My Comment on NYTimes op-ed piece.
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Desired comment:
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Curious logic, both of you. Let's separate economics from politics and problem from solution and fall back on basic principles.
To paraphrase Bertand Russell, when experts disagree, you cannot be sure any
position presented is correct. We don't even have recognized and trusted experts. The activity proposed is unorthodox, if not unprecedented in this country, so even experts admit we are in uncharted territory.
What are we sure of? Enough, it turns out, to reach a conclusion.
Is there a crisis? Yes.
Does anyone comprehend all of the national and international aspects of the crisis, its full scope and scale and character, and all the players involved? No.
What are the odds that complex, interconnected systems with huge stakes are capable of behaving unexpectedly, even paradoxically, as well as generating unintended and unanticipated "side-effects"? 100 percent.
So, how many people in the world, after extensive study and modeling, could reliably predict all the significan teffects of any of the proposed interventions? None.
Then, how many people in the world, after incomplete study, little discussion with experts, and no simulation or modeling, could reliably predict all the significant effects of the proposed solutions? None.
So is it possible ANY proposed solution would actually make things worse, not better? Yes.
Is our intuition a good guide to behavior of complex adaptive systems with feedback? Demonstrably no. John Sterman at MIT and others have demonstrated that even simple feedback baffles most people and their predictions, while confident, are well off the mark.
If we cannot reliably predict the outcome, then how good a track record do we have in quickly realizing and admitting that a course set out upon is not looking good, or in fact, should be rejected after all? Sadly, history suggests continuation of even blatantly failed policies is human nature.
If it turns out to be the right direction, are we sure we are going far enough? No.
Is it possible the true final cost might be well larger than initial predictions? Yes.,
if this turns out to be the wrong direction, is it relatively easy to undo? No.
Is it possible to undo at any cost? Not clear.
Would an attempt to undo it result in yet another case where we are spending most of our effort trying to undo the impact of prior, ill-conceived "solutions"? Yes.
Are well all very good at recognizing when our help is only making things worse? No.
If someone else was doing this in a parallel economy, say on Mars, that we had no stake in, what would we think the odds are that their first intuitive guess as to an obvious solution is, in fact the solution? I think, very low.
Does having a strong vested interest, and a sense of panic, improve human judgment and decision making? Not generally, no.
All of this comes together to say that the a priori odds that any solution proposed will solve the crisis are very low, close to zero. It may be the same odds that you could fix a broken television by reaching inside and cutting the obvious wire, and we're arguing over which wire is the obvious one.
If we take this action, and it doesn't work out, how many more such tries do we have? Not many, at that price tag. A failed attempt not only fails to solve the problem, it uses up limited ammunition andt time.
Now, this is hard but try. Aside from political considerations, and group psychology, are we more likely to improve things or to cause yet more damage by any such large-scale action? I have to conclude from the above that carefully-considered inaction is more defensible, safer, and stabler than (re)action, politics aside.
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OK, now bring politics back into this picture. Do the American people tend to support carefully-considered inaction? No. Do we care what the American people think? Both journalists say "No." That's a story in itself, but for another day.
Wade
2008
8:23 pm
A drama in one act:
* Pilot?! The wing is on fire!
Yep, seems to be.
* Should we dump fuel?
Well, it might be the exact wrong time to do that.
* Don’t we need to do something?
Yes.
* So we dump fuel?
No, that would just catch fire from the wing and cause the airplane to explode.
* But it’s the only suggestion we’ve come up with and we need to DO something NOW!
OK, then I’ll put the airplane into a dive and go so fast that the wind blows out the fire, as it says in the manual.
* NO, we want to stay UP!
The crowd of passengers forcibly removes the pilot and pushes the fuel-dump button.
The end.
— Posted by Wade