Top all-time · #789
Noahpinion
Personal blog · noahpinionblog.blogspot.comeconomicspolitics
Noahpinion is a personal blog at noahpinionblog.blogspot.com about economics and politics. Since 2011, 82 different Hacker News readers have linked it 108 times, most often “What we didn't get”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Noah Smith's blog as a critique of David Graeber's Debt and of economists' claims, and as an economist's take on policy and career questions. Commenters cite it as a source for their own points.
- Recommended for · 5 comments
- Called a 'good critique' of Debt and a 'good rebuttal', and an 'invaluable essay' on Japan; one likes his Taleb take.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This is the old Noahpinion archive. Noahpinion continues at noahpinion.substack.com
Most-linked posts?
- What we didn't get6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2017-09-23
- /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html?m=13 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-09-03
- /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-05-15
- Yuppie Fishtanks: YIMBYism explained without “supply and demand”3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-07-28
- Geeks and money2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-05-05
- /2017/06/the-shouting-class.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-06-18
- Follies of a Finite Physicist2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-14
- Critiquing Silicon Valley2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-06-19
- Desire Modification: The Ultimate Technology2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-30
- The reason macroeconomics doesn't work well2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-30
What Hacker News says?
“Debt: the first 5000 years” is riddled with errors. https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/01/the-very-last-david-g... > That made me prick up my ears, and say that that was not so. The example I gave was Graeber's claim that the: >> Federal Reserve… is technically not part of the government at all, but a peculiar sort of public-private hybrid, a consortium of privately owned banks whose chairman is appointed by the U…
Comment linking /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?”Submitted Does the "Entrepreneurship Subculture" prevent big ideas? as a story · 51 points
HN discussionThanks for linking that. It does a good job of drawing out some of the feelings I had when I read Debt . On the one hand I'm very glad I read the book. I found it very enlightening in terms of various aspects of history and anthropology, as well as enlightening about various leftist ideas. On the other hand I can't say I came away feeling like I had read a "correct analysis" or that I really understood any better ho…
Comment linking /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html?showComment=1415178947855&m=1
on “David Graeber has died”Submitted Academic B.S. as artificial barriers to entry as a story · 35 points
HN discussionHere’s a good critique of Debt by Noah Smith: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-debt-...
Comment linking /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html?m=1
on “David Graeber has died”Submitted Review of “Stubborn Attachments” by Tyler Cowen as a story · 31 points
HN discussionBut also be sure to read critiques of Debt written by economists. Here’s one by Noah Smith: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-debt-...
Comment linking /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html?m=1
on “David Graeber has died”Submitted “Race and IQ”: a brain-eating memetic parasite as a story · 8 points
HN discussionThe article is actually fairly silent on the reasons so read into it what you will. If anything the author is endorsing his friend's book without giving away the thesis and if the link is accurate it covers a wide range of factors. As for Deirdre McCloskey, as Noah Smith says,"do not believe things that Deirdre McCloskey says just because she says them." http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/deirdre-mccloskey...
