= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
knb comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (1329)
I'm increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.
People who as their first reaction start pulling excuses why this must be wrong out of their asses get big negative points on this rationality test.
I don't need to explain why this is not mainstream. It is also extremely unlikely to be significantly wrong.
I'm increasingly inclined to use reactions to data that Communist economies did no worse on average than Capitalist economies as a new litmus test.
This is extremely problematic for a number of reasons.
You are using (or at least citing) one study to argue for an extremely unorthodox claim that is highly values dependent. For example, what does it mean "to do worse on average" than capitalist countries? The paper you cite only demonstrates that GDP growth was not much worse for communist countries than for less liberalized non-communist countries. Perhaps the totalitarian communist systems were worse, even if their arbitrary GDP numbers, inflated by massive military spending, were fairly respectable.
Be careful, using this as a "litmus test" for rationality could make you dismiss arguments for why you should actually change your opinion about whether communist countries did "worse on average".