Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

The whore of the insurance industry...

...lives up to expectations.  (Maybe we will thank him?  Hard to know.)

What a pathetic, reactionary country this is.

What happens when a blog does not moderate comments?

You end up with lists like this.

Thanks to the many intelligent readers who guarantee that every comments thread here will be instructive, intelligent, and actually worth reading.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the link.)

On Afghanistan

George W. Obama neglected to mention any of this while explaining his escalation of the war.

The Narcissist Reviewed

This is quite funny--read it through to the end.  One imagines Larry Summers feels vindicated.

UPDATE:  A philosopher in the Boston area writes:

As a generally appreciative reader of your blog, I write to offer clarification that might be helpful. The Summers/West controversy was not mainly about the judgment of West's scholarly work and activities. Rather, it was about the tone of "street" familiarity and subsequent condescension that Summers adopted in his infamous meeting with West.

This was the view of many academics sympathetic to West, particularly those who had nearby experience with Summers or knew others who had.   West himself made clear that the issue was mainly about manner of address. Had the issue been mainly about West's scholarly output and its quality, and whether this ever merited appointment as a University Professor at Harvard, I am fairly confident that many of these sympathetic academics, at least those with some knowledge of areas closely related to his work, would not have been nearly as sympathetic.   Indeed, some of these academics might question McLemee's highly
favorable judgment of West's earlier work.

In short, if Summers were to now feel vindicated regarding the controversy, this largely suggests that he would feel vindicated about his manner of address to West. I doubt that this is what you meant to suggest.

Indeed, that was not at all what I meant, and I am grateful for the additional context surrounding that dispute, about which I was unaware.

Thomas Nagel Jumps the Shark, Part II

What else can one say when a prominent, and formerly reputable, philosopher lends the fame of his name to endorse the latest misleading hatchet job on biological science by Stephen Meyer, one of the key figures in the Discovery [sic] Institute?  Scientists are already taking note of this embarrassing display (and see here), which just invites ridicule of the profession:

In a previous post, I said, "Whenever scientific subjects are discussed, you can count on some philosopher to chime in with something really stupid."

Here's another example. Thomas Nagel, a philosopher of some repute, nominates Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell as his pick for book of the year in the Times Literary Supplement.

Does Nagel have any biological training? None that I could see. Does he know anything about evolution or abiogenesis? Not if he thinks Meyer has any valid contribution to make. Did he bother to check if biologists think Meyer's book is a good contribution to the literature? I doubt it. Did Nagel spot all the phony claims Meyer makes about information? I doubt it again....

It's sad to see such an eminent philosopher (Nagel) make a fool of himself with this recommendation.

It is sad, but it is also a reason to be angry, since he's not simply making a fool of himself, he's giving ammunition to those who campaign, relentlessly, to undermine biology education in the public schools.  (The pathological liars at the Discovery [sic] Institute are already all over this and other creationists also realize the public relations value of this endorsement.)  Regarding what actual experts think of Mr. Meyer's work, do see this and this and this.  There is also a patient dissection of the book from a religious biochemist here.  (And for even more on Meyer and the Discovery [sic] Institute, these two items are illuminating.)

This latest embarrassment comes on the heels, of course, of last year's comically bad--and obviously not peer-reviewed--article about teaching Intelligent Design in the public schools and the Dover decision (here), in which Nagel largely made up what the Dover court said and made a mash of the science as well (that article was almost entirely footnote-free for very good reason).   But for Philosophy & Public Affairs's wholly corrupt practice of letting the 'inside circle' of cronies publish without actual editorial oversight, this article could never have appeared in a reputable scholarly journal.

For those outside philosophy or new to it, Nagel's best work--primarily (though not entirely) in moral philosophy--is well-represented by his 1978 collection Mortal Questions and his 1970 book The Possibility of Altruism.  (He also has a very fine, short introduction to philosophy:  What Does It All Mean?)   Much of his philosophical work reflects an interest in the tension between "objective" and "subjective" points of view, for example, in his best-known contribution outside ethics, a paper (reprinted in Mortal Questions) on "What is it like to be a bat?" (challenging the ability of materialist accounts of the mind to capture the subjective character of experience).  He has never made any contributions, or manifested any expertise, in the philosophical fields most relevant to assessing the issues raised by Meyer's work, such as philosophy of biology; that lack of expertise needn't have been fatal to a philosopher's judgment on these matters, of course, though in Nagel's case it may have been.  Given that his careless ignorance in these matters may have repercussions for actual schoolchildren (since the Discovery [sic] Institute's main activity is lobbying school boards consisting of laypeople, not scientists, to undermine the integrity of biology education in the public schools), one wishes he would behave more responsibly.

