The ITulip Peer Review System

[c1ue]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

The goal is worthy, but the subject is difficult.

More specifically: in areas where testing can be done to assess the best results, a peer review system is fine.

But economics in general is both very long duration and noisy. This allows all sorts of charlatans to pop up since anything espoused by almost anyone - assuming it is not too extreme - is probably true at some point for some period of time.

However, the exercise may be worth conducting anyway to see if perhaps this above situation can be avoided.

My suggestion would be to take a leaf from iTulip: whatever is espoused, that the background information and the indicators be openly available and tracked. In this fashion whatever the strength or weakness of any particular position can be at least correctly attributed.

[oddlots]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

- I don't share the pessimism regarding the uses of the internet. It has been a powerful force in my life and overwhelmingly positive. (Double check that with my wife.)

- I'm excited, as I said before, to make some progress on particular, recurrent issues that we all seem to wrestle with to some extent. I've reached a plateau where I'm no longer learning as much as I once did - both here and in other "research" - and I think I need to kick it up a notch. I need to synthesize and process stuff now and need some purposeful project to frame that for me.

- I think there's a value to being an outsider to a discipline - e.g., economics - but the value of this tops out at a certain point: I'd honestly like a chance to kind of map the edge or limit of what a non-expert outsider can usefully say (if only so I know when to STFU - not a likely outcome I know - and maybe so I can start studying some economics proper without wasting time on stuff that is simply bs.)

So... at the risk of hijacking your idea and riding off into the sunset on my own hobby-horse... I'd like to suggest a project that has some tangential connection to the "peer-review 2.0" idea you suggest...

If your proposed project happened to overlap with my imagined one it would look something like this:

A discussion of

- what we collectively or individually feel are the real problems facing us
- what the pseudo-problems are that tend to get us or others exercised without purpose
- who the most useful thinkers addressing these problems are or resources available to bring to bear on them

Let me give an example of what I have in mind. Earlier in the thread I suggested that neo-classical economics has been an abject failure as demonstrated by its inability to foresee the crisis. Yves Smith drew what I thought was a very perceptive parallel to systems engineering that illuminated why neo-classical economics has apparently been such a disastrous dead-end. Post here.

Anyone care to comment on whether that parallel is valid or not. And if not, why?

I recall a piece by Steve Keen that dealt with the same theme. Economics is simply a mathematical backwater where the more complex modelling common in engineering has simply failed to penetrate:

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2...erous-to-know/

He summed up with the following wish-list of what an updated economics curriculum would look like:

"Joe McCauley... suggested that:

the economists revise their curriculum and require that the following topics be taught: calculus through the advanced level, ordinary differential equations (including advanced), partial differential equations (including Green functions), classical mechanics through modern nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics, stochastic processes (including solving Smoluchowski–Fokker–Planck equations), computer programming (C, Pascal, etc.) and, for complexity, cell biology. Time for such classes can be obtained in part by eliminating micro- and macro-economics classes from the curriculum. The students will then face a much harder curriculum, and those who survive will come out ahead. So might society as a whole. (McCauley 2006, p. 608; emphasis added)"

Is there anyone here with a physics or engineering background that could comment on whether this seems reasonable and, if implemented, what economics might look like after this makeover? (Not asking much I know.)

In a similar vein, I always found Minsky to be an incredibly enlightening read especially at this particular juncture. Reading about his financial instability hypothesis gave me that overwhelming desire to take the book into the street and say to people, have you read this? It explained so much of my experience in the markets so effectively and so simply that I couldn't believe it wasn't well known. And, if it was well known, I couldn't believe no one had told me about him.

One of Minsky's most devastating critiques of economic orthodoxy went something like this: whatever other virtues an economic model might have it must be capable of re-creating, in vitro so to speak, the boom-bust cycles that have historically plagued capitalism. His clearly achieves this while the neo-classical models apparently fail to. Is this fair criticism? That seems a devastating critique to me.

And yet Krugman is able to write quite a withering piece on Minsky or at least of his new found acolytes:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...isting-minsky/

Is Minsky a "phase" one passes through like Austrian economics as EJ would have it? If so, why?

Other themes that I keep circling back to, seemingly without progress:

- economic rent: this seems an incredibly powerful concept that reveals the core moral and political message of liberalism. It provides a consistent test of whether an economic policy is just that also disarms special or partial interests at the same time. It does this simply by asking of any given economic set-up or tweek: "Is there a future in it?" If it is as useful a tool as I make out why has it become such an obscure, musty concept? Can it really be because the elite has stifled it? What are the legitimate critiques of the idea, if any?

- monetary reform. I'm intrigued by the fact that it is in fact possible for government to issue money simply by "spending it into existence" rather than granting seigniorage to private bankers. This is apparently what Lincoln did during the Civil War and it "worked," though I'm not particularly sure what's at stake either way. On the one hand Hayek piloried the concept as a version "stone soup." On the other, claims are made that resorting back to this kind of set up is closer to a libertarian model than the current corporatist mess where banking interests seem to be driving the system to implode. The more extravagant claims seem less like "stone soup" than that Depression era song "Rock Candy Mountain." What's at stake here? (This guy champions the idea and seems to have a fairly coherent presentation:

http://www.richardccook.com/we-hold-these-truths/

Others seem less reputable to me.)

Other topics might be:

- debt based money. Is this really the heart of the problem?
- fractional reserve banking. Ditto.

