Re:I Win My European Unemployment Bet
by smsm42 on Friday March 08, 2019 @03:03PM
(#19341645)
That reminds me of a joke - what's the probability of meeting of a dinosaur in the street? 50% - either I meet him, or I don't!
Not every event with two outcomes is 50/50, you know :) And the article does point to both the subject of the bet - unemployment indexes, which are known to all participants and it's kinda the job of the economist to know what they mean - and why Caplan thought he would win. It may be, of course, that he won randomly and his theory is still wrong - but in general people that successfully predict real world outcomes are regarded better in most scientific endeavors than people that predict wrongly.
Not every event with two outcomes is 50/50, you know :) And the article does point to both the subject of the bet - unemployment indexes, which are known to all participants and it's kinda the job of the economist to know what they mean - and why Caplan thought he would win. It may be, of course, that he won randomly and his theory is still wrong - but in general people that successfully predict real world outcomes are regarded better in most scientific endeavors than people that predict wrongly.