UPDATE:  The TLS has just published a letter from a chemist about Nagel's little "recommendation"; the whole thing is worth reading (scroll down for it), but here's a key bit:

[Nagel] should not promote the book to the rest of us using statements that are factually incorrect.

In describing Meyer’s book, Nagel tells us that it “. . . is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin” (my italics). Well, no. Natural selection is in fact a chemical process as well as a biological process, and it was operating for about half a billion years before the earliest cellular life forms appear in the fossil record.

Compounding this error, Nagel adds that “Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause.” Again, this is woefully incorrect. Natural selection does not require DNA; on the contrary, DNA is itself the product of natural selection. That is the point. Indeed, before DNA there was another hereditary system at work, less biologically fit than DNA, most likely RNA (ribonucleic acid). Readers who wish to know more about this topic are strongly advised to keep their hard-earned cash in their pockets, forgo Meyer’s book, and simply read “RNA world” on Wikipedia.

ANOTHER:  David Wallace, a philosopher of physics at Oxford University, writes:

The worst consequence of his actions is doubtless the damage done to the anti-creationist fight – but it’s bad news for philosophy of science too. It’s infuriating for those of us who work in technical bits of philosophy of science when this kind of thing happens – it contributes to the very widespread view amongst scientists that philosophy is a waste of time and that philosophers don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s uphill work trying to get (e.g.) physicists to take philosophy of physics seriously, and this kind of thing only makes it worse.

Indeed, that attitude is on display in the initial blast from Professor Shallitt quoted above.  It thus bears emphasizing that Nagel is not a philosopher of science and is ignorant of the relevant science, as is now abundantly clear.  It has been the hallmark of the best philosophers of science in recent decades that their knowledge of the particular sciences is exemplary, and that they often publish in scientific as well as philosophical journals.  And, needless to say, these actual experts are not falling for the nonsense put out by the Discovery [sic] Institute!

Annals of Scathing Book Reviews, Part 78

From a review of André Burguière's Annales School:  An Intellectual History (translated by Jane Marie Todd) by Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans: 

Self-important, pompous, pretentious, solipsistic, often obscure, sometimes barely coherent, his book seems to address itself only to those in the know. The translation by Jane Marie Todd renders all these faults with exemplary accuracy.

But did he like the book? 

 

(Thanks to Jerry Dworkin for the pointer and for realizing this was a review after my own heart.  Professor Evans should have a blog!)

There is no bottom to dumb...

...especially not among Sarah Palin supporters.

Climate Change

The right-wing crazies--in the U.S., this phrase is now mostly redundant, I realize--have been going beserk about hacked e-mails from climate scientists which they believe--since they are dumb as well as crazy--reveal a vast conspiracy to manipulate data on global warming.  There is a clear explanation of what the hacked e-mails actually reveal here.

UPDATE:  This incident illustrates a more general problem, namely, when failures of the peer review process are exploited for partisan political purposes.  We've seen this, of course, in the context of th ID creationism scam.

ANOTHER:  Statements from the University of East Anglia, where the climate scientists whose e-mails were hacked work.   Dr. Jones concedes that the stolen e-mails "don't read well."  Goodness, they read better than mine--no expletives, for example.  And that scholars would be incensed when crackpots and ideological hacks sneak their work into ordinarily reputable journals is hardly surprising.

Sarah Palin's new book reviewed

Here.  This guy would be even funnier if he were a bit less vulgar and pornographic.  A choice excerpt of the good parts:

Millions of copies will be sold of a book written by someone who can’t write, intended for an audience that doesn’t read, about the thoughts of a person who doesn’t think. God is dead....

If you are sentient, it will pain you to read...this wholly fictional monument to self-aggrandized mediocrity....

The book is less a biography than an elaborate press release. Its 432 pages (with sixteen pages of pictures – and no index) barely feign interest in describing Palin’s life in detail. It moves as quickly as possible to its real raison d’être – a methodical re-imagining of her entire political career replete with more excuses than a Cleveland Browns post-game press conference. Palin has never done anything wrong. The public have merely been led to believe that she is a dangerously stupid, erratic narcissist. Going Rogue is all about setting that record straight, offering a wildly implausible excuse for every crash and bang in her train wreck of a political career.

The theme that permeates the book – and with all the subtlety of an Oliver Stone film – is Palin’s overwhelming magnanimity. The book itself was written solely for our benefit, to set straight all of our misconceptions. Her Hindeburg interview with Katie Couric was done only because Palin pitied the struggling journalist (no mention of how her personal generosity forced her to answer simple questions like a lobotomized rube who had never ventured beyond Wasilla). Her hillbilly-wins-the-Lotto shopping sprees and misuse of Alaska taxpayers’ funds to take her daughters on vacations in $3000 per night hotels either never happened (er, she “usually” eschewed lavish accommodations for simple ones) or were forced upon her by others; McCain aides practically held a gun to her head and made her buy a new wardrobe. She resigned the governorship halfway through her only term for the benefit of the people of Alaska (admittedly, she may be onto something there). Her enormous legal bills stem from frivolous ethics complaints by her enemies, and she has borne these costs for you – out of the kindness of her heart. Buying her book and electing her to the presidency is the least you can do in return, ingrate.

