How do your friends explain the fact that the Ehrlichs made their prediction for the 1970's, which are already in the past? I can see that interpretation of Nordhaus by someone who looks at his numbers instead of his rhetoric. It's occurred to me that perhaps Nordhaus is a skeptic who uses the alarmist rhetoric to get people to believe h…
How do your friends explain the fact that the Ehrlichs made their prediction for the 1970's, which are already in the past?
I can see that interpretation of Nordhaus by someone who looks at his numbers instead of his rhetoric. It's occurred to me that perhaps Nordhaus is a skeptic who uses the alarmist rhetoric to get people to believe his numbers, but I don't think it likely.
I have a low opinion of Noah Smith because he wrote a piece on Adam Smith that was wildly wrong, trying to represent Smith as a modern progressive. I put an explanation of the errors on his comment thread, he responded to other things in the comment thread but not mine, so I concluded that he did not care whether what he wrote was true. For some details see:http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Ideas%20I/Economics/Adam%20Smith.pdf
I find it hard to judge, in the case of people like Noah, or the authors of Rennert et. al. 2022, whether they are deliberately dishonest for what they see as good reasons, not bright enough to see what is wrong with what they write, or just have very strong priors that let them ignore contrary evidence.
How do your friends explain the fact that the Ehrlichs made their prediction for the 1970's, which are already in the past?
I can see that interpretation of Nordhaus by someone who looks at his numbers instead of his rhetoric. It's occurred to me that perhaps Nordhaus is a skeptic who uses the alarmist rhetoric to get people to believe his numbers, but I don't think it likely.
I have a low opinion of Noah Smith because he wrote a piece on Adam Smith that was wildly wrong, trying to represent Smith as a modern progressive. I put an explanation of the errors on his comment thread, he responded to other things in the comment thread but not mine, so I concluded that he did not care whether what he wrote was true. For some details see:http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Ideas%20I/Economics/Adam%20Smith.pdf
I find it hard to judge, in the case of people like Noah, or the authors of Rennert et. al. 2022, whether they are deliberately dishonest for what they see as good reasons, not bright enough to see what is wrong with what they write, or just have very strong priors that let them ignore contrary evidence.