Brad DeLong — Noah Smith, Paul Romer, "Mathiness", and Baking the Politics into the Microfoundations...

Brad DeLong explains what Paul Romer's recent paper is about. It's a smackdown of ideological economics directed at the Chicago School (George Stigler, Robert Lucas, etc.) Are key neoclassical assumptions "innocent" sophistry based on a Noble Lie? Or is it the Big Lie?

Grasping Reality
Noah Smith, Paul Romer, "Mathiness", and Baking the Politics into the Microfoundations...

Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Semantics or Sophistry In Policy Discussions and Economics. Which Do We Want? Our Selections Shape Our Success.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

Don't know the difference between fiat, denomination units, currency, Public Initiative, semantics and sophistry?

Then read this and give it a 'tink:

Issuing sovereign currency gov Treasury securities [eg US, Japan] just allows the non-government to have net financial savings. That maintains a buffer stock of currency in private hands.

So what is the problem?

Why on earth do even MMT economists stoop to calling distributed holdings of denomination units a deficit or debt? That's unproductive use of semantics. It constitutes sophistry.

Better can we do, counsels YodaCredChief, Fedi Master. :)

To expose the semantics, just hold up the 1921 Edison/Ford statement on equivalence of bonds/bills.

I've had fiscal policy discussions with military operations people about the state of economics. They listened, said they understood, and simply replied:

“You’re going nowhere until you create a glossary of new terms allowing coherent discussion to proceed. You can’t prepare coherent operations when there is such high margin of error in interpreting statements.”

So do we want to figure out how to drive the changes we need in order to keep up our adaptive rate? Or do we just want to get people to accept no change?

Soph·ist·ry: noun,
   modern use, the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving.

Has anything regarding the principles of finance & sophistry really changed?

Video: "Christian Debate?" About the Morality of Nominal Sophistry

(Commentary by Roger Erickson)

Data is meaningless without context. So before viewing the video below, please consider it's context, and the parameters which allow us to assess REAL vs only nominal success in a given context.

Many have heard of the origins of the phenomenon named "sophistry" by the Greeks.

2300 years ago, Greeks noting and naming the structure of language, immediately also noticed the fluidity and gradual change of what they named grammar, vocabulary, semantics and sophistry.

Semantic plasticity - the function of letting the same word imply different things in different contexts or usage patterns - allows a relatively small number of words to describe an unlimited set of concepts, when specified by context, word order, or many other linguistic tools (prefixes, suffixes, and noun/verb/other variants).

Sophistry was one, early form of humor noted, used and abused by various people. It use is described in the dialogues of Socrates.

"Is that YOUR dog?" 'Yes.'
"And is YOUR dog a mother?" 'Yes, she has puppies.'
"Then that dog is YOUR mother!" :)     Socrates noted two general classes of responses.
      Intelligent people: '[Greek equivalent of "bug off."]'
      Naive youth: "Oh my gosh. My dog is my mother!" Fear. Panic.

This brings up a moral dilemma. Or does it?

Maybe not in the same way for all people. The early sophists were soon reviled, for their irritating habit of practicing and refining ancient methods for confusing, dividing and 'conquering' naive targets, so that they could be more easily tricking into being the object of ridicule. Worse, sophists were soon followed by others who refined their methods of cheating at wagers, or even robbing people. Sophistry has long been associated with subterfuge, propaganda, and looting.

So, is it immoral for a person to have a dog as "their" mother? What if they own multiple dogs with puppies? How immoral is it to have multiple mothers, and that they are all dogs? :(

Or is this all a lot of data, and semantic descriptors, uselessly applied completely out of context, and therefore contravening a basic, hierarchical rule of language utilization ... i.e., that it be applied to orient to REAL, not just imaginary, nominal or nonexistent scenarios?


Let's take another example.

"Is that YOUR fiat currency?" 'Yes.'
"And in purely nominal, double-entry accounting ... fiat currency creation has to be balanced with an equal entry labeled, purely for form, a 'deficit' or 'debt?' " 'Yes.'
"Then that nominal metric is YOUR real debt!" :)

Just like with Socrates, we're seeing two general classes of responses.
   Intelligent people: '[Get lost.]'
   Naive people unaware of basic banking operations: "Oh my gosh! Our nation is in DEBT!!!' Fear. Panic

Is it only nominally immoral for a population to have a purely semantic 'debt' to itself? What if that population grows AND the transaction rate of each resident increases! Is it immoral to allow increasing use of nominal or fiat measuring units for our growing populace to denominate necessary transactions with - i.e., an increasing volume of fiat currency?

