Re: academic funding redux



On Tue, 8 May 2007, Russell wrote:

On May 8, 8:39 am, morrisjc...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Heh. No big surprise here.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs58.html

First he says, "I do not pretend to have expertise in climatology
or any of the related physical sciences". Then he follows up
later with, "Climatologists know nothing about cost/benefit
considerations; indeed, most mainstream economists
themselves are fundamentally misguided about such matters
(adopting, for example, procedures and assumptions about the
aggregation of individual valuations that lack a sound scientific
basis)." IMO he may well be correct about economists, but
there is a cadre of climatologists who do know about
cost/benefit considerations as well as other policy matters and
their intersection with the field, and since he admits to a lack
of expertise in the field, he really should have kept quiet on
this point.

Well, a lot of us, here, have bashed economics/economists and we're not economists, either (thus making us all a little guilty), but a lot of us make this judgement (that economists are a pile of hooey) and use, as our reference, the fact that a lot of economists, themselves, think that a lot of economics/economists are a pile of hooey (thus making us not guilty about anything at all).

So, we're basically on a train trip with the destination: "how do we determine the truth?" The short answer is: get thesis, get antithesis, and come up with synthesis? The longer answer is (maybe): listen to all sides in all the arguments and become knowledgeable enough to see the defects, shortcomings, assumptions (good or bad), and the dirt swept under the rug in all sides of the arguments?

Or, maybe I should have just kept my own mouth shut, here?

Cheers,

Cheers,
Russell


.

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