A serious question arises from her narrative. Is she a sociopath with a messiah complex – i.e. she actually believes the version of events she relates here – or is she simply a shameless liar? Does she honestly fail to realize that the McCain team was bending over backwards to protect her from her own stupidity when she rails on about how they abused, demeaned, and stifled her?...

 Going Rogue is an irritatingly vernacular, fantastical, and cloying autobiography of a malignant narcissist, every bit as thunderingly stupid throughout as the person behind it. In what world is it either necessary or desirable to spend $9 and four hours to figure that much out about Sarah Palin?

Professor Roubini's Economic Forecast

Not cheery.

An informative piece on swine flu and the vaccine shortage

Here.

Armistice Day

91 years since the end of one of the most appalling mindless slaughters that make up the history of the human race.  As George W. Obama contemplates ramping up the U.S. war machine further, this is worth glancing at.

Two Devastating Indictments of the Health "Reform" [sic] Bill Making Its Way Through Congress

First:

Conservative rhetoric notwithstanding, the House bill is not a "government takeover." I wish it were. Instead, it enshrines and subsidizes the "takeover" by the investor-owned insurance industry that occurred after the failure of the Clinton reform effort in 1994. To be sure, the bill has a few good provisions (expansion of Medicaid, for example), but they are marginal. It also provides for some regulation of the industry (no denial of coverage because of pre-existing conditions, for example), but since it doesn't regulate premiums, the industry can respond to any regulation that threatens its profits by simply raising its rates. The bill also does very little to curb the perverse incentives that lead doctors to over-treat the well-insured. And quite apart from its content, the bill is so complicated and convoluted that it would take a staggering apparatus to administer it and try to enforce its regulations.

What does the insurance industry get out of it? Tens of millions of new customers, courtesy of the mandate and taxpayer subsidies. And not just any kind of customer, but the youngest, healthiest customers -- those least likely to use their insurance. The bill permits insurers to charge twice as much for older people as for younger ones. So older under-65's will be more likely to go without insurance, even if they have to pay fines. That's OK with the industry, since these would be among their sickest customers. (Shouldn't age be considered a pre-existing condition?)

Insurers also won't have to cover those younger people most likely to get sick, because they will tend to use the public option (which is not an "option" at all, but a program projected to cover only 6 million uninsured Americans). So instead of the public option providing competition for the insurance industry, as originally envisioned, it's been turned into a dumping ground for a small number of people whom private insurers would rather not have to cover anyway.

If a similar bill emerges from the Senate and the reconciliation process, and is ultimately passed, what will happen?

First, health costs will continue to skyrocket, even faster than they are now, as taxpayer dollars are pumped into the private sector. The response of payers -- government and employers -- will be to shrink benefits and increase deductibles and co-payments. Yes, more people will have insurance, but it will cover less and less, and be more expensive to use.

But, you say, the Congressional Budget Office has said the House bill will be a little better than budget-neutral over ten years. That may be, although the assumptions are arguable. Note, though, that the CBO is not concerned with total health costs, only with costs to the government. And it is particularly concerned with Medicare, the biggest contributor to federal deficits. The House bill would take money out of Medicare, and divert it to the private sector and, to some extent, to Medicaid. The remaining costs of the legislation would be paid for by taxes on the wealthy. But although the bill might pay for itself, it does nothing to solve the problem of runaway inflation in the system as a whole. It's a shell game in which money is moved from one part of our fragmented system to another.

This author follows with some good reform proposals of her own.

Second:

The Obama Disappointment

Predictable, of course, but this is well-said.

The Neoliberal Paradigm in Higher Education...

...has been preparing the demise of "public" research universities for 25 years now.   Those that become de facto privates like Michigan will survive as major research universities, and those that don't will see their former excellence gradually erode--unless, of course, there is some dramatic transformation in the economic and political culture.

How Judith Butler Writes Her Books and Articles

The secret revealed at last!

"On the Human" Forum from the National Humanities Center

They are featuring a number of items that will be of interest to philosophers.

Someone Needs to Advise Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer to Stop Digging

Really.  A public apology would suffice.

UPDATE:  The link is now fixed.

ANOTHER:  A thoughtful person even writes the apology for them.

Ayn Rand Deserves Fans...

...like this.

(Thanks to John Casey for the pointer.)

Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer: Dangerously Stupid Journalists of the Month

Many people will get sick and some may even die because these two are too stupid to be able to analyze and evaluate evidence.   Share the preceding link with your friends who read The Atlantic.

