MackTheKnife's Blog : Economists in a Steel-Cage Match

Predicting that there will be no catastrophic economic collapse is like predicting that the world will never end. If you're ever wrong then "oops!" Sometimes there is a vague line between making forward looking statements and predictions, but fortunately we can always regain our composure because markets are in fact a continuum state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

Howdy, 1J!

Predicting that there will be no catastrophic economic collapse is like predicting that the world will never end. If you're ever wrong then "oops!"

Assuming I am correctly reading both you and your Wikin -- a large assumption in this case -- I believe the key difference between an economist like Robert J. Shiller, who pointed to not one but two major financial-market bubbles while they were being inflated (i.e., the one associated with the Dot-Bomb Era in the last century, and the other associated with the Real-Estate Wreck in this century), and an economist like Alan Greenspan, who pointed to nothing so much as the evidence of the hot air emanating from his own person, is that the former primarily focuses on facts and the latter primarily focuses on opinions.

Oops, indeed.

Good luck!

2J (Alias MackTheKnife)

JC,

Regarding, sorites paradox, what did you think of Wiki's statement:

"Or one may accept the conclusion by insisting that a heap of sand can be composed of just one grain."

I find that logic inconsistent with the second premise, for if one removes a grain from a one grain heap then a heap is not left after all. :-)

Sorites is a lesson in the grayness of definition and the frailty of qualitative definition. A heap of 100,000 grains is seemingly identical to a heap of 99,000 grains having very similar properties in most every regard. But the 2 grain heap is noticeably different than the 1 grain heap. So there are limits to a definition and properties fail at the limit. Even so, it is possible to relate an understanding of any heap mathematically, even the 1 grain heap, but when it is done properly one finds that each and every heap has differing quantities to their properties and so what is true of one heap is never quantitatively true of another (even if a majority of the set are qualitatively similar).

This paradox reminds me a lot of of Zeno's but in one regard its different. Zeno tries to impose a limit by truncating time which is in experience a continuum which isn't bounded by Zeno's imposition whatsoever. In the case of the sorite, one is trying to deny the obvious limit of a finite quantity of grains.