People who as their first reaction start pulling excuses why this must be wrong out >of their asses get big negative points on this rationality test.
Well, if people are absolutely, definitely rejecting the possibility that this might ever be true, without looking at the data, then they are indeed probably professing a tribal belief.
However, if they are merely describing reasons why they find this result “unlikely”, then I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with that. They’re simply expressing that their prior for “Communist economies did no worse than capitalist economies” is, all other things being equal, lower than .5.
There are several non-obviously-wrong reasons why one could reasonably put a low prior on this belief. The most obvious is the fact that when the wall fell down, economic migration went from East to West, not the other way round (East-West Germany being the most dramatic example).
Of course, this should not preclude a look at the hard data. Reality is full of surprises, and casual musings often miss important points. So again, saying “this just can’t be so” and refusing to look at the data (which I presume is what you had in mind) is indeed probably tribal. Saying “hmmm, I’d be surprised if it were so” seems quite reasonable to me. Maybe I’m just tribalised beyond hope.
Yes—The original post wasn’t about using someone’s judgement on an issue as a litmus test. It was about the peculiar fact that you can use someone’s judgement on an issue as a test of their rationality without knowing anything about the issue, if they’re expressing a non-tribal opinion.
I’m increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.
This is extremely problematic for a number of reasons.
You are using (or at least citing) one study to argue for an extremely unorthodox claim that is highly values dependent. For example, what does it mean “to do worse on average” than capitalist countries? The paper you cite only demonstrates that GDP growth was not much worse for communist countries than for less liberalized non-communist countries. Perhaps the totalitarian communist systems were worse, even if their arbitrary GDP numbers, inflated by massive military spending, were fairly respectable.
Be careful, using this as a “litmus test” for rationality could make you dismiss arguments for why you should actually change your opinion about whether communist countries did “worse on average”.
After glancing at the study [and after editing again after RobinZ’s comment]:
It criticizes other studies for not controlling for such details as ethnolinguistic fractionalization, religion, natural resource abundance, or the wealth of neighboring countries. It’s full of references to other variables that ought to be controlled for, like climate, resource-richness, and social mores. But the only thing this study claims to control for is initial wealth.
Much of the article lists rankings of growth rates that control for nothing at all. It has a large initial section claiming that communism performed well because a bunch of Communist countries that started out poor, grew faster than a bunch of non-Communist countries that started out rich. Then, in the other section of the paper, it claims that we can’t compare Russia to Western Europe, because Russia started out poor, and of course every economist knows that poor countries grow faster than rich countries! So we must compare Russia to Mexico. Besides the fact that they conveniently ignored this in the first half of the paper, that doesn’t make sense. A comparison that showed Russia growing slower than Western Europe (as it did) would only indicate that the difference in the effectiveness of their governments was even greater.
It says that Eastern Europe’s economic performance was only dismal as compared to Western Europe’s, and Asia; and that a more fair comparison is with Mexico, or the US, or New Zealand, or Switzerland, or a variety of other names that come up. But the cases it dismisses seem like better parallels than the cases it includes. It has a section acknowledging that most economists would say it isn’t fair to compare the growth rates of nations with different initial wealth (the cases it uses in the first section), and would instead compare the growth rates of nations with similar initial wealth (the cases it excludes in the first section). It tries to justify this, and I’m afraid I can’t now remember what the reasoning was.
It’s odd for a study to talk so much about the standard tools of economic analysis, such as regression, and yet not use any. There’s no math in this paper. It presents a bunch of graphs and argues verbally about what they imply. Also, it has not been published in a refereed journal; and I predict that it won’t be until the author remedies this.
I’m not being thorough here, and you might want to read the paper yourself rather than trust my admittedly hasty judgement. Consider yourself notified that the opinion I’m expressing here is not based on careful study. taw is a smart person and has studied it more carefully than I have.
It’s not a good litmus test until you also point to what you consider the best honest skeptical response—albeit this is often damned hard to do with poor skepticism, cryonics being exhibit A in point.
You should offer a reward for the best top-level anti-cryonics post.
Something to entice quiet dissenters to stick their necks out.
You can post it together with a pro-cryonics reading list, so people
know what they’re up against and only post arguments that haven’t
already been refuted.
The only good experiment performed was the partitioning of Germany. East and West Germany were economically equivalent at the end of World War 2, with very similar populations, socioeconomically and genetically.
