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Any video that tries to condense all of economics into 16 minutes is going to be wrong to a certain extent, but I think anyone without a strong negative opinion

by Aunche 3y ago

Any video that tries to condense all of economics into 16 minutes is going to be wrong to a certain extent, but I think anyone without a strong negative opinion of capitalism would get the point she makes. Penicillin would be useless without industrialization, and industrialization wouldn't have happened without capitalism, so therefore capitalism is good.

runarberg 3y ago
There are allot of assumptions in your line of reasoning. It can be argued that it is just as likely—if not more likely—that the only people watching this video that came out of it with a positive opinion on capitalism, are the people that already believe these assumptions to be true, don’t need any evidence to further believe them—may even reject the evidence showing the contrary—and already held the faith that capitalism is good. Either way it was a bad video, and not at all to par with the scientific standard she sets in her previous work, in the field she is an expert at.
- Aunche 3y ago
  I didn't make any assumptions. Most people, including Karl Marx, agree that capitalism is what lead to industrialization. All Sabine did is make the obvious connection between capitalism, industrialization, and the widespread availability of penicillin. "Ackchyually, there was some resistance to pharmaceutical companies conducting research for penicillin production" is something you care about if you're being hypercritical.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    It is still an assumption, and an ahistorical one at that. Many countries industrialized without capitalism, and humanity has seen much greater technological revolutions without this system. And yes, Karl Marx was wrong about many things, if he stated that industrialization would not happen without capitalism, he would be wrong. But there is another—much worse—assumption you made. Even if we conclude that industrialization only happened because of capitalism, and even if we conclude that industrialization and capitalism is what made penicillin useful, we still cannot conclude that capitalism is a good system. You run into the black swan problem here. Just because you can point to a single white swan, and even if you can point to a million white swans, this is no basis to conclude that all swans are white. Similarly, even if all your other assumptions are correct, your anecdote about penicillin is not a conclusive about the quality of the system. This is why scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder usually only take anecdotes at face value, and use them only as hints to justify further research. For some reason Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t do that when she concludes that capitalism is a good system. I wonder why.
    - Aunche 3y ago
      > Many countries industrialized without capitalism I'm not talking about countries. I'm talking about industrialization in general. It is less of an accomplishment to replicate an innovation that you already know works. Obviously, Marx who never lived to see any communist revolutions, wasn't talking about countries either. > You run into the black swan problem here. Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans.
      - runarberg 3y ago
        > Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans. I don’t follow the logic here. You should come into this knowing that you have a bias towards favoring capitalism, as you are not only living within that system but very likely benefiting heavily from it. You should also come into this knowing that you have a very limited scope to weigh alternatives, as you don’t have much real world data, and all historical data is heavily tainted with both your biases, as well as the filtered through lenses of your current system. Imagine your self to be an astrophysicist, this is akin trying to compare our sun to a star that is on the other side of the galaxy directly behind the sun, without having many instruments or even a telescope to observe the latter. Whenever you try to look at that star, 99.9999% of all the light you see is coming from our sun, not that star, and you have to account for that when comparing them. Saying that capitalism is good and backing it up with a few stories, also ignores all the stories which demonstrates that capitalism is bad. For every story of your penicillin—which isn’t even that clear cut, but let’s ignore that—there are stories like the Bhopal disaster, the climate disaster, of wage theft, of poverty and exploitation, of people dying of preventable and curable diseases, etc. Those are the black swans in the system, and they are all over the place. People arguing that capitalism is good are choosing to ignore these stories, and focus on the penicillin. Saying that “capitalism is good” based on observing white swans, should follow with “capitalism is bad” based on observing the black swans. A scientist like Sabine Hossenfelder should know better.

by Aunche 3y ago

runarberg 3y ago

There are allot of assumptions in your line of reasoning. It can be argued that it is just as likely—if not more likely—that the only people watching this video that came out of it with a positive opinion on capitalism, are the people that already believe these assumptions to be true, don’t need any evidence to further believe them—may even reject the evidence showing the contrary—and already held the faith that capitalism is good. Either way it was a bad video, and not at all to par with the scientific standard she sets in her previous work, in the field she is an expert at.

Aunche 3y ago
I didn't make any assumptions. Most people, including Karl Marx, agree that capitalism is what lead to industrialization. All Sabine did is make the obvious connection between capitalism, industrialization, and the widespread availability of penicillin. "Ackchyually, there was some resistance to pharmaceutical companies conducting research for penicillin production" is something you care about if you're being hypercritical.
- runarberg 3y ago
  It is still an assumption, and an ahistorical one at that. Many countries industrialized without capitalism, and humanity has seen much greater technological revolutions without this system. And yes, Karl Marx was wrong about many things, if he stated that industrialization would not happen without capitalism, he would be wrong. But there is another—much worse—assumption you made. Even if we conclude that industrialization only happened because of capitalism, and even if we conclude that industrialization and capitalism is what made penicillin useful, we still cannot conclude that capitalism is a good system. You run into the black swan problem here. Just because you can point to a single white swan, and even if you can point to a million white swans, this is no basis to conclude that all swans are white. Similarly, even if all your other assumptions are correct, your anecdote about penicillin is not a conclusive about the quality of the system. This is why scientists like Sabine Hossenfelder usually only take anecdotes at face value, and use them only as hints to justify further research. For some reason Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t do that when she concludes that capitalism is a good system. I wonder why.
  - Aunche 3y ago
    > Many countries industrialized without capitalism I'm not talking about countries. I'm talking about industrialization in general. It is less of an accomplishment to replicate an innovation that you already know works. Obviously, Marx who never lived to see any communist revolutions, wasn't talking about countries either. > You run into the black swan problem here. Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans.
    - runarberg 3y ago
      > Saying "capitalism is the best system ever" is like saying there are no black swans. Saying capitalism is "good" merely requires the existence of a large number of white swans, or at best more white swans than black swans. I don’t follow the logic here. You should come into this knowing that you have a bias towards favoring capitalism, as you are not only living within that system but very likely benefiting heavily from it. You should also come into this knowing that you have a very limited scope to weigh alternatives, as you don’t have much real world data, and all historical data is heavily tainted with both your biases, as well as the filtered through lenses of your current system. Imagine your self to be an astrophysicist, this is akin trying to compare our sun to a star that is on the other side of the galaxy directly behind the sun, without having many instruments or even a telescope to observe the latter. Whenever you try to look at that star, 99.9999% of all the light you see is coming from our sun, not that star, and you have to account for that when comparing them. Saying that capitalism is good and backing it up with a few stories, also ignores all the stories which demonstrates that capitalism is bad. For every story of your penicillin—which isn’t even that clear cut, but let’s ignore that—there are stories like the Bhopal disaster, the climate disaster, of wage theft, of poverty and exploitation, of people dying of preventable and curable diseases, etc. Those are the black swans in the system, and they are all over the place. People arguing that capitalism is good are choosing to ignore these stories, and focus on the penicillin. Saying that “capitalism is good” based on observing white swans, should follow with “capitalism is bad” based on observing the black swans. A scientist like Sabine Hossenfelder should know better.