

An Ubernerd Weighs In - jc123
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/an-ubernerd-weighs-in

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andrewljohnson
The biggest non-starter in his original essay was that mining is wasteful.
Krugman doesn't understand orders of magnitude.

The mathematical fallacy is that the cost of mining never adds up. The total
amount of energy ever expended by all miners that will ever be produced
amounts to such a small amount of total power as to be inconsequential
compared to the commerce transacted. Krugman should optimize a few computer
programs, and then he might understand why he's barking up the wrong tree.

Krugman misses what every nerd, uber or otherwise, sees plain as day. The
mining is simply irrelevant. There will be 22M coins, give or take, and the
joules to find the hashes simply do not matter. And when the coins are all
found, the miners will continue to simply clear transactions, which any
network needs, and furthermore still doesn't create any meaningful cost.

Bitcoin has problems, but the mining is beside the point. and his follow on
argument is... bitcoin is valuable now because nerds conflate economics with
technology, and will soon pop? That's insipid and unarguable - it's just an ad
hominem attack on a group.

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mcantelon
It wouldn't be the first time Krugman's been wrong about a transformative
technology.

[http://imgur.com/B9oMzZd](http://imgur.com/B9oMzZd)

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thomasz
Does this fallacy has a name?

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aric
Considering a person's history of _astounding_ lack of understanding isn't a
fallacy. It's telling. It's far more telling than any award given to a person
for work that circularly adheres to the vision and acceptance of those who
bestow the award.

The only fallacy is when people grant that person's thoughts higher or lesser
value while the words don't stand by their own merit and explanation. That
fallacy is what happens. Shocking degrees of ineptitude are given enormous
weight in society, often through glamor alone.

~~~
sentenza
Ahem. What on earth are you talking about? Krugman explicitly talks about
things that he as gotten wrong over the years, the internet thing being one of
them and some of his predictions regarding Japan being another. Compare that
to almost all other punditconomist, who refuse they admit error. (Btw, one
should never rely too much on advice from anybody who has never admitted being
wrong. Those people are either liars or deluded.)

In addition to that, he _ALL THE FUCKING TIME_ writes about how recent years
have shown that you cannot argue from position (in doing so often joking about
"the award") but that your arguments must carry themselves no matter who you
are.

So essentially, the Krugman whose blog I read, again and again states the
exact opposite of the things that you accuse him and his "adherents" of.

~~~
aric
> _Ahem. What on earth are you talking about?_

Nothing I've written says that there aren't people who shun such fallacy and
always think critically. However, there are a great deal of people who use
Krugman as a crutch in thought and in citations, especially due to the prize.
If you're not one of them, good for you. My underlying point is pretty simple.
Here's a parallel so we're not focused on Krugman.

End-of-the-world predictors, and the like, sometimes recant about being wrong
too and may joke about it. What do we take from this? Being wrong about
matters that are painfully obvious is of valid consideration, especially when
judging future patterns of unsubstantiated claims in the same domains. We
mustn't forget the grains of salt.

------
greenyoda
Prior discussion (57 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6981007](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6981007)

~~~
jc123
Thanks, the edited title is more descriptive, but it wasn't the original title
and I didn't find the duplicate using HNSearch at the time.

~~~
corresation
HN disallows duplicate URLs from being submitted (if you try it simply
considers your submission a vote for the original), but in this case your
variant lacks the trailing forward slash. Which is weird given that the NY
Times site automatically redirects URLs that lack that trailing slash,
appending it on.