Comment linking /2015/06/deirdre-mccloskey-says-things.html
on “The Most Important Thing: Decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease”Submitted What is "derp"? The answer is technical as a story · 7 points
HN discussionExactly. Math isn't a set of procedures, it's a way of thinking. Without understanding that way of thinking it is impossible to be an educated person. "Most mathematicians at one time or another have probably found themselves in the position of trying to refute the notion that they are people with "a head for figures." or that they "know a lot of formulas." At such times it may be convenient to have an illustration…
Comment linking /2013/08/a-few-words-about-math.html
on “School is a prison and damaging our kids”Submitted What we didn't get as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI am digging through his book and it reads to me like a healthy dose of ideology littered with references to sociology papers that would likely not survive replication. Additionally, I am reading a back and forth between Bryan and Noah Smith[1]. The main thing that stands out, is that after putting forth such a quantitative focused text on the topic, Bryan seems to resort to an idealogical back and forth with Noah.…
Comment linking /2017/12/sheepskin-effects-signals-without.html
on “No one cared about my spreadsheets”Submitted If you get a PhD, get an economics PhD as a story · 5 points
HN discussionAt the general level, I doubt anyone is surprised to see this story, and there will likely be more to come as tech flocks to Austin (though it was already a notable tech hub with some of these pressures already before the billionaires decided to give it the seal of approval). To me, the more interesting question here is how does Austin avoid what happened to SF, where tech hollowed out nearly all of its existing cul…
Comment linking /2018/07/yimbyism-explained-without-supply-and.html
on “They Just Moved to Austin. Now They Want to End One of Its Traditions”Submitted Nuclear will die. Solar will live as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> Still plenty of stuff to complain about, but the job market looks far different than in the natural sciences or humanities. Yup. Economics [0] and comp sci are basically the only doctoral programs worth going into at this point (at least if you're an American citizen). You can debate which one is _more_ worth it, but the fact is that if you're doing anything else, you're in a for a world of pain. [0] http://noahpi…
Comment linking /2013/05/if-you-get-phd-get-economics-phd.html?m=1
on “Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs”Submitted Venture capital is sucking (your money) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt's really not. First of all, the affordable housing market isn't where the housing market was most inflated so the author's entire premise is wrong. Secondly, the author of that article is pretty clearly shilling to privatize Fannie Mae. Thirdly, nobody here seems to understand what the community lending standards actually were and just wants to use it as a post to rest their argument on. This is a much better, th…
Comment linking /2012/12/did-risky-mortgage-lending-cause.html
on “The Real Cost of the 2008 Financial Crisis”Submitted The reason macroeconomics doesn't work well as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI particularly like Noah Smith's take on him[0]: "Nassim Taleb is a vulgar bombastic windbag, and I like him a lot. His books do a good job of explaining some deep, important finance ideas for a general audience. He has helped popularize the notion of "skin in the game". His trolling of economists is also good for some lulz (I particularly enjoyed his coinage of the term "macrobullshitters")." [0] http://noahpinionb…
Comment linking /2014/01/of-brains-and-balls-nassim-talebs-macro.html
on “Nassim Taleb: We should retire the notion of standard deviation”Submitted Yuppie Fishtanks: YIMBYism explained without “supply and demand” as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhat point is Graeber trying to make in Debt ? It seems to be “capitalism bad” but that may be too kind to the book’s coherence. On Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/book-review-debt... > Now, this may sound a little silly - if someone wrote a book called "Metal: The First 5,000 Years," and then filled that book with stories of war and bloodshed, never fai…
Comment linking /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html?m=1
on “The Machine Learning Software Engineering Interview”Submitted Rap is capitalist as a story · 3 points
HN discussionUnfortunately most academic economists are not going to touch it. It's a sprawling, highly polemic work by a marxist anthropologist. Much of the book focuses on various moral issues portraying history as a sequence of just and unjust acts, oppressors and oppressed, and finally there are some call for coordinated debt forgiveness. That's not really inviting for academic economists that need to focus on quantitative o…
Comment linking /2014/11/book-review-debt-first-5000-years.html
on “David Graeber’s Possible Worlds”Submitted What we didn't get: Science fiction and science history as a story · 3 points
HN discussionCS and Econ PhD programs both benefit from an extreme amount of cross-pollination between academia and industry. The ability to jump ship from the academy isn't nearly as large of an issue as it is in the sciences (with the exception of physics perhaps). The humanities are mostly screwed. Source (for econ at least; CS is anecdotal): http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/if-you-get-phd-ge...
Comment linking /2013/05/if-you-get-phd-get-economics-phd.html
on “PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours”Submitted What we didn't get as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI agree that the headline and tone of this article are engaging in unnecessary hyperbole, but this description of Noah Smith's views and arguments are not consistent with what I've read. I don't see him arguing for a Grand Theories perspective of economics, and he grounds his arguments in empirical evidence and is vocal about the need to do this. I also think you have contrived an exaggerated view, attributed it to…
Comment linking /2013/04/the-reason-macroeconomics-doesnt-work.html
on “What Economists Still Don’t Get About the 2008 Crisis”Submitted San Francisco housing – The NIMBY challenge as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