UPDATE:  Another useful demolition of these two irresponsible hacks.

British Bureaucrats are Insane, Part II

Case in point, of which this quote summarizes the problem:  "A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore."

"Swine flu" On Campus, Again

Useful update on the situation across the nation.  The injectable version of the vaccine started becoming available (for children and high-risk groups) in Chicago just yesterday.  The nasal mist version has been available on some college campuses since last week, as I understand it.  If college students are less dumb than Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher, we will hopefully be spared an unpleasant flu season on campus.

Dangerous Temptations for Young People: Drugs, Alcohol...

...and higher education.

(Thanks to David Rudolph for the pointer.)

Nader on Obama's Presidency So Far

Pretty fair appraisal in my view; a summary:

• His early months in office have been "very disappointing."
• Obama is "a frightened man," who won't take on corporate power.
• Obama is "conflict averse" - and a "harmony ideology type," who's being taken advantage of by the sharks in Congress, of both parties.
• He's "Bush-Cheney redux" when it comes to military and foreign policy, "albeit with better speeches" to the Muslim world. Given Obama's handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nader wonders in amazement: "And they gave him the [Nobel] Peace Prize?"

In the grand tradition of Kissinger, Arafat, Begin...

...and other orchestrators of war and terror, the wholly meaningless Nobel Peace Prize has now gone to Barack Obama.  Would it not have been simpler to just issue a statement saying, "Thank God the war criminal and moral monster Bush is out of office"?

"There should never, ever be an Ayn Rand revival"

This is amusing.

(Thanks to Donald Hubin for the pointer.)

Cultural Barometer: Obama is in Trouble When "Saturday Night Live" Turns on Him

Here.

This is cute: "liberal" economists kissing up to "liberal" economists

In this case, DeLong smooching Summers.  That's sweet.  Too bad it doesn't change the facts.  "Ideas" and "arguments" indeed.

Rosenberg v. Levine on Marcroeconomics on Bloggingheads TV

Kudos to David Killoren for following up on our earlier post by lining up Alex Rosenberg (Duke) to discuss economics with economist (and Krugman critic) David Levine (Wash U/St. Louis).

No Obama Blather from this Democratic Congressman

A refreshing change of pace.

(Thanks to Ruchira Paul for the pointer.)

Posner on Keynes, and the Krugman-Cochrane Debate Continued

Richard Posner, repentant free-market utopian, has writte a nice overview of the main ideas of John Maynard Keynes, which also confirms a number of Krugman's charges against the "Chicago School" of macroeconomics:

Until last September, when the banking industry came crashing down and depression loomed for the first time in my lifetime, I had never thought to read The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, despite my interest in economics. I knew that John Maynard Keynes was widely considered the greatest economist of the twentieth century, and I knew of his book's extraordinary reputation. But it was a work of macroeconomics--the study of economy-wide phenomena such as inflation, the business cycle, and economic growth. Law, and hence the economics of law--my academic field--did not figure largely in the regulation of those phenomena. And I had heard that it was a very difficult book, which I assumed meant it was heavily mathematical; and that Keynes was an old-fashioned liberal, who believed in controlling business ups and downs through heavy-handed fiscal policy (taxing, borrowing, spending); and that the book had been refuted by Milton Friedman, though he admired Keynes's earlier work on monetarism. I would not have been surprised by, or inclined to challenge, the claim made in 1992 by Gregory Mankiw, a prominent macroeconomist at Harvard, that "after fifty years of additional progress in economic science, The General Theory is an outdated book....We are in a much better position than Keynes was to figure out how the economy works."

We have learned since September that the present generation of economists has not figured out how the economy works. The vast majority of them were blindsided by the housing bubble and the ensuing banking crisis; and misjudged the gravity of the economic downturn that resulted; and were perplexed by the inability of orthodox monetary policy administered by the Federal Reserve to prevent such a steep downturn; and could not agree on what, if anything, the government should do to halt it and put the economy on the road to recovery. By now a majority of economists are in general agreement with the Obama administration's exceedingly Keynesian strategy for digging the economy out of its deep hole. Some say the government is not doing enough and is too cozy with the bankers, and others say that it is doing too much, heedless of long-term consequences. There is no professional consensus on the details of what should be done to arrest the downturn, speed recovery, and prevent (so far as possible) a recurrence. Not having believed that what has happened could happen, the profession had not thought carefully about what should be done if it did happen.

Zombie Karl Popper Attacks!

A quick take on our recent discussions about economics.  (Thanks to Ben Burgis for the pointer.)

