Hacker News Reader

Comment by psergeant | Hacker News Reader

> Frankly, everybody with a bit of economic common sense knows

Citation? True Scotsman fallacy?

I gave a citation. When I say "everybody with a bit of economic common sense", I mean everybody in economic profession who is able of some elementary reflection on what they are doing. Even most neoclassicals (which is probably the only school where somebody actually believes in EMH) know that many of the theoretical assumptions are bullshit. Another classic example, aside from EMH, is SMD theorem.

I am pretty sure that most economic Nobel prize winners do not believe in EMH, from the top of my head, Akerlof and Kahneman.

You gave a link to a popsci book whose Wikipedia Criticism section is ... unforgiving and relentless.

You then double down on your True Scotsman fallacy, mae a sweeping unsupported claim about a nebulous group of people, and follow it up with another conjecture about another group in an attempt to appeal to authority.

We can do better than this.

So do better! Find me an economist who truly believes in EMH and is either not a neoclassical (that's about half of all economists) or makes some real-world economic decisions (like in a central bank) or has expressed his belief in support of EMH after 2008 crash.

I gave you two Nobel prize recipients who actually wrote famous articles explicitly outlining market inefficiencies.

Regarding Steve Keen, I don't have my copy handy, but I am sure it has plenty of additional citations. While it is written in accessible style, it is certainly not unsupported. (I personally think that every student of economics should read him, but it's up to each individual what they want to do with their free time.) Many post-keynesians I have read expressed similar dismay about EMH.

The product description for the book you quoted:

> Debunking Economics exposes what many non-economists may have suspected and a minority of economists have long known: that economic theory is not only unpalatable, but also plain wrong.

Plainly alludes to the fact that the book is not mainstream economic theory. People arguing for minority views of complex subjects find — rightly — that the burden of proof is on them, and not the other way around.

Related: it’s not in the least bit surprising to see the book make an appeal to common sense over “those experts”. Truly we live in the age of Trump and Farage.

And Sharpe and Fama, which he quotes expressing doubts about empirical validity of EMH, are mainstream?

But you can only lead horse to a water..

What's your opinion on Mandelbrot?

So I actually opened Keen's book - and it's more damning than I remembered. He quotes evidence that two major proponents of EMH - Sharpe and Fama - have made very critical comments as to its (EMH) empirical validity.

Isn't it also ironic that you criticize the book as being pop-sci by perusing Wikipedia? You know, in both cases, being pop-sci doesn't imply being wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com