When they reunified, West Germany was very far ahead of East Germany. I know many people who’ve come from or been to both East and West Germany, and their opinions on the subject are so strong and unanimous that I will flatly deny any study that says they were equivalent economically. I will not even bother to read such a study.
To make the comparison completely fair, you might have to adjust for the fact that America loaned money to West Germany for reconstruction, while Moscow IIRC saw East Germany as a revenue source. But then again, you might not. Because having your wealth transferred to the capital is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a communist economy.
The only good experiment performed was the partitioning of Germany. East and West Germany were economically equivalent at the end of World War 2, with very similar populations, socioeconomically and genetically.
This is just plain false. Their income ratios in 1950 were about 2.1:1. Income ratios in 1990 were still about 2.1:1.
I think you have a point there. Planned economy is called a “failed experiment” with much greater confidence than justified. Not so sure about “extremely” and what “significantly” should mean here, though.
My current position after updating on the evidence form skimming through that paper is that capitalism probably is better for some things, planned economy better for others, and that whether the historical performance of socialist planned economies lags behind that of capitalism depends on what assumptions you make, which countries you hold as comparable and so on, but the answer probably is somewhere between “no” and “yes, but not by all that much”.
The original post wasn’t about using someone’s judgement on an issue as a litmus test. It was about the peculiar fact that you can use someone’s judgement on an issue as a test of their rationality without knowing anything about the issue, if they’re expressing a non-tribal opinion.
OP said: If x is a member of X, and opinion(X) = B, and opinion(x) = not(B), this indicates x is at least an independent thinker, regardless of the truth of B.
So, if you find someone who thinks that Communist economies did no worse than capitalist ones, that person is an independent thinker. But since there are very few such people here, that can’t be what you mean when you say you plan to use it as a litmus test.
According to Table One in the document you linked, for most of the 20th century, India was almost 40 ranks wealthier per capita than the USA. Are you really claiming this data is extremely unlikely to be significantly wrong?
You’re proving taw’s point. You are so eager to find faults that you don’t even double check long enough to realize that the table is ordered form poorest to wealthiest. If that’s not selective perception I don’t know what is.
Point. I will freely grant I was skimming looking for flaws; but some of those rankings still look dubious. What data are they based on? Official figures on the wealth of communist countries greatly differed from reality—in particular, compare the official exchange rates with the actual black market ones. (Comparing wealth across countries sensitively depends on the exchange rates used.)
As for the general argument, when an unlikely (and probably politically motivated) claim is presented, are you saying you think ‘skim briefly looking for flaws’ is a bad approach to take, at least initially? If so, would you apply that same standard to other unlikely claims?
As for the general argument, when an unlikely (and probably politically motivated) claim is presented, are you saying you think ‘skim briefly looking for flaws’ is a bad approach to take, at least initially?
No, but once you spot “flaws” you should at least check whether they actually are.
Yeah, thinking about it, it’s been quite some time since I’ve seen anyone try to defend the Soviet Union on economic grounds; in the old days, those who did so, tended to do it based on obviously off the wall ‘data’. I should really have realized anything quite that flaky wouldn’t likely be linked approvingly from LW, and updated my priors accordingly.
So chalk one up for be careful about reacting off the cuff to X just because it seems to resemble previously encountered Y and Z.
Trust me here that I am not defending the Soviet Union in terms of any moral or ultimate economic success (I have ties to a “Former Soviet Republic” and know the failings on both accounts)...but it should be noted that the rate of growth of the Soviet economy, and the rate of improvement of quality of life, outpaced that of Western Europe and the US from time of the revolution to about the late 50′s early 60′s (give or take).
It should be noted that Russia at the time of the revolution was barely “developed” and was fully in the grips of a system based on serfdom bordering on (if not actually equivalent to) slavery. It was, in common parlance, “backwards”. They were coming from quite the depths, and made great strides.
In doing so, they brought their standard of living up, and their level of “development” up, while managing to bring their agricultural production down. Sooner or later it was all a diminishing return, but the Soviet system in the early years was at least defensible on certain grounds.
Ultimately that system did not succeed, but it points the notion that different systems might be better for different things. What might have happened had the Soviets edged towards capitalism more in the manner of recent China, or if they had not bankrupted themselves on military spending? (and by extension, what can we as capitalists learn from that last point?)