Alex Rosenberg on Cochrane and Economics

Alexander Rosenberg (Duke), as most readers will know, is a leading philosopher of science, especially of biology and economics, and author of a devastating critique of economics, Economics:  Mathematical Politics or Science of Diminshing Returns? (University of Chicago Press), which won the 1993 Lakatos Prize in Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics.  I asked Professor Rosenberg for his reaction to John Cochrane's reply to Krugman, and he kindly gave me permission to post his thoughts:

I can imagine how a Chicago-school free-market economist like John Cochrane feels when he reads an article in the New York Times Magazine like Paul Krugman’s “How did Economists get it so Wrong?” How would analytical philosophers have felt if Quine had published an accessible version of “Two dogmas of empiricism” in the Times, along with cartoons making fun of Kant and Carnap?

The fact that Cochrane can't do any better than the response on his blog is about as significant for economics as the fact that the best opponents could do to Quine was Grice and Strawson’s question-begging article, “In defense of a dogma.”

Cochrane thinks that neither Krugman nor the last years of the Bush stock market can impugn the “efficient markets hypothesis” and so everything in conventional economic theory is untouched.

The efficient markets thesis is that the market makes complete use of all relevant information, and the “proof” is roughly that in a perfectly competitive market among perfectly rational agents prices invariably and instantaneously reflects all agents’ real beliefs and real desires. Any one who knows anything that can make him or her money acts on it—buys or sells—and that signal is picked up by every one else, who also acts on it, thus preventing any one from making excess profits—rents--long-term.

The first thing a philosopher notes about this notion is that since most people have false beliefs, especially about the future, an efficient market doesn’t internalize knowledge, but only beliefs. If they are mostly false, then the market isn’t efficient at internalizing (correct) information, it’s efficient at internalizing mostly false beliefs. If false beliefs are normally distributed around the truth, then they’ll cancel out and the proof of a probabilistic version of the efficient markets theorem will go through—market prices reflect the truth most of the time. Too bad false beliefs don’t always take on this tractable distribution. Even worse, when enough people notice the skewed distribution of false beliefs, they can make rents, as the markets crash. This is what Cochrane seems to think can't happen. How many times will it have to happen for the Chicago School to give up the efficient markets hypothesis?

There are so many way the assumptions of the efficient markets theorem can go wrong—different ones at different times, often even cancelling one another out, that it's easy for a complacent economist to see in the long term trend a vindication of the efficient markets theorem. And all Chicago economists have been taught to be complacent with their mother’s milk—Milton Friedman’s famous insistence that the falsity of assumptions doesn’t matter.

But Friedman’s children, like Milton himself, forgot his caveat that false assumptions are harmless so long as predictive power is improved, or at least preserved. Now the real point of Krugman’s essay is the obvious one. The economic theory the Chicago School prizes lacks the predictive resources even to have retrodicted the last two years of the world’s economic trajectory. The catastrophe of international finance is only the head-line grabbing symptom of this failure. And Chicago economists don’t have the slightest idea of where to start to explain (to retrodict) it. They don’t know which of their assumptions to give up, and how much of each of those to give up. Add in their ideological attachment to the nonsensical ideas that the marginal productivity of labor or capital measures its causal role, and therefore its moral right to a proportional slice of the profits, and you easily slip from Laissez-faire “science” to “trickle down” political philosophy.

Cochrane talks earnestly about how the Chicago School’s scientific economists are forever comparing their theories to quantitative data.  Since most of what they will accept as data is unreliable, and mostly it shows no short-term trends, the Chicago School satisfies itself that its theory is consistent with the long run (the logarithmic long run at that). Here the expected quote from Keynes can’t be resisted. In the long run, we are all dead. What we want from economics—if it purports to be a science—is at least medium term predictions. What Krugman seeks, and Keynes before him sought, is a theory that has some medium term consequences, something that would make it relevant to governmental policy that will ameliorate peoples’ lives while they wait for the hidden hand’s benevolent long run outcome. The Chicago school has scientifically self-protective and normative objections to the very possibility of medium-term prediction. It will put a theory that can make none out of business, and it will put a theory that does at the disposal of a government that might use it to redistribute if that is what it takes to increase the total size of the pie.

Keynes, not Kahnemann, was of course the first of the behavioral economists—think about propensities to consume, liquidity traps, and most of all “animal spirits.” It was easy for Chicago School proselytes to explain away ‘70’s stagflation by showing that perfectly rational economic agents couldn’t be fooled into spending their way out of a recession by inflationary government policies Keynes inspired. But the fact is that people are not like that. They are satsificers exploiting fast and frugal heuristics with kinky indifference curves.

Keynes’ repudiation of rational choice theory’s description of the economic agent was the first straw, and the last for the Chicago school.  Without even allowing for the work of the last 40 years, it was enough to put paid to Keynesianism among the free market elect. For the same reason—their retrospective rationalization of the stagflation they hadn’t predicted—they felt themselves able to ignore work that won many of the subsequent ersatz Nobel Prizes in their subject—especially those awarded for work in behavioral and other branches of economics that don’t take general equilibrium solutions seriously. The same after-the-fact account of why Keynesian pump priming stopped working in the ‘70s also licensed their repudiation of the Obama administration’s stimulus spending this year. We wont hear of its successes from them.  Too much of an embarrassment.