I wouldn't expect the result of these discussions to be anything less than a hoary free-for-all and that would be fine.

Or if it really worked we could distill a kind of ultimate dinner-party conversation stopper... sort of like an unfunny version of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I3zCQzZx68

Then we could get back to the forum early for more discussion. Yay.

[Rajiv]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

I think you may also want to look at Aetius' four part masterpiece (4th still to come) starting with Are There No Prisons - Are There No Workhouses

The first of a four-part essay that questions the inevitability of the social costs of unfettered capitalism. By travelling back in time to visit the world as it was before the ancient precursors of Goldman Sachs, it becomes clear that options for the inclusion of social welfare in capitalism existed, but were deliberately externalized by the rapacious tenor of the times. We live needlessly with the result.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

Is there anyone here with a physics or engineering background that could comment on whether this seems reasonable and, if implemented, what economics might look like after this makeover? (Not asking much I know.)

Well, I was only ever competent in something less than half the subjects McCauley lists, but this I can say with confidence:

If economics were restructured as McCauley suggests, there would be a lot fewer economists in the world.

[Aetius Romulous]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

In the end, what is economics?

Quite apart from the contemporary definition, economics is a vast field that is nothing more than the sum total of all other social disciplines. It is all things that make a collection of humans a collection of humans.

What economics has become however, is an academically fenced off set of specialties and subspecialties with virtually no cross-pollination. For reasons too crazy to enumerate, the economics people have inherited the spreadsheets. It is the spreadsheet people that influence policy in the west.

But worse, economics has become the preserve of a closed culture. Economists that influence policy are all white, old, Anglo-American, men. The major centers of economics are all American. To study, publish, and get cited you must have studied in America. Thus, economics has an ideological and cultural bias, one that is more so than any other discipline.

My position is that we may well be dealing in the next decades with social issues that defy standard solutions because those solutions have a rigid hierarchical academic foundation. This excludes any deep examination of issues from "off the grid", where real contributions may be found.

To break this gridlock, it will mean a new process for inclusion of all ideas and concepts from all related fields, in a forum that is free from ideological constraint and promotes cross pollination of disciplines. And it just works out that this process continues daily on web sites, message boards, forums, and blogs from around the world. We are doing it right now.

So the theory is simple; use what's available technologically to gather up these disparate folks and provide an online process to collate and synthesize in a productive and organized manner. Then fit it all into a working business plan to raise $$$ and expertise to get 'er done. Piece of cake LOL.

But it can be done because on the net, anything is possible.

[Rajiv]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

Look also at George Mobius' blog - Question Everything

systems science: systems science is the science of understanding how the world works. it is at the core of every other science. Given our energy and material consumption, and governance of our systems will we be able to sustain all life for the long-run. the human condition: the human brain has evolved , our capacity to share abstract/conceptual information, and our ability to cooperate in complex ways have advanced us to dominate the ecos. but, should we confiscate nature to our selfish purposes? do we have the wisdom to find a balance between our own desires, and the good for the whole earth?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

He summed up with the following wish-list of what an updated economics curriculum would look like:

"Joe McCauley... suggested that:

the economists revise their curriculum and require that the following topics be taught: calculus through the advanced level, ordinary differential equations (including advanced), partial differential equations (including Green functions), classical mechanics through modern nonlinear dynamics, statistical physics, stochastic processes (including solving Smoluchowski–Fokker–Planck equations), computer programming (C, Pascal, etc.) and, for complexity, cell biology. Time for such classes can be obtained in part by eliminating micro- and macro-economics classes from the curriculum. The students will then face a much harder curriculum, and those who survive will come out ahead. So might society as a whole. (McCauley 2006, p. 608; emphasis added)"

Is there anyone here with a physics or engineering background that could comment on whether this seems reasonable and, if implemented, what economics might look like after this makeover? (Not asking much I know.)

McCauley is a professor of physics; his world view might be skewed and this opinion may contain a little hubris. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Various physicists have been attributed this quote, most often Rutherford:

"In science there is only Physics; all the rest is stamp collecting"

It reminds me of the famous jihad that Serge Lang mounted against Samuel Huntington in 1986 within the National Academy of Sciences.
A great article about that in Discovery magazine by Jared Diamond in 1987 (http://bama.ua.edu/~sprentic/607%20Diamond%201987.htm) has this passage near the end:

"The ingrained labels ''soft science'' and ''hard science'' could be replaced by hard (i.e., difficult) science and easy science, respectively. Ecology and psychology and the social sciences are much more difficult and, to some of us, intellectually more challenging than mathematics and chemistry. "

[oddlots]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

Thanks for the feedback all. More to read. Yay.

[doom&gloom]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

vBulletin has a built in 'peer review' system. you can see what it looks like at www.bodybuilding.com which is one blog i know of that implemented it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The ITulip Peer Review System

But it can be done because on the net, anything is possible.

Sometimes things can't be done because of too many constraints.

Sometimes things can't be done because of too many choices.

I read your statement that "it can be done on the net" as a claim that it's possible, because the net does not make it impossible by virtue of too many constraints.

But that's only half the way there, at best. There are still too many choices. A bowl of mushed up protoplasmic soup and nondescript organic matter does not spontaneously form an ostrich. You need the constraint of some ostrich DNA, properly amplified by an interesting suite of biological processes, to make an ostrich.

"There are too many clues!", as detective Hercule Poirot might protest (while investigating a Murder on the Orient Express.)