Bob, did you catch this on CNBC: "Federal Reserve to cut US Dollar in half over next 14 years"
 

Regarding the whole "consensus" thing, this goes back a long time. There's a good book on this called "The Making of an American Thinking Class: Intellectuals and Intelligentsia in Puritan Massachusetts"

Here's an appropriate excerpt that gives a good explanation of what the whole "consensus" thing is about and how it functions as a way of legitimating DeLong and the intellectual class' power. Think about it. DeLong and his class base their authority and legitimacy on the claim that they use and have access to an objective standard of "Reason." "Consensus" on an issue gives the appearance that the conclusion arrived at by DeLong and his class are exclusively due to an objective standard of "Reason." Without "consensus" the public would quickly realize that intellectuals/professors/scientists have various views that don't agree, they're still searching for the truth, a lot of them are flat out wrong despite being smart, that they're just human like the rest of us uneducated rubes, etc. This is also why half of DeLong's blogposts consists of childlishly calling someone whose views he disagrees with an idiot, stupid, etc.

"The Puritan ministers [...] created a completely new form of political authority - in the Weberian sense of legitimate power - which I have called cultural domination. Cultural domination, as here conceived, requires four formal supports.

First of all, like charismatic authority, it requires recognition in the form of ritual election or some similar mechanism of oath swearing or covenant signing. Fealty is sworn to the "