Vaniver comments on I want to learn economics - Less Wrong

8 Post author: alexflint 13 January 2011 11:02PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (43)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Vaniver 15 January 2011 06:15:12AM 3 points [-]

Seconded. The result that made the book popular- abortion reduces crime- was so strongly contested by Steve Sailer (debate here) and others that I'd call it refuted.

In the book, Levitt makes a comment at some point that he wasn't good at the mathematics side of economics, but was great at the unconventional thinking side. That set my alarms blaring, because thinking unconventional things is no credit when you screw up the math. Which Levitt appears to have done at least once.