Fields Where It Matters That “There’s No There There,” Fields Where You Can Thrive on B.S. Alone, and Everything in Between
15th January 2023
Seeing this desperate attempt by Tyler Cowen to cover for crypto scams (his list of “falls in status” includes silly items such as “Mrs. Jellyby,” bizarre items such as “Being unmarried (and male) above the age of 30,” and “Venture capital,” but, oddly enough, not “Crypto” itself) made me think that smart people are overrated. Let me put it this way: if you’re a smart astrologer, you’re still not gonna be able to do “real” astrology, which doesn’t exist. To say it slightly differently: it’s easy to promise things, especially if you have a good rep; you have to be careful not to promise things you can’t deliver. It doesn’t matter how smart James Watson’s friend was; he didn’t have that promised cancer cure in two years.
As the saying goes: Saying it don’t make it so. I could go around telling the world I had a solution to all the problems of MRP, and some people might believe me for awhile—but I don’t have such a solution.
I can see how Cowen in his above-linked post doesn’t want to believe that crypto is fundamentally flawed—and maybe he’s right that it’s a great thing, it’s not like I’m an expert—but it’s funny that he doesn’t even consider that it might be a problem, given the scandal he was writing about.
All this got me thinking: in what fields of endeavor does it matter that you’re just B.S.-ing, and in what fields can you get away with it?
Aside from politics, of course, where B.S.-ing is all there is.