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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (110704)	5/5/2009 2:56:46 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541487

I certainly wasn't disparaging his achievements. I'd just say that "Nobel prize winner", or even "Nobel Prize Winner in the general field in question", doesn't equal "is right". If we didn't already know that, we'd be forced to reach that conclusion when we take note of the fact that Krugman won a nobel prize in economics, and so did Friedman and Hayek and Buchanan. Even people who recognize the (IMO obvious) idea that "Nobel Prize doesn't equal 'right'", often give too much weight in arguments to it, or to other achievements or symbols of prestige, in arguments. In political arguments (and Krugman is often arguing about politics) such presitge should IMO amount for little. In more purely economic arguments it could count for a bit more, but IMO should never be a primary factor. Even in harder science arguments the experts in the field can be wrong, and also you have to consider the field they are particular experts in. Modern research is specialized. Why certainly a Nobel prize winning physicist or economist would know more about the physics or economics in general than most, that doesn't mean he is necessarily a true expert in the entire field. Experts in general get too much deference from many IMO (or at least people find a particular expert they like to defer to, ignoring those with other opinions), and those that have long bee extremely partisan in their writings should expect even less defference when their writings touch on political issues. If your talking about the response on PfP, to the extent they where disparaging the Nobel (rather than just making the point I make above), it was based off the Nobel Peace prize, which has gone to some rather dubious characters. I could have made that argument as well, but it could be dismissed with a claim that other prizes are not as political as the peace prize (although certainly politics of different types plays a role, so I'm not sure how strong that counter claim is). I preferred to provide examples of the same prize, and not "well look this idiot got the prize too", but rather people I respect who got the prize but who don't agree with the prize winner in question.