I’m increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.
People who as their first reaction start pulling excuses why this must be wrong out of their asses get big negative points on this rationality test.
I don’t need to explain why this is not mainstream. It is also extremely unlikely to be significantly wrong.
Well, if people are absolutely, definitely rejecting the possibility that this might ever be true, without looking at the data, then they are indeed probably professing a tribal belief.
However, if they are merely describing reasons why they find this result “unlikely”, then I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with that. They’re simply expressing that their prior for “Communist economies did no worse than capitalist economies” is, all other things being equal, lower than .5.
There are several non-obviously-wrong reasons why one could reasonably put a low prior on this belief. The most obvious is the fact that when the wall fell down, economic migration went from East to West, not the other way round (East-West Germany being the most dramatic example).
Of course, this should not preclude a look at the hard data. Reality is full of surprises, and casual musings often miss important points. So again, saying “this just can’t be so” and refusing to look at the data (which I presume is what you had in mind) is indeed probably tribal. Saying “hmmm, I’d be surprised if it were so” seems quite reasonable to me. Maybe I’m just tribalised beyond hope.
Yes—The original post wasn’t about using someone’s judgement on an issue as a litmus test. It was about the peculiar fact that you can use someone’s judgement on an issue as a test of their rationality without knowing anything about the issue, if they’re expressing a non-tribal opinion.
I’m increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.
This is extremely problematic for a number of reasons.
You are using (or at least citing) one study to argue for an extremely unorthodox claim that is highly values dependent. For example, what does it mean “to do worse on average” than capitalist countries? The paper you cite only demonstrates that GDP growth was not much worse for communist countries than for less liberalized non-communist countries. Perhaps the totalitarian communist systems were worse, even if their arbitrary GDP numbers, inflated by massive military spending, were fairly respectable.
Be careful, using this as a “litmus test” for rationality could make you dismiss arguments for why you should actually change your opinion about whether communist countries did “worse on average”.
After glancing at the study [and after editing again after RobinZ’s comment]:
It criticizes other studies for not controlling for such details as ethnolinguistic fractionalization, religion, natural resource abundance, or the wealth of neighboring countries. It’s full of references to other variables that ought to be controlled for, like climate, resource-richness, and social mores. But the only thing this study claims to control for is initial wealth.
Much of the article lists rankings of growth rates that control for nothing at all. It has a large initial section claiming that communism performed well because a bunch of Communist countries that started out poor, grew faster than a bunch of non-Communist countries that started out rich. Then, in the other section of the paper, it claims that we can’t compare Russia to Western Europe, because Russia started out poor, and of course every economist knows that poor countries grow faster than rich countries! So we must compare Russia to Mexico. Besides the fact that they conveniently ignored this in the first half of the paper, that doesn’t make sense. A comparison that showed Russia growing slower than Western Europe (as it did) would only indicate that the difference in the effectiveness of their governments was even greater.
It says that Eastern Europe’s economic performance was only dismal as compared to Western Europe’s, and Asia; and that a more fair comparison is with Mexico, or the US, or New Zealand, or Switzerland, or a variety of other names that come up. But the cases it dismisses seem like better parallels than the cases it includes. It has a section acknowledging that most economists would say it isn’t fair to compare the growth rates of nations with different initial wealth (the cases it uses in the first section), and would instead compare the growth rates of nations with similar initial wealth (the cases it excludes in the first section). It tries to justify this, and I’m afraid I can’t now remember what the reasoning was.
It’s odd for a study to talk so much about the standard tools of economic analysis, such as regression, and yet not use any. There’s no math in this paper. It presents a bunch of graphs and argues verbally about what they imply. Also, it has not been published in a refereed journal; and I predict that it won’t be until the author remedies this.
I’m not being thorough here, and you might want to read the paper yourself rather than trust my admittedly hasty judgement. Consider yourself notified that the opinion I’m expressing here is not based on careful study. taw is a smart person and has studied it more carefully than I have.
Upvoted, but I have not examined the paper—an independent check of Phil Goetz’s remarks would be appreciated.
It’s not a good litmus test until you also point to what you consider the best honest skeptical response—albeit this is often damned hard to do with poor skepticism, cryonics being exhibit A in point.
You should offer a reward for the best top-level anti-cryonics post. Something to entice quiet dissenters to stick their necks out.