All the reasons the failure of financial markets gives us to question the scientific status of Chicago-school economic theory are mutates mutandis reasons to ignore their “rational expectations” claims (the wish being the father of the thought) that the stimulus wont work—or at least that the non-tax-cut portions of it wont.

Since I am not an insider, I’ll refrain from commenting on Cochrane’s hurt feelings about the insults. But if this is the best a Freshwater economist can do by way of reply to Krugman, there is not much chance he will have to take anything back.

Signed and substantive comments welcome.  Submit your comment only once; it may take awhile to appear.

UPDATE:  For the reading impaired, a signed comment is one with your full name in the signature line.  Postings that aren't signed, or are being posted with pseudonyms, are being summarily deleted:  they won't appear, so you're wasting your time.  And a substantive comment is one which engages the substance of the arguments.  Ex cathedra pronouncements by random nobodies are not substantive, and won't appear.

AND ANOTHER:   The comments of Brad DeLong, an economist at Berkeley, are also relevant to our topic du jour.  This is also pertinent:

Alex Tabarrok has a great post today clarifying the complaint that "economists failed to predict this crisis." Some big guns have come out and said that not only should they be excused for failing to predict the crisis, but they should be congratulated for predicting that they would fail to predict this and all future crises. (If you think I'm exaggerating to make a joke, read it yourself.) So Tabarrok calls this move for the obvious foul that it is. (Incidentally, Tabarrok is responding to this defense of macro by David Levine. But when I get more time, I have to write a full-blown article on it, it's so bad.)

Volcker on Economics

A propos our topic du jour, here is former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker:

I recently commented to some of my economist friends that I’m not aware of any large contribution that economic science has made to central banking in the last 50 years or so.

Our ability to forecast is still very limited. The old issues of the relative role of fiscal and monetary policies are still debated. Markets are certainly more complex, and some of the old approaches toward monetary control seem less relevant. Recent events have certainly illustrated limitations in our understanding of the economy.

Cochrane v. Krugman...or the Pseudo-Science of Macroeconomics Implodes

We noted Krugman's attack (which didn't go far enough) on the "pseudo-science" (with apologies to Larry Laudan) of macroeconomics, but now one of his targets, John Cochrane, an economist in the Finance Department at the Business School here has responded, and in terms that are not wholly, shall we say, edifying.   There is a useful overview of the debate here, which notes that, "Cochrane makes the same mistake he accuses Krugman of, by caricaturing and oversimplifying Krugman's argument, and, even worse, complaining that Krugman is only interested in making personal attacks on an ever-growing 'enemies list,' while engaging in his own litany of vicious slander."  The only "personal" criticism I can find in Krugman's original piece is the suggestion that some free-market utopians are motivated by the financial rewards of touting the party line.  Cochrane is far worse, but readers can decide for themselves.  But from a philosophical point of view, the really remarkable aspect of the Cochrane reply is the start.  As this observer notes:

I am trying to read John Cochrane's comments on Paul Krugman's article on why economists got it so wrong. I tend to get upset while reading. I have managed to get through the first paragraph in which Cochrane compares Krugman to someone who denies that HIV causes AIDS and compares developments in economics to progress in the natural sciences. Now in the natural sciences, there are counter intuitive models which are consistent with all available data and have withstood many tests. Also there are once mysterious facts which are explained by theories to the satisfaction of all people familiar with the theories.

Professor Cochrane even mentions the fake Nobel Prize in Economics as a way of legitimating the epistemic credentials of the field--which, of course, was precisely the objective of those who created it.  Yet this works only if you think of that Prize as on a par with the prizes in Physics and Chemistry, rather than, say, Literature or Peace, the latter two being quite explicitly ideologically motivated more often than not.

I am curious to hear how the Krugman-Cochrane dispute looks to philosophers engaged with economics.  (I am not inviting a free-for-all discussion of Krugman's or Cochrane's views, there are plenty of places on the Internet to rant and rave about that.)

UPDATE:  Here's a more substantive, and calmer, response to Krugman by a Minnesota economist, which suggests that Krugman has misdescribed the state of macroeconomics among its leading young practitioners.

Krugman on the Failures of Macroeconomics

For those who don't read The New York Times, this piece might be worth your time, though being an economist he can't quite draw the real conclusion about the epistemically feeble state of his discipline.

"Change we can believe in"

What a betrayal.

UPDATE:  People are so desperate to believe in Obama, that even smart people resort to brazen non-sequiturs.  Wow!  The U.S. is certainly long overdue for a civilized healthcare system, but that has nothing to do with the points made in the original link (from several days ago no less!), does it now?

