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Your quote doesn't back up your point at all, nor can I see any 'confusion' there. He is saying that geeks overrate their expertise in economics. It couldn't be

Your quote doesn't back up your point at all, nor can I see any 'confusion' there. He is saying that geeks overrate their expertise in economics. It couldn't be clearer.

Tichy 18y ago
To me saying "you don't have a clue" amounts to almost the same as saying "you shouldn't open your mouth in this discussion".
- davidw 18y ago
  No, it means that you should approach things with an open minded, questioning attitude, rather than thundering on about the gold standard or some such.
  - Tichy 18y ago
    Maybe... Anyway, I take it as a given that in any such discussion, there will be some obnoxious people (the ones that dismiss arguments as "obviously stupid" without even thinking about them). I just ignore their attitude and try to extract ideas, information and inspiration. Personally I tend to start all sentences with "I think that...", "Maybe..." and so on, but I seem to remember PG writing somewhere that doing so is kind of lame ;-)
mynameishere 18y ago
The attitude suggested by "Heir of authority" [sic] is not compatible with those suggested by "defensive" and "emotional". I don't want to explicate a confused rant to show that it's confused, but: Unlike the evolutionists, though, economists don’t have a mini-community of people making youtube videos and evangelizing their points of view to the general public. Yes, there are economists who make youtube videos. Programmers love to talk about quantum physics, the speed of light, and black holes. But you won’t find geeks getting all authoritative on the finer points of the event horizon? Why? Economics is arguable because it is a soft science. We don't argue hard science because it's subject to controlled experiment. He's confusing apples and oranges. Every, single, person in the discussion is an expert. Except, of course, they aren’t. None of them are. Nope. Some of them are. He's confused "Some" with "None". ...blah blah. I'm picking up random sentences and they're all fucked up. If the point is to be funny, well, he failed at that as well.

Your quote doesn't back up your point at all, nor can I see any 'confusion' there. He is saying that geeks overrate their expertise in economics. It couldn't be clearer.

Tichy 18y ago

To me saying "you don't have a clue" amounts to almost the same as saying "you shouldn't open your mouth in this discussion".

davidw 18y ago
No, it means that you should approach things with an open minded, questioning attitude, rather than thundering on about the gold standard or some such.
- Tichy 18y ago
  Maybe... Anyway, I take it as a given that in any such discussion, there will be some obnoxious people (the ones that dismiss arguments as "obviously stupid" without even thinking about them). I just ignore their attitude and try to extract ideas, information and inspiration. Personally I tend to start all sentences with "I think that...", "Maybe..." and so on, but I seem to remember PG writing somewhere that doing so is kind of lame ;-)

mynameishere 18y ago

The attitude suggested by "Heir of authority" [sic] is not compatible with those suggested by "defensive" and "emotional". I don't want to explicate a confused rant to show that it's confused, but: Unlike the evolutionists, though, economists don’t have a mini-community of people making youtube videos and evangelizing their points of view to the general public. Yes, there are economists who make youtube videos. Programmers love to talk about quantum physics, the speed of light, and black holes. But you won’t find geeks getting all authoritative on the finer points of the event horizon? Why? Economics is arguable because it is a soft science. We don't argue hard science because it's subject to controlled experiment. He's confusing apples and oranges. Every, single, person in the discussion is an expert. Except, of course, they aren’t. None of them are. Nope. Some of them are. He's confused "Some" with "None". ...blah blah. I'm picking up random sentences and they're all fucked up. If the point is to be funny, well, he failed at that as well.