There is a deeper point about whether economic activity is even a good thing. It might be a measure of deterioration and not of value creation.
For example, in the first quarter of last year, according to the Bank of England, the UK avoided a recession because so many people took our private health insurance.
But the only reason so many people paid for that is that they perceived that the NHS could not be trusted to provide the service it is supposed to.
So this economic activity was brought about by the failure of the NHS system to work reliably.
There is a concept, invented by John Seddon, of “failure demand” - where a system fails to resolve an issue at first engagement and has to then act further to resolve it.
How much economic activity is caused by “failure demand”?
No! The phrase is "the exception proves the rule," not "the counter-example proves the general claim." Those are different words, and the phrase is entirely sensible when read straight: if you have something that is an exception, that proves the existence of a rule (to which it is an exception).
A sign reading "no drinking on the job" is (technically, logically, pointlessly, etc) compatible with there not being drinking any other time either. But anyone who isn't trying to intentionally misunderstand things would interpret sign as telling you there's an exception being made, and that getting drunk after work is fine (as far as that rule is concerned).
Yeah man, sure. But also it's main meaning in English is establishing truth or validity.
Also for it to make sense that way you have to use a non-standard use of the word "exception," *and* a non-standard use of the word "rule", and now the only word in the sentence that's being used normally is "The".
And the fact that "exception" and "counter-example" are different things? And that "rule" and "generalization" are different words too?
If you have to go to 'the probable latin root of a potential french origin of this word means...." when talking about a word in modern english it's a good sign that you're headed somewhere silly. Especially since, you know, exceptions don't test rules rules either.
Never mind that you'd have to be going through this whole dance to try to interpret it in a way that doesn't make sense, in order to come up with a fancier way of interpreting the nonsense as something that is only dumb.
Actually the biggest (and most informative in its use) surviving use of ‘prove’ as ‘to test’ is in ‘proving’ bread. Dough would be left to ‘prove’, in that it was left in a dark warm place to test whether it had sufficient yeast to rise
What do you believe most I guess. UK labour force survey (our big number) is blighted by poor survey response rates and unemployment has apparently risen significantly. Tax records show more employees. I'd hope they are accurate. Records submitted to the Insolvency Service show normal levels of planned redundancies. None of this need be contradictory. But I have come to prefer figures where there is a legal requirement to be included.
I don't disagree but... superficially, this seems to conflict with the moral of your story (which I think about a lot) about analysts "trying to develop their understanding of an incredibly complicated system" vs the "mindless bomb-throwers". Many people are currently digging into the weeds of the labor market data finding contradictory signals, special factors and reasons to think this time is different. Likewise in 2021 many people were digging into the weeds of the inflation data (used cars...) and attributing much of the aggregate spike in inflation to these unusual special factors. I don't think it was a mistake to try and understand the details, but it's far from clear it led to a better inflation forecast, relative to the lazy approach of just looking at a few aggregate time series. It's one thing to be able to access all the component series and understand how they feed into the aggregate, and another thing to actually be able to judgmentally incorporate all this information to make better decisions while keeping motivated reasoning and institutional biases in check.
There is a deeper point about whether economic activity is even a good thing. It might be a measure of deterioration and not of value creation.
For example, in the first quarter of last year, according to the Bank of England, the UK avoided a recession because so many people took our private health insurance.
But the only reason so many people paid for that is that they perceived that the NHS could not be trusted to provide the service it is supposed to.
So this economic activity was brought about by the failure of the NHS system to work reliably.
There is a concept, invented by John Seddon, of “failure demand” - where a system fails to resolve an issue at first engagement and has to then act further to resolve it.
How much economic activity is caused by “failure demand”?
Do any economists even attempt to measure this?
Great footnote!
Reminds me of your long-ago Crooked Timber post about comparing apples and oranges.
No! The phrase is "the exception proves the rule," not "the counter-example proves the general claim." Those are different words, and the phrase is entirely sensible when read straight: if you have something that is an exception, that proves the existence of a rule (to which it is an exception).
A sign reading "no drinking on the job" is (technically, logically, pointlessly, etc) compatible with there not being drinking any other time either. But anyone who isn't trying to intentionally misunderstand things would interpret sign as telling you there's an exception being made, and that getting drunk after work is fine (as far as that rule is concerned).
That's a fine looking dessert you have there, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Latin "probere", to test, from which we also get probe, investigate deeply.
Yeah man, sure. But also it's main meaning in English is establishing truth or validity.
Also for it to make sense that way you have to use a non-standard use of the word "exception," *and* a non-standard use of the word "rule", and now the only word in the sentence that's being used normally is "The".
Old usage, not non-standard. It's a relic of a better time.
And the fact that "exception" and "counter-example" are different things? And that "rule" and "generalization" are different words too?
If you have to go to 'the probable latin root of a potential french origin of this word means...." when talking about a word in modern english it's a good sign that you're headed somewhere silly. Especially since, you know, exceptions don't test rules rules either.
Never mind that you'd have to be going through this whole dance to try to interpret it in a way that doesn't make sense, in order to come up with a fancier way of interpreting the nonsense as something that is only dumb.
Actually the biggest (and most informative in its use) surviving use of ‘prove’ as ‘to test’ is in ‘proving’ bread. Dough would be left to ‘prove’, in that it was left in a dark warm place to test whether it had sufficient yeast to rise
The same can be said for those who produce it.
I approve the footnote !
What do you believe most I guess. UK labour force survey (our big number) is blighted by poor survey response rates and unemployment has apparently risen significantly. Tax records show more employees. I'd hope they are accurate. Records submitted to the Insolvency Service show normal levels of planned redundancies. None of this need be contradictory. But I have come to prefer figures where there is a legal requirement to be included.
I don't disagree but... superficially, this seems to conflict with the moral of your story (which I think about a lot) about analysts "trying to develop their understanding of an incredibly complicated system" vs the "mindless bomb-throwers". Many people are currently digging into the weeds of the labor market data finding contradictory signals, special factors and reasons to think this time is different. Likewise in 2021 many people were digging into the weeds of the inflation data (used cars...) and attributing much of the aggregate spike in inflation to these unusual special factors. I don't think it was a mistake to try and understand the details, but it's far from clear it led to a better inflation forecast, relative to the lazy approach of just looking at a few aggregate time series. It's one thing to be able to access all the component series and understand how they feed into the aggregate, and another thing to actually be able to judgmentally incorporate all this information to make better decisions while keeping motivated reasoning and institutional biases in check.