I wrote about how I built a boat as a retreat from the bullshit that surrounds us. My logic is simple. You build a boat with real physical materials and put it in real actual water. If it sinks you did it wrong. If it floats and performs, you did it right.
Human thought benefits from interaction with reality.
Lets turn now to one of my least favorite people; Paul Krugman. I don’t dislike Krugman because he’s wrong. Mistakes are how we learn, unless of course you’re Paul Krugman. He follows the classic cop out of simply never admitting you were wrong. This frees him from the feedback that would allow him to learn. It’s not that he doesn’t learn, it’s that he actively built a world where he cannot learn.
Willful ignorance annoys me; God did not give us turbo powered super monkey brains to sit in the dirt. He wants us to be awesome. Krugman is not awesome and he’s not on the path to get there. He starts wrong, stays wrong, and continues being wrong.
Because Krugman’s wrong in a way that tells people what they want to hear, they keep listening to him. They continue to think he’s clever no matter how wrong he gets. They are immune to learning and they listen to rapt attention to a man who is equally immune to learning.
This is what happens when you separate people from real world tests of their theories. You get dipshits like Paul Krugman.
Paul Krugman in New York Times November 9, 2016:
“It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?
Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.
Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.“
Forbes Magazine October 29, 2019:
“The S&P 500, now gaining almost 22% this year, broke its record high of 3,027.98 on Monday, rising to 3,044.08 during day trading.”
This is just the most recent in a three year avalanche of good news. I can come up with a thousand such milestones since late 2016. Krugman wasn’t just wrong, he was wrong on a level and depth that expands the very definition of wrongness.
Paul Krugman, was very very very very very very very very very wrong. He has a Nobel in economics. He was still wrong. He was wrong even if he wears a cape and gets interviewed by “journalists” on TV. No matter how many awards he get, no matter how well he’s treated, no matter how spiffy he looks in a suit and tie… he’s wrong.
I do not have a Nobel prize. But my boat floats. It tracks straight, steers well, and sails as it should. I have a blog instead of a paying writing gig. But I wasn’t wrong.
That’s why I recommend boats.