What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?

Punoxysm

What is something you used to believe, preferably something concrete with direct or implied predictions, that you now know was dead wrong. Was your belief rational given what you knew and could know back then, or was it irrational, and why?

Edit: I feel like some of these are getting a bit glib and political. Please try to explain what false assumptions or biases were underlying your beliefs - be introspective - this is LW after all.

correlation between economic freedom and economic growth was much stronger than it is

Here is a list of countries ranked by economic freedom:

http://www.heritage.org/index/

The top 10 are all very prosperous countries. In particular, Hong Kong and Singapore are both much richer than surrounding areas. Chile is conspicuously richer than other South American countries. Mauritius is conspicuously richer than other African countries. Ireland is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe.

correlation between economic freedom and economic growth was much stronger than it is

Here is a list of countries ranked by economic freedom:
http://www.heritage.org/index/
The top 10 are all very prosperous countries. In particular, [...]

Princess_Stargirl is talking about the correlation with economic growth, which is not going to be the same as the correlation with economic prosperity. This looks like a confusion of a variable with its rate of change.

It is informative to see what happens if I (1) correct this by correlating the economic freedom index ... (read more)

11gjm12y

That site has a nice slightly-interactive map where you can pick out individual components of their "freedom index". Mostly they correlate with prosperity (I have no idea what the actual causal relationships are) ... until you click on "Government Spending" and suddenly it goes exactly the other way round -- the allegedly-worst government spending figures are for the US, Canada and Western Europe, and the allegedly-best are for severely messed up central African countries and China (!) and India. If they stopped counting government spending as opposed to freedom -- it seems to me only marginally a matter of freedom -- the correlation between "freedom" and prosperity would become even more impressive. (Note 1. The cynic in me says: Of course that's out of the question because a central part of the reason why the Heritage Foundation exists is to argue for lower government spending and hence lower taxes. If it advocated less forcefully for that, it would become less useful to those who fund it.) (Note 2. It seems like there are lots of other things that could go into a "freedom index" with about as much reason as government spending. Two examples: longer working hours mean less freedom to do as you please with your time; stronger IP law means less freedom to start a technology-based business, to do as you please with the books and music and software you own, etc. Again, the absence of these things from the Heritage Foundation's "freedom index" seems adequately explained by the interests of the organizations that provide its funding.)

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What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?

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What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?

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