Swine Flu Comes to Campus

It's been circulating all summer in the Northern Hemisphere, which influenza viruses usually don't do, and now that college is resuming across the U.S., outbreaks are already being reported.  The 'good news,' as it were, is that it now is clear that 30-50% of swine flu infections do not involve fever, and really are fairly mild (Dr. Niman, Pittsburgh's prophet of doom, is good on this subject).   The odds are pretty good that a majority of readers of this blog (since most are either academics or students) are either going to get swine flu or have already had it (perhaps without knowing it).   If, in fact, the incidence of infection is much higher than realized (because those with mild symptoms do not usually seek medical care), than the mortality associated with this strain of flu is really very low.  And if there has already been widespread infection with it, then, if we're lucky, there won't be as much transmission this fall as feared.  Still, it's a good bet that there will be a lot of absent students and faculty in September and October.  Meanwhile, The Accidental Blogger, who grew up in an environment with far deadlier viruses in circulation, has some sensible advice about how to avoid getting sick.

UPDATE:  Another example of what schools will be up against this fall.

100 German Professors Being Investigated for Taking Bribes to Award PhDs

Story here.  No indication of how many folks were paying bribes for philosophy doctorates!

There should have been a constitutional provision...

....for just this problem.  Of course, my friends who periodically send this to me aren't thinking specifically of George W. Bush, but a phrase that, for some reason, I often had occasion to use during the appointments process in the law school.  Go figure?

Speaking of plutocracy...

...it's alive and well.  And probably plays a role in explaining this too.

"Yes we can" sustain the plutocracy

That seems to be the fairest conclusion to draw after six months of the Republocrat Administration of Barack Obama.  Indeed, the colleague who once told me Obama is more liberal than he was letting on during the campaign, now admits he's a "timid centrist."  Of course, it would be OK to be a "centrist" if it wasn't the mid-point, as it is in the U.S., between the crypto-fascist right and what in the rest of the civilized world would be thought centrism.  Here's a scathing assessment from Chris Hedges, quoting extensively from Ralph Nader:

Chomsky on Libertarianism and Its Meaning

This is a curious interview; here he responds to a question about why he calls himself a "libertarian" given its association with figures like Nozick, Hayek, Rand, and Friedman:

Actually,  I don't think I've ever called myself a "libertarian," because the term is too ambiguous. I do often call myself a "libertarian socialist," however.

The term "libertarian" has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada, reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In the European tradition, "libertarian socialism" ("socialisme libertaire") was the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European, not the US sense).

I use the term in the traditional sense, not the US sense.

I strongly dislike the figures you mention. Rand in my view is one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history. Friedman was an important economist. I'll leave it at that.

Nozick, who I knew, was a clever philosopher. He did call himself a libertarian but it was fraud. He was a Stalinist-style supporter of Israeli power and violence. People who knew him used to joke that he believed in a two-state solution: Israel, and the US government because it had to support Israeli actions.

Hayek was the kind of "libertarian" who was quite tolerant of such free societies as Pinochet's Chile, one of the most grotesque of the National Security States instituted with US backing or direct initiative during the hideous plague of terror and violence that spread over the hemisphere from the 60s through the 80s. He even sank to the level of arranging a meeting of his Mont Pelerin society there during the most vicious days of the dictatorship.

Quite apart from practice, I don't suggest that they understood it, but in their "libertarian" writings these figures were in fact supporting some of the worst kinds of tyranny that can be imagined: namely private tyranny, in principle out of public control.  Traditional European libertarian socialism addressed this issue.  I often found myself agreeing with US-style libertarians -- not those you mention, but many in the Cato Institute, for example; in fact I could only publish in a journal of theirs for years.  But we had fundamental differences, specifically, about the nature of freedom.

I'm not trying to convince you. Merely to respond to your question, and explain why I'm comfortable with the terms I use, "libertarian socialism" -- which to US (and I suppose many Canadian) ears sounds like an oxymoron.

ADDENDUM:  A couple of readers wanted to know what I thought was "curious" about the interview.  It wasn't the point about libertarianism, which I thought a useful reminder.  But two items struck me as curious:  the hostility towards Nozick in the quoted remark; and, in parts of the interview I didn't quote, his attitudes towards and objections to the regulation of hate speech (the former not that surprising, I suppose, the latter argument silly, involving a wilful ignorance of the meaning and application of hate speech laws in Canada).  On the regulation of hate speech, see these posts from several years ago: here and here.

