> The author's chief defense of academic economic hypothesis is they are complicated. I have not had much patience for the "its complicated, trust us" idea sinc

> The author's chief defense of academic economic hypothesis is they are complicated. I have not had much patience for the "its complicated, trust us" idea since Catholic school. The author didn't make a defense of "academic economic hypothesis". He made an attack on geeks' false sense of expertise on macroeconomics. Macroeconomics remains a giant, complex, poorly understood system regardless of whether there are academic economic models of it. It's not like "academic economic hypothesis" creates the system. The system is there regardless. It's hard to understand, but lots of people run around pretending they understand it. > Perhaps the author's and our time would have been better spent if he offered a coherent defense (maybe even using vaguely correct grammar) of these academic economic hypothesis rather than a sweeping ad hominem attack. Presumably you note the irony of making an ad hominem attack while simultaneously rebuking the author for making an ad hominem attack. In actuality, your ad hominem was far less called for because the author's "ad hominem" was the whole point. He was arguing that the quality of debate is poor, not arguing against any particular line of reasoning. On a side note, it's disappointing that there's been so much made recently of the high quality of discussion on Hacker News and how we need to preserve it, and yet rubbish like "maybe even using vaguely correct grammar" still gets voted sharply up. Some day I truly hope to find a popular forum of well-informed members where snide comments are penalized as a natural side-effect of the forum design.