Comments on: Smart People to Blame for Central Planning

By: Spacobs

Spacobs — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:20:59 +0000

Quite a smart article! The economy structure that engages all material and human resources into all civilization activities, has to be in line with a formulated universally evolutionary pattern. As of now it is not so. Therefore, the perception about human brain and a future AI-dominated surrounding portrayed in the article is much of a restricted prejudiced point of view that emerges out of contemporary sociological issues.

The collective intelligence of the planet is working towards forming a collective cybernetic system that's based on the universal evolutionary formula. Overall this system is a dynamic interactive network with its components again trained and designed on the universal evolutionary pattern. So you get a singular fundamental stem sprouting individual and collective intelligence forms with different and similar existential properties (biological or non-biological) into multi-dimensions and paradigms.

Sure we need a simple, logical, practical and evolutionary vision for all operators of the current economy to reap contemporary genuine benefits as well as blend into the transition.

It's so great to be a part of an era that's conducting an intellectual evolution!

Cheers!

By: Marty

Marty — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:50:43 +0000

The Austrian economists, (www.mises.org), who predicted the bubble outcomes, still are not being invited to the table at the White House. We will be in for more pain.

Also, watch for books now being written that will describe the depth and breadth of organized crime within our government.

By: Angelo

Angelo — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:48:07 +0000

It's not the intelligence factor that is resposnible for the declining results in the economic equation. Like most everything else, negative results are the product of negative ethics and greed factors.

By: Daver

Daver — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:13:37 +0000

I think Gregory Bateson gets to the nub of the issue in this peice.

http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/Gregory_Bateson.pdf

By: Rowan

Rowan — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:42:26 +0000

Smart people should read: EXPERTS.

See Taleb for the problem with experts... in a nut shell, they have tunnel vision, i.e. they think only in terms of what the know, never in terms of what they might not know (the dreaded Rumsfeldian: UNKNOWN, UNKNOWNS).

Most of economics is deeply flawed... the market cycle etc, it's time all this nonsense was junked along central planning. Markets are not efficient, people are not rational.

'Private individuals' are just prone to herd instinct and misinformation as so called genii. The so called business cycle is simply a result of herd behaviour. So called intuition is often a result of heuristics, it's not all bad but there are some really common ones that require a great deal of awareness of too overcome... so I do agree that experience is very important.

It's foolish to make predictions about if or if not the singularists will succeed. It's an untestable statement... therefore meaningless.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:23:14 +0000

My feeling about the 'smartness' of the finance industry is that intelligence manifests in different ways.

There is the intelligence required to solve real-world problems, where you are up against the laws of physics and your success or failure will be obvious to all. This is real smarts that requires intellectual honesty and will not tolerate hubris.

Then there is the sort of dishonest and deceptive smartness so common in the financial industry, where you can appear smart by adopting ever more sophisticated ways of trying to cheat risk. It relies on suspending your critical faculties and believing things when you do know better (mortgage defaults are statistically random uncorrelated events..), but it is more convenient to deceive oneself since the rewards are so great.

The failure of a society to understand the distinction between these two types of smartness will be its undoing.

By: Vic

Vic — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:15:34 +0000

Seems like most psuedo-intellectuals are up in arms; they do deserve to be publicly exposed and shamed. Their college degrees, and their disdain for the real work and for lesser endowed brains have made them lose touch with humanity and with reality. A cultural revolution perhaps is not too far away. Especially, when people start starving due to market failure - about 2014-15?

On the other hand, if you read the whole of this article on DR (USA) you might agree that this is one of the best he has written - and he has written a few good ones. The man has way with the words.

By: Ross

Ross — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:22:09 +0000

I believe the university system must be brought back to serve its core function of providing a general education and that the research and vocational training should sit separately. Too many in universities don't want to teach, too many university boards are primarily politically and tribally energised. The worst of such boards are those in the US where Wall St and the State Dept/CFR types have firmly got their hooks into all the power faculties. You have exclusive space given to Deans to write narratives and running human rights lawyers in China on undercover budgets and you have creatures like Robert Rubin running roughshod over boards with inducements, the same boards that support central banker nominees.

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:31:34 +0000

Good comments Daniel.

I too like Feynman.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:39:31 +0000

I made a comment before reading the comments and now have to make another. Most of the comments are in the nitwit category. The author is not decrying 'intelligence' as such but that attitude that raw intellectual power is worth anything out of context. The 'out of context' here requires a great deal of hubris and belief in raw intellectual power combined with a certain 'local' ignorance. There is a current in our society that worships intelligence. Intelligence is certainly worthwhile but I fear we give too much power to those that can dazzle with their brilliance and that in turn corrupts the intelligence and leads to the gulag and financial meltdowns. Only an idiot would think that this article is arguing against 'intelligence.' The misapplication of it? Yes. The hubris often associated with it? Yes. The belief in 'Central Planning' and the 'Experts at a distance?" Yes. Richard Feynman said, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." Chew on that before you spill your invective.