being seen by their peers as having gotten it wrong. I've recently seen comments that since it's HN, voluminous uninformed conversation is fine, and without harm. So absent ego threat, or clear social norms, the next line of defense for quality is... comment votes? Which seems more a mechanism for norm enforcement than creation. The HN comment guidelines don't actually recommend "thoughtful and substantive", only that that should increase as topics get divisive. The emphasis seems respectful and curious discussion. That combination might tend towards quality, but perhaps has failure modes. Like concentrations of poorly informed discussion, perhaps less than ideally respectful and curious, either discouraging quality, or taking too long to shift towards it? One argument for discussion fora supporting personalized filtering, is the speculation that virtual subpopulations might create and sustain norms more easily than an unfiltered population can filter comments.
  - mncharity 7y ago
    Brainstorming, perhaps highly upvoted comments might be darkened or otherwise highlighted, analogous to how the downvoted are lightened? Upvotes moving a comment upward, within its parent's node, is a quality signal that is weakened when there are few siblings. So outside of root and big nodes, it's hard to scan/skim for high-quality outliers. Which incentivizes making bulk judgments about whether chunks of the hierarchy, or even entire article discussions, are of a quality to be worth reading. And reduces the incentive for creating quality outliers in parts of the hierarchy where they will remain low visibility.
aguyfromnb 7y ago
Amen. One of my pet peeves is talking about debt without corresponding asset levels. Corporate America has a net worth of ~$35 trillion.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Real or intangible assets?
ummonk 7y ago
This isn't calling the recession; it's calling out the main area of rot in our economy that is likely to cause the most trouble / ripple effects whenever the next recession hits.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Having a finance background I can't stand finance related discussions on HN anymore. Any attempt at science immediately goes out the window and it just gets me so tilted. Too many armchair economist, not enough people willing to admit what they don't know and learn. I would wager that finance is not the only topic subject this effect. E.g. Everyone in every Tesla thread is an expert in every component that goes into an automobile.
rayiner 7y ago
The media is like this about almost any field you know about. Pharmaceuticals for example.

chewz 7y ago

> Too many armchair economist Isn't that the beauty of economy and meteorology? That everyone is an expert?

EGreg 7y ago
Obviously the markets can’t go up forever without a correction, and overleveraging will happen and add up in the financial system. Negative interest rates are a sign of this insane stimulus. The difference in the US this time around is that the public will have no say in bailouts of banks. It will be done all hush-hush with the world dollar reserves and demand for the greenback as the final backstop: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XRQecD-Gopg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XRQecD-Gopg Not sure what the other federations would do though.
- jhoechtl 7y ago
  To many nay-sayers and short sighted in here.
kpmcc 7y ago
Yeah and even the 'experts' can't often see the cliff until they've fallen off it.
Frost1x 7y ago
It amuses me when relatively new branches of study with poor to non-existent predictive modeling capability criticize "arm-chair" experts on accuracy/predictive aspects. Criticize methodology, data, or conclusions, not authority. This should be applied even in very well established domains. The fact is, there really are no good predictive models yet. There are a lot of very good and legitimate reasons why there are no good predictive models dealing with complexity, scale, and an inherent connection to human behavior. Now, this doesn't mean we throw our hands up and anything goes: we should still provide rationale and people should continue to study these systems methodically as they can. At this point, much of professional economics vs armchair economics isn't too far separated from chemistry:alchemy or astronomy:astrology hundreds of years ago. Obviously, there was great merit in the work early chemists, astronomers, etc. took on since we can now stand on their shoulders. Economics shouldn't be belittled, yet at the same time, it should be recognized for what it is: still not very predictive.
- pmayrgundter 7y ago
  Not sure your fact is correct. I saw this linked on HN recently: "We find that financial cycle measures have significant forecasting power both in and out of sample, even for a three-year horizon. Moreover, they outperform the term spread in nearly all specifications. These results are robust to different recession specifications." https://www.bis.org/publ/work818.pdf https://www.bis.org/publ/work818.pdf
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    The authors of that paper are not nearly as convinced in overall applicable recession predictability using their proxy measures as the abstract excerpt that lures the reader in: "These results suggest that financial cycle proxies may be another indicator that could be useful to policymakers, professional forecasters and market participants more generally." Emphasis added is mine. That's double the coverage of uncertainty propogation. Unfortunately, I suspect, like most working in modern research and academic settings, papers have to inflate success as much as possible or the researchers lose future funding even though this type of work is high risk of failure. This is partly to blame for the reproducibility crisis we're encountering across the board. I don't blame the authors (I feel their pain), but I do blame the poorly structured incentive/disincentive system creeping ever-further into academic research.
Humdeee 7y ago
Even 'experts' aren't experts. In fact, it's a running joke in my city that the top senior meteorologist has made the exact wrong prediction every year for the last decade on winter weather. That's very hard to do. Flip a coin and guess the right (or wrong) side back to back nearly 10 times. Mind blowing. It is very good pay as a glorified fortune teller. It is too complex a problem right now.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

I feel the same whenever the article relates to neuroscience...its just not the discipline of many in the HN crowd, but because everyone has a brain, people frequently think they have something insightful to contribute about how the brain works. Contrast this with computer related ropics and the HN expertise shines.

mncharity 7y ago
Not my field, but perhaps fear of embarrassment is important? Feynman's snark that (something vaguely like) good cocktail party topics are those where no one present has expertise. I've seen a biology professor, writing a biology children's picture book, with unusual care, who seemed in part motivated by not being seen by their peers as having gotten it wrong. I've recently seen comments that since it's HN, voluminous uninformed conversation is fine, and without harm. So absent ego threat, or clear social norms, the next line of defense for quality is... comment votes? Which seems more a mechanism for norm enforcement than creation. The HN comment guidelines don't actually recommend "thoughtful and substantive", only that that should increase as topics get divisive. The emphasis seems respectful and curious discussion. That combination might tend towards quality, but perhaps has failure modes. Like concentrations of poorly informed discussion, perhaps less than ideally respectful and curious, either discouraging quality, or taking too long to shift towards it? One argument for discussion fora supporting personalized filtering, is the speculation that virtual subpopulations might create and sustain norms more easily than an unfiltered population can filter comments.
- mncharity 7y ago
  Brainstorming, perhaps highly upvoted comments might be darkened or otherwise highlighted, analogous to how the downvoted are lightened? Upvotes moving a comment upward, within its parent's node, is a quality signal that is weakened when there are few siblings. So outside of root and big nodes, it's hard to scan/skim for high-quality outliers. Which incentivizes making bulk judgments about whether chunks of the hierarchy, or even entire article discussions, are of a quality to be worth reading. And reduces the incentive for creating quality outliers in parts of the hierarchy where they will remain low visibility.

aguyfromnb 7y ago

Amen. One of my pet peeves is talking about debt without corresponding asset levels. Corporate America has a net worth of ~$35 trillion.

mcguire 7y ago
Real or intangible assets?

ummonk 7y ago

This isn't calling the recession; it's calling out the main area of rot in our economy that is likely to cause the most trouble / ripple effects whenever the next recession hits.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>Having a finance background I can't stand finance related discussions on HN anymore. Any attempt at science immediately goes out the window and it just gets me so tilted. Too many armchair economist, not enough people willing to admit what they don't know and learn. I would wager that finance is not the only topic subject this effect. E.g. Everyone in every Tesla thread is an expert in every component that goes into an automobile.

rayiner 7y ago

The media is like this about almost any field you know about. Pharmaceuticals for example.