You can post it together with a pro-cryonics reading list, so people know what they’re up against and only post arguments that haven’t already been refuted.
EDIT: reworded for clarity, punctuation
The only good experiment performed was the partitioning of Germany. East and West Germany were economically equivalent at the end of World War 2, with very similar populations, socioeconomically and genetically.
When they reunified, West Germany was very far ahead of East Germany. I know many people who’ve come from or been to both East and West Germany, and their opinions on the subject are so strong and unanimous that I will flatly deny any study that says they were equivalent economically. I will not even bother to read such a study.
To make the comparison completely fair, you might have to adjust for the fact that America loaned money to West Germany for reconstruction, while Moscow IIRC saw East Germany as a revenue source. But then again, you might not. Because having your wealth transferred to the capital is one of the distinguishing characteristics of a communist economy.
This is just plain false. Their income ratios in 1950 were about 2.1:1. Income ratios in 1990 were still about 2.1:1.
I think you have a point there. Planned economy is called a “failed experiment” with much greater confidence than justified. Not so sure about “extremely” and what “significantly” should mean here, though.
My current position after updating on the evidence form skimming through that paper is that capitalism probably is better for some things, planned economy better for others, and that whether the historical performance of socialist planned economies lags behind that of capitalism depends on what assumptions you make, which countries you hold as comparable and so on, but the answer probably is somewhere between “no” and “yes, but not by all that much”.
The original post wasn’t about using someone’s judgement on an issue as a litmus test. It was about the peculiar fact that you can use someone’s judgement on an issue as a test of their rationality without knowing anything about the issue, if they’re expressing a non-tribal opinion.
OP said: If x is a member of X, and opinion(X) = B, and opinion(x) = not(B), this indicates x is at least an independent thinker, regardless of the truth of B.
So, if you find someone who thinks that Communist economies did no worse than capitalist ones, that person is an independent thinker. But since there are very few such people here, that can’t be what you mean when you say you plan to use it as a litmus test.
According to Table One in the document you linked, for most of the 20th century, India was almost 40 ranks wealthier per capita than the USA. Are you really claiming this data is extremely unlikely to be significantly wrong?
You’re proving taw’s point. You are so eager to find faults that you don’t even double check long enough to realize that the table is ordered form poorest to wealthiest. If that’s not selective perception I don’t know what is.
Point. I will freely grant I was skimming looking for flaws; but some of those rankings still look dubious. What data are they based on? Official figures on the wealth of communist countries greatly differed from reality—in particular, compare the official exchange rates with the actual black market ones. (Comparing wealth across countries sensitively depends on the exchange rates used.)
As for the general argument, when an unlikely (and probably politically motivated) claim is presented, are you saying you think ‘skim briefly looking for flaws’ is a bad approach to take, at least initially? If so, would you apply that same standard to other unlikely claims?
No, but once you spot “flaws” you should at least check whether they actually are.
Yeah, thinking about it, it’s been quite some time since I’ve seen anyone try to defend the Soviet Union on economic grounds; in the old days, those who did so, tended to do it based on obviously off the wall ‘data’. I should really have realized anything quite that flaky wouldn’t likely be linked approvingly from LW, and updated my priors accordingly.
So chalk one up for be careful about reacting off the cuff to X just because it seems to resemble previously encountered Y and Z.
Trust me here that I am not defending the Soviet Union in terms of any moral or ultimate economic success (I have ties to a “Former Soviet Republic” and know the failings on both accounts)...but it should be noted that the rate of growth of the Soviet economy, and the rate of improvement of quality of life, outpaced that of Western Europe and the US from time of the revolution to about the late 50′s early 60′s (give or take).
It should be noted that Russia at the time of the revolution was barely “developed” and was fully in the grips of a system based on serfdom bordering on (if not actually equivalent to) slavery. It was, in common parlance, “backwards”. They were coming from quite the depths, and made great strides.
In doing so, they brought their standard of living up, and their level of “development” up, while managing to bring their agricultural production down. Sooner or later it was all a diminishing return, but the Soviet system in the early years was at least defensible on certain grounds.
Ultimately that system did not succeed, but it points the notion that different systems might be better for different things. What might have happened had the Soviets edged towards capitalism more in the manner of recent China, or if they had not bankrupted themselves on military spending? (and by extension, what can we as capitalists learn from that last point?)