Interview with Robert Solow. #Politics #Economics #ML
Lovely man, charming and intelligent. Yet, extremely shortsighted, narrow, none diverse worldview on display in this interview - exemplary of post-war US intellectual power. The dominance of "Truth is in models, math and technocracy, not in humans and real-world" paradigm. Pure stupid narrow-minded arrogance, disguised as intellectual cleverness.
"A good 80% of 20th century growth of US economy had to be imputed to the broad concept of technological progress." - Robert Solow
Comment from Youtube by Kemble Walker:
"According to Solow, “Earlier generations are entitled to draw down the pool (optimally, of course!) so long as they add (optimally, of course!) to the stock of reproducible capital” [1]. Throughout his career, Solow has been a consistent apologist for the destruction of our living environment for the accumulation of artificial, man-made rubbish. This ideology has brought human civilization to such a state of existential crisis that we have taken a complete about-turn. The Paris Agreement promises to re-plant massive tracts of the very same forests that Solow vociferously justified destroying for the production of skycrapers, plastic packaging, highways and toxic chemicals.
Such people are embraced by the megalomanic because they make psychopathy sound good. But the horrific consequences of these thoughts will only become more obvious as our natural ecosystems falter and collapse, a process which is already underway. Neo-classical economics is the result of generational hypnosis and dysfunctional neocortex. Unfortunately, many are swayed by accolades. But whatever psychological manipulations are at play in this video, the fact remains that shopping malls do not replace the water cycle; a network of highways does not replace atmospheric oxygen"
[1] Solow, R.M., 1974. Intergenerational equity and exhaustible resources. Review of Economic Studies Symposium, p. 41.