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As an engineer, she's more bound by reality and reasons from first principles. I find that she's right more often than mainstream economists. Relevant example:
by steelstraw 5y ago
As an engineer, she's more bound by reality and reasons from first principles. I find that she's right more often than mainstream economists.
Relevant example: They were surprised by non-transitory inflation, she was not. That's a huge miss by other economists.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> As an engineer, she's more bound by reality and reasons from first principles. Reasoning from first principles (applying a priori dogma) and being bound by reality (responding to empirical cues) are generally opposed, the exception is when the dogmas are laid down by people who are bound by reality. Much (but not all) engineering work is bounded by reality inherently because there is quick and non-murky feedback when it is wrong; this is a feature of the work, not the worker. Engineers working in economics (and even moreso in economic punditry than actual policy, though it's true either way) don't get that. And the available “first principle” dogmas they can choose to apply are either intentional pedagogical simplifications, poorly tested against reality by comparison to anything in most domains of engineering, or flatly falsified, often ideologically motivated, ideas.
- selimthegrim 5y agoThere's a difference between an engineer and a scientist, and you just hit on it.