Date:      Monday, December 01, 2010

Subject: Empower XIV - Paul Krugman

In his NYT blog, on December 01, 2010, Paul Krugman wrote:

I have to say, when I got into economics, I expected evidence to matter more than it does -- obviously telling people what they want to hear prevails more in the political arena than in academics, but even there the willingness to hang on to preferred narratives no matter the evidence is impressive.

Nothing to do but keep on plugging, I guess. In the long run truth will, one hopes, prevail; but in the long run ...

Unfortunately, Dr. Krugman continues to cling to a fantasy -- the one dealing with the existence of "truth", as though there were some way of defining same.

The fact of the matter is that it is all about opinions -- opinions developed by human beings through the very, very human process of thinking. The evidence that Dr. Krugman refers to is somebody's opinion, and if there is a "truth" it is simply a measure of acceptance of a specific opinion.

The problem with the Krugman approach is the complete lack of effort to "sell" the Krugman opinion and the process behind it's derivation.

In short, Dr. Krugman, refuses to acknowledge that other people can have different opinions -- opinions that may even constitute the "truth" in their system of belief.

To be continued (I hope)

BTW, in hopes of exciting some discussion I am posting this page on the following web sites.
http://ifihadmyway.com
http://nationalcomputerassociation.com
I don't provide for comments -- I do provide an e-mail address!! (Please put a [MYWAY] in your title to get my attention)

Thanks for your time,

Doug Skoglund - skoglund@pdmsb.com

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