Re: Answer to Sven

[Clifford Poirot <cpoirot@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul,

 

What bothers me about what I think you are saying about science and information, is that if I were to extend your reasoning (assuming I understand you correctly) is that Darwin would have had no "information" about speciation, and indeed, Darwinism would not be a "science" at all. Or do I totally misunderstand you?

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Davidson [mailto:pdavidson@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 4:52 PM
To: pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Answer to Sven

Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 15:51:03 -0500
To: Sven R Larson <slarson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Paul Davidson <pdavidson@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [Fwd: nobel]

At 02:06 PM 10/10/02 -0400, you wrote:

Honestly, Paul, anyone with 300-level economics, and particular with
graduate training, knows this. You're breaking through open doors.
Even my son, 8 years old, knows that it makes no sense to say that if
your right hand is in boiling water and your left hand is on ice you
are on average doing pretty OK.

Dear Sven:  I never did beat my wife---or your 8 eight year old son -- so stop framing your queries in terms of "when did you stop beating your wife questions?"  I am not saying that we are drawing one observation from the boiling water universe and the second from the ice universe.  I am saying something much more profound -- namely there may not be one (or even a finite number of universes of realizations that observations are being drawn from.

Paul

So let's skip that and talk about how
we can actually approach the world beyond the armchair. I have a
review of Truman Bewley's book "Why Wages Don't Fall During a
Recession" in the last ROPE. Read it, then read the book. Bewley shows
that using the right kind of empirical tools you CAN grasp the world
in a way that suits a Post Keynesian perspective.

> Crude statistical analysis is bad statistics and deserves to be recognized
> as such.  Observatiuon and statistical analysis is not the same.  As a
> biochemist I was always warned that a column of data that others collected
> was merely a column of numbers-- and not information about the real world [
> [as those who have been following the recent several decade long
> disclosures of fabrication of  lab book observations by eminent  and up
> coming scientists has revealed.  and like Enron that is just the tip of the
> iceberg in the natural science-- and econometrics starts even off worse,
> since the lab book observations are fabricated by someone else who the
> analyst typically does not know -- and does not communicate with.

Are you saying qualitative evidence is superior to quantitative? I
don't think so, but you don't seem to have anything good to say about
quantitative empirical methods whatsoever.

/srl

--
Dr. Sven R Larson
Department of Economics
Skidmore College
815, North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
(518) 580-5278

Paul Davidson

Editor, JOURNAL OF POST KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS

Economics Department - University of Tennessee

503 SMC

Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550

work phone: (865) 974-4221

fax: (865) 974-4601/  (865) 974-1686

home phone and fax (865) 692-0802

http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html