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gwern comments on Peter Thiel warns of upcoming (and current) stagnation - Less Wrong Discussion

24 Post author: SilasBarta 04 October 2011 05:30PM

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Comment author: gwern 04 October 2011 07:23:12PM 3 points [-]

A lot of bubbles over many centuries, perhaps, but without a data series how can one say it's off? After all, we've hit 2 acknowledged bubbles in as many decades (notice that I don't say 'centuries' or 'half-centuries'), and there are more controversial recent ones (commodity bubble with oil or gold? 'Green' stocks? China?) which would push the count up even higher.

Comment author: asr 04 October 2011 10:31:49PM 6 points [-]

I'm not sure that one per decade is unusually many. The US had a lot of bubbles in the 19th century -- canal bubbles, real estate bubbles, railroad bubbles, etc. In all these cases (as with today), there was a real innovation underneath, that bedazzled investors into funding instances of it that didn't make sense.