[FRIAM] “Don’t they have grandchildren?” was The case for universal basic income UBI

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Well, to be clear, it wasn't (I don't think) Russ' rhetoric but Weintrobe via McKibbon. Russ was simply pointing it out to us. 

But further, Weintrobe's argument seems to be (I haven't read the book, only a couple of reviews of it) a mechanistic explanation for how we in the northern hemisphere have become inured to externalities. She's proposing neoliberalism (and/or it's ancillary appendages) is causal. It's fine to disagree with that. But it's an entirely different thing to propose a fact-accumulating, fitted *hull* of a model like Epstein's as equivalent ... or even similar in kind.

Whether it's beyond any human's ability to *make* the assertion she made is obvious. It is within any human's ability to make such assertions. The question is, if we take her hypothesis seriously, how do we *test* it? What measures can we take that stand a chance of falsifying this causal role of neoliberalism?

And, I think, asking that question ... Can we test it? ... helps distinguish between purely descriptive and mechanistic models. If it's your claim that Weintrobe is making an untestable hypothesis, that's fine. But in order to lift up Epstein's just-so story to the same level as Weintrobe's, we'd have to also ask how can we test Epstein's (implicit) hypothesis? 

So, again, my answer is: No, Epstein's case is unhinged in some crucial variables, fragile to the inclusion of ignored facts. And regardless of whether Weintrobe's turns out false or too weak, because it's mechanistic, isn't fragile in that same way.

On 5/21/21 1:44 PM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> I agree with you. It's very challenging to make sense of the world, and the human mind is amazing at building generative models of the world and those models become the reality for the mind. With the models we can make conclusions and explain how the world actually works. Now the clincher, to make progress, the conclusions must have clear explanations that are independant of the different layers that we used to generate the model to get to the conclusion. 
> 
> I repeat, sure, use a complex layered approach to get to an understanding. But after you have formed your conclusions, don't rely on the complex layered model to explain the phenomena, distil it and get to a clear conclusion and back it up with good explanations. Always try to verify it using evidence.
> 
> For example, in the narrative of Russ, it is assumed that they have knowledge of the effects of Reagan and Thatcher on the world. I argue that it is impossible to have any level of confidence in that. The world is a chaotic complex system and we have some knowledge about what different actors (eg Reagan and Thatcher) did and what consequently happened, but nobody has a clue what the causal relationships were. It is simply impossible to know that. Sure, one can speculate, but tag it as speculation. ABM generative models show some promise in helping humans to understand such complex systems, but it's early days and current ABM models are not even close to answer questions like that.
> 
> I don't know the answers and I speculate it's beyond any human's capability to make statements like */“The self-assured neoliberal imagination has increasingly revealed itself to be not equipped to deal with problems it causes,”/* and have any level of confidence in this. Yes, it's a good process to speculate that, but be real and admit that it's only speculation and/or the result of a generative model in your mind and not rooted in the real world. I tag it as "opinion" and respect the person to have that opinion. 

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