
Major recessions are characterized by something novel - ksvs
http://american.com/archive/2009/our-epistemological-depression
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scw
Thanks for the excellent article. This parallels nicely with Nassim Taleb's
work on black swans, how statistical knowledge fails us when unpredictable
extreme events are present.

I recently attended a talk by an economist who advised Greenspan during the
housing run-up, and I was disappointed that he didn't cover the limits of
knowledge: he stated things got worse due to declining housing prices, which
is a symptomatic treatment of the problem. Hopefully this kind of deeper
analysis will gain traction.

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nazgulnarsil
the soft sciences need to get over empiricism. You can not have empirical
proof of anything in situations where a control is impossible. social/economic
theories are either deductive or abductive, neither of which is falsifiable.

