Is that a fair test?

Via Paul Krugman, I read Ezra Klein's opening tribune on his new, independent website venture.

And it purports to show that politics makes us brain dead because, when presented with a political problem that fits our prejudice (or goes against them), we tend to reply according to the prejudice rather than according to our abilities, in this case a simple maths proportions problem (yes, I am surprised that most people failed the problem in the first place, and that it be called "difficult", go take a look).

But the killer is that, while the study reports that it happened to liberals and conservatives alike, it also reveals that the question meant to go against the liberal prejudice (and thus that they would get wrong by answering against the data) used correct numbers presented incorrectly. That is, they showed crime rates to be higher in cities that banned handguns, whereas the actual data said the opposite.

Unfit models

In a recent conference about data analysis, I highlighted the importance of being well aware of one’s model’s assumptions. That all models are wrong should not be a reason never to use them, but you must be acutely aware of what their use implies.

I trust that you would agree with such an observation (OK, some will not want to use imperfect model at all, but that is going too far, and would have prevented any progress in human knowledge). But if you do, you should be pretty worried. Because most developed countries (and probably even more so less-developed ones) are now run on the basis of models whose assumptions are wildly violated –to the point where the rules of such models have made their way into their constitutions.

Anachronic music

A propos of nothing, I recently came to reflect that the last time Jacques Brel performed live was 47 years ago. And, since that was way too early for people like me to be there, for those who have to go by live recordings, the last one was in 1964. Fully 50 years ago.

Yet I cannot play the famous Olympia 64 without being immediately taken by a shiver -though I have played it many, many times. I immediately feel the presence. Where last year's pop star hit can already feel embarassingly outdated, this feeling seems to have eternity thrust upon it.

Music being the art that probably most directly touches us without bothering to go through the intellect, could the fact that much of the music I listen to dates back quite a bit be not only consequence, but even cause, of my frequent impressions of not being in synch with the times? Not that I don't listen to any contemporary artist (and, OK, Bob Dylan is still very active, but going on 73), although those I tend to enjoy would typically not be the main household names. But, typically, as I type, a 1963 Dylan recording of Moonshiner is playing. And it can still bring tears to my eyes after many hundred times.

Propaganda works

So, we are once again hearing calls for selling, well,everything public. And a French nominally (yes, already only nominally) socialist president is announcing a major turn rightwards –economically, that is- despite being at the helm of a country that has been performing markedly better than tenants of Aust(e)rian orthodoxy, such as the Netherlands or Finland.

(A side note: people will say “look at Germany”. Well, Germany is a country that locked in a balance of payments surplus by beggar-thy-neighbour policies, i.e. depressing wages and internal consumption during the years of European boom. Whether it was a success is highly debatable –poverty has shot up, for a start- but anyway that is moot: it is not an available option now, even leaving aside the fact that other EU countries specialise in other kinds of goods and have much different demographics, since it required other countries to have markedly faster inflation without going into deflation. And with Germany’s inflation below 1%, there simply is not enough room above 0 to open up a significant gap.

Besides, Germany’s public spending went up since the crisis. They did not apply Austerian economics to themselves –which is good for Europe, although far from enough- despite demanding it of others. So, to see the impact of current Austerian follies, look at the Netherlands or Finland. It’s not pretty)

And, you know what: he’s getting praise for it.

Deaf dance

Yesterday, in the Parisian metro, I noticed two teenage girls “talking” to each other. The quotes are because there was no sound –they were signing.

It quickly occurred to me how wonderfully expressive they were. You have to be –a lot of signing is in the facial expressions. And I who, while maybe sometimes partly guessing the nature of an emotion conveyed, could not understand any of their conversation, found myself taken on by their communication dance.

Signing is a wonderfully observing creative language. It has to be, in order to be able to quickly describe something or someone with a few gestures, hinting at a signature trait. And while I realise that it can be used to express deep, even sad emotions, it always seem to carry an inherent joy of communicating. It is hard to feel entirely sad while dancing.

Don’t get me wrong, deafness is a terrible thing that I, with music my favourite hobby, would much rather avoid. But signing flies high the standard for not letting yourself down, it is a visual statement that communicating is the greatest of joy. Most people in public transport seem to behave like any interaction is an aggression. To see them, in the metro, wholly engaging their minds and bodies in a passionate conversation made me wish that, while I may not want permanent residence there, I could be invited on a visitor visa into their world.

Shock doctrine in the headlines

Travelling on the Eurostar is bad for my blood pressure. Well, I don't know that from a doctor's advice, but I’m sure it is.

Oh, nothing to do with the quality of the journey. Or the politeness of the staff (never had to complain). No, you see, the problem is that when I travel on the Eurostar I get to see the titles of their papers and magazines selection.

Indeed, I have had so many trips that, despite taking standard tickets, I get access to the business lounge. They do have papers and magazines. But, you see, it’s a business lounge. And so, mostly, the selection largely seems to reflect what they reckon very rich people would want to read –especially in the London lounge (the Parisian one is slightly better, or at least used to be, I did not find Alternatives Economiques today). Don’t expect to find even the Guardian there –but there will be an ample choice of the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Daily Mail (yes, I still can’t quite believe that), the Economist…

To be fair, on the away trip, it mattered very little what the selection would be, I would just have to be appalled. Lack of web access made me unable to post before so many household names with actual readers bases did so, but even a glimpse of a title on, well, any French newspaper would have read similar, and included words such as “supply-side socialism”. You see, the French president, François Hollande, had just given his January press conference, and said that the rest of his mandate would be based on supply-side “Economics” (cut me some slack with the quotations, if you are going to put supply-side before it, especially with high unemployment, you really are saying voodoo. You have no right to pretend it’s actually Economics).

When a refutation is anything but

For decades, many academics and pundits have pronounced that the 70s conclusively proved that Keynes had been completely wrong, and that it proved that Friedman had been completely right.

You see, there was a recession, and it should have created deflation, except if inflation was actually determined by expectations based on previous experience, in which case it would not be brought down by depression. Friedman went on to state that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" which, if you think twice about it, is the most laughable statement.
And to this day, I keep reading articles, even by professors of economics in the UK, saying that the episode of inflation over 2% in the UK in the early years of the current Government is a clear indication that any stimulus would have had little to no effect, being swallowed by inflation.


That's what happens when you start believing that your model matters more than reality.