Or is the only functional immorality that of an electorate leaving itself unaware of basic operations, unable to discriminate sophistry from functional semantics, and flat out unaware of actual context?

Now, please watch this video and the 2nd link, to see how it is promoted. Then please comment below.

"Christian" Debate About the Morality of Nominal Sophistry

Government Debt is 'Idolatry,' Hurts the Poor, Future Generations, Christian Panelists Argue

The immediate issue here is confusion over the dual roles of any currency system, and conflating two separate needs.

1) denominating any and all, unpredictably needed transactions, WHENEVER they need to be denominated (tempo is paramount for group agility)

2) short term vs long term stable store of value. (Value is ultimately dictated by context, not by denominating units.)

The deeper issue is basic need to maintain situational awareness, as the threshold for survival of a functioning democracy.

Since tempo is critically important, we really need to address our electorate's situational awareness, ASAP - before we're robbed again, or confused and divided enough to be conquered? What else could be more important for National Security?

Paul Rosenberg — Stop enabling the right: The media just makes dysfunction worse

Our politics are a disaster because the media -- and the president -- pretend conservatives are dealing with facts

Examines some logical fallacies used in sophistical reasoning to “make the worse case the better” (Protagoras, DK80b6).

Salon
Stop enabling the right: The media just makes dysfunction worse
Paul Rosenberg

How to Discuss Fiat Currency Supply With Luddites, Small Children and Non-Initiates (like Politicians)

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Luddites (and/or petty crooks and sophisticated Control Frauds) are constantly heard discussing fiat currency supply in panicky tones and fearful terms.

It's as though they live in constant fear that we will run out of fiat. (Although I've never heard a definition of how such an abstract condition could ever actually occur. Maybe among the severely ill, depressed or lethargic? Perhaps in patients with advanced Parkinson's Disease - bereft of the neural ability to trigger even volitional thoughts, let alone motor actions?)

Even most of those trying to help Luddites understand fiat currency don't help. The "helpers" often complain that Luddites just won't listen.

Yet what is it that they won't listen to?

Semantics always seems to be a big part of the problem. Please stop sloppily calling net fiat currency creation a "debt," or even a deficit - at least with novices. Without defining terms, semantics lapses into useless sophistry - a perennial tool used by crooks to separate fools from their resources.

Nearly every word in every language has multiple meanings, based on context. That's the price we pay for having lean, dynamic linguistics. Don't argue over it. Just define your terms, and the context they're used in!

Imagine 50 people meeting at the Tower of Babel and discovering to their joy that they all use the same alphabet, script and words! Happy coincidence! They're problems are half over - but only half. Imagine their horror to discover that all 50 assign different meanings to the exact same spoken and written words. Worse, they all have multiple meanings for every shared word, based on the particular context discussed using their particular grammar and phraseology. To be exactly sure of the meaning of a given sentence, you could easily have a 50x50 matrix of possible meaning options to parse! Actually, this situation applies to everyone's daily experiences. So how do humans manage this nightmare scenario? Easily, it turns out. Everyone simply defines their terms whenever initiating a discussion - everyone except priests and economists! Those two professions are wont to chant long strings of incantations mixing in just enough familiar words to be mesmerizing, but perverting them with such a jumble of ambiguity and archaic expressions so as to render them unintelligible for pragmatic use. 

Please. When discussing the topic of fiat currency supply with Luddites - or simply the uninitiated - respect your audience, and take care to talk about bonds, banking reserves, return on coordination, interest rates, inflation or deflation levels, currency supply, Output Gap, jobs, national capabilities ... anything but confusing sophistry.

You don't convince many people to be atheists ONLY by repeatedly telling them that there is no God, there is no devil, there is no hell and that they're NOT going to heaven. The ONLY thing they'll know is what you're telling them not to pay attention to. FAIL! Losing strategy.

So, remind novices entering every topic unfamiliar to them that there are these concepts called semantics, sophistry and linguistic redundancy.  Then stick to talking about concepts that ARE adaptive for that particular conversation. Define terms and context, and then talk about desired outcomes. Nothing more & nothing less.