Academics and Political Party Affiliation, Again

A new Pew study finds that just 6% of scientists are Republicans.   Given the condition of the Republican Party, I'm surprised it's as high as 6%, but putting that to one side, the silence from right-wing bloggers about this new study has been deafening compared to earlier, less methodical ones, but the reason is clear:   whereas a case might be made that skewed political party affiliations in law or the humanities or the social sciences should be chalked up to bias in the hiring process, it seems a bit harder to see how partisan politics could figure in the evaluation of work in cosmology, molecular genetics, or physical chemistry.  So this raises the question whether other factors are at work in explaining political party affiliation.  A serious investigation of the question would have to consider what role intelligence, emotional or psychological health, and/or bigotry play in explaining why the Republican Party can attract only a small minority of intellectuals and scholars to its ranks any longer.

Cutting-Edge Science

The Accidental Blogger directs us to this blog featuring abstracts of actual scientific articles on, shall we say, curious topics.  It's very funny.

Texas Tech's Walter Schaller Spearheads Petition Protesting Appointment of Disgraced Former AG Alberto Gonzales

Kudos to philosopher Walter Schaller at Texas Tech University for organizing a petition to protest the appointment of disgraced former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the faculty.  (More information and supporting documents here.)  The petition correctly challenges both the "procedure" by which he was appointed (there wasn't one!) and the merits of the appointment.  So far more than 70 Texas Tech faculty have signed.  As I understand it, Mr. Gonzales's former firm, Houston-based Vinson & Elkins, would not take him back, and the private sector generally has balked.  How strange and ironic for a public university to step in; so much for faith in markets!

My one and only comment on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

A few readers have asked whether I might have a comment on the arrest of Professor Gates of Harvard for "disorderly conduct" after someone phoned the police after seeing him and his car service driver forcing open the front door of the house, which was jammed.   President Obama, who described the arrest of Professor Gates as "stupid," has now been backtracking, since one is not supposed to criticize the police, apparently, in America.  "Stupid" is, I think, a very nice way to put it:  I do not see any evidence that the officer was stupid, just arrogant and irritated at being bawled out.  Even if one accepts verbatim everything in the police report--and more on that in a moment--it's pretty clear the arrest was unlawful.   Why would an intelligent officer make an unlawful arrest?  Because he was pissed off at being shouted down and thought he could get away with it, as the police usually do.

In any case, the police simply aren't very credible in circumstances like this, so it would be bizarre to credit the police report in all details:  police lie, all the time.  I recall a Queens (N.Y.) prosecutor telling me years ago that the police he would have to call as witnesses would openly joke about testifying in court as "testilying."  The culture of dishonesty in the service of both commendable (e.g., getting genuine criminals and preserving public safety) and self-serving (e.g., concealing misconduct and allowing the police to trample on those who offend them) ends is, from all the evidence I have seen, absolutely pervasive in American policing, at least in the major urban areas, where the pressures on the police are probably the greatest.  (On testilying, see the first few paragraphs here [and citations therein] or this L.A. Time article.)  Anyone familiar with police practice in major urban centers knows that "disorderly conduct" is the charge the police always fall back on when they don't have an actual charge to support an arrest.  (See the comments of Northwestern law profesor Steven Lubet in this regard.)  Some minority of "disorderly conduct" charges are probably legitimate, most are not.  Professor Gates acted imprudently, without a doubt, but he was right to be angry, and all the evidence now available strongly suggests the arresting officer acted illegally.

What role did race play in all this?  Less, I suspect, than the initial news coverage has suggested (or than this would suggest).  The woman who called the police was probably influenced by racial considerations:  why are two dark-skinned men forcing their way through the front door of a nice house near Harvard Square?  But would she have called the police if two white men were doing the same thing?  One hopes so, but who knows?   The arresting officer's annoyance at being bawled out may have been exacerbated by the fact that it was an African-American man shouting at him:  it's hard to know, we'd have to know a lot more about the officer in question.   Police do not like to be berated or challenged, period, and an incident like this should call more attention to police abuse of the charge of "disorderly conduct" as a way of trampling on the First Amendment rights of citizens to challenge police conduct. 

Signed comments from readers are welcome:  full name, valid e-mail.

What Hitler Learned from the US Advertising Industry (and the Industry was proud!)

Curious story.

Atlas Shrugged, the Movie: It's on the Way!

Helpful analysis here; choice paragraph:

Weep no more, bruised and battered libertarians: After 37 years of being shot down by rational people who see the book as a stilted and masturbatory work suitable only for college freshmen who haven’t figured out that, if everyone did exactly what they wanted all the time, civilization would collapse on itself—and by the way, dudes, most ladies don’t enjoy being raped into submission, even by rugged industrialists—your sticky dreams of turning Rand’s rambling screed about the values of selfishness and laissez-fare capitalism into a brutally dull, unwatchable movie are about to become a reality!

Iran Protests Again

A dramatic account by a philosophy student in Tehran of protests this past Friday.  (Thanks to Parsa Pezeshki for the pointer.)