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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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My wife was once a professional therapist, but my first therapist gig was this EconTalk podcast with Russ Roberts, where I help him come to terms with the fact that economists disagree. In good therapist style, I'm quiet for 28 minutes while Russ agonizes, and then I tell him he has already answered his own question; he just doesn't like the answer. One blogger loves it:
It truly has been a long time since I've seen anything so original and so fascinating. … I can only hope that I can someday be as intellectually curious and honest as Robin.
Congrats to EconTalk for being voted Best Podcast in the 2008 Weblog Awards.
Roberts’ Bias Therapy
I liked the podcast but I think that I would have liked it more had you talked more.
Great discussion on: how do we know that 'we know'? I congratulate Russell and Robin for such an honest exposition of their own doubts and theories. The bottom line for me: it is good to be skeptical as a drive to always seek for truth, Though, I am humble too to recognize that as humans, the closest we are to truth is only in the process of seeking it. Just sometimes a path-breaking discovery comes along.The limits and fallibility of the human reason was emphasized by both of you. Russ with a more pronounced hayekian 'bias'.I agree with Robin regarding that the 'conservative' rigor of the academic process is necessary for newcomers or young scholars. On the other hand, that very same process might be not rewarding 'marginal' innovation from within. To give an example: Picasso's first paintings fall into the classical category very realist. He mastered that technique. But then he departed from it to offer us cubism and the like. That kind of innovation should also happen in science.Speaking of bias, our methods to collect data, to falsify a theory/model. to build a model/theory might also be responsible for some disagreement in topics such as the current financial mess.Now, it is interesting that it was also the events of the Great Depression, and the Stagflation, that ignited a re-examination by economists of our own methods and theories. This has happened in a period of less than a 100 years. So, maybe 100 or 200 years from now some economists might finally provide a better theoretical understanding of all these events. And I would not be surprised if that discovery comes at a cost of giving up some of the 'approaches' we 'conservatively' follow and spread these days.