Charlie Stross, Paul Krugman Discuss the Future 127
Peripatetic Entrepreneur writes "At the Science Fiction World Convention in Montreal, Hugo Award winning author Charlie Stross and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman opened the show with a 75-minute, wide-ranging conversation on stage. From flying cars to decoding the genome of the Pacific Ocean to vat-grown Long Pig, it's all there. Audio is also available — video soon."
Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha (Score:4, Insightful)
neither did anyone investing in the market that lost any money. the ability to predict market crashes has little to do with predicting things over the long term. the market recovers and people move on. the real reason why predictions of the future are more often wrong than not is because people have a tendency to expect what they think is interesting [flying cars] rather than anything of practical use. if you want an accurate prediction make one that is the result of several small practical steps away from what exists now. for example; I predict that hybrid cars [or some offshoot of them] will make up a majority of cars within 50 years. not a very exciting prediction but it's probably more accurate than expecting flying cars any time soon.
The evil overlord? (Score:1, Insightful)
Science fiction goes nowhere if the government isn't an evil overlord. Deal with it.
Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha (Score:0, Insightful)
The problem with Krugman is that he is relentlessly political and that is a bad trait for an economist.
[Citation needed] on the bad trait part. There is a need for somebody who knows his stuff to stand up to the bad science in Washington.
He tireless argues for greater and greater interventions in the marketplace (that is, he's a statist) without taking into account the secondary effects of those interventions because that would contradict his world view.
[Citation Needed] again. Just because you do not agree with him does not make him wrong.
What about my jet pack? (Score:2, Insightful)
Where is my damn jet pack? What about my teleporter?!
Re:Krugman called FOR the bubble (Score:3, Insightful)
I read that as a pretty open attack on Greenspan rather than any sort of advocacy. He's accusing Greenspan of trying to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble, as a way of trying to produce some fake normalcy by "curing" one bubble with a new one. And that's pretty much what happened.
Re:Why do people make shit up? (Score:3, Insightful)
People make up arguments like this to discredit sources who they disagree with but have the annoying habit of being right.
The thinking that tends to lead to making up this sort of thing is:
1. I believe $BELIEF.
2. $SOURCE demonstrates using all sorts of incontrovertible facts and logic that $BELIEF is completely wrong.
3. If $BELIEF is so obviously completely wrong, than I'm an idiot.
Here's where the thought process starts to go wrong, thanks to cognitive dissonance:
4. Since I'm not an idiot, $BELIEF is actually right.
5. Since $BELIEF is right, $SOURCE demonstrating that it was wrong is either stupid or lying.
6. Since I can't prove $SOURCE is stupid and/or lying, I'll make stuff up to make it look like $BELIEF is stupid and/or lying, which will convince people that I'm not an idiot.
In this particular case, substitute "Liberal economists can't predict anything useful" for $BELIEF, and "Paul Krugman - liberal economist" (he would describe himself as such) for $SOURCE.
Re:Krugman called FOR the bubble (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between the two is that Stross writes entertaining fiction, and Krugman influences international economic policy. Krugman can do a hell of a lot more damage.
Re:Krugman's prognostication skills aren't all tha (Score:4, Insightful)
"I'll say this though: most libertarian economists warn about the dangers of governments using policy to direct economic matters."
But that's a political point of view right there. It's akin to saying that Sector X of the economy (where X in this case == banking) should be above the law. Why? Well... just because we say so! It's our axiom that GOVERNMENT == BAD and FINANCE == GOOD!
Both government and finance are means of social control - and neither come from Mars but both execute with the consent of the people, and as the means of implementing the people's will. It's also valid to say that finance should not control people's lives any more than government should.
Do libertarian economists warn against the dangers of financial speculation wasting resources and causing gross mismanagement? But they should, if they're going to be honest. Economists should be both apolitical and afinancial.
However, "libertarians" often seem to have a huge blind spot when it comes to money. They seem to think that money is a self-justifying power base which can do no wrong, unlike those evil Gubmint bureaucrats. But greed and power is greed and power no matter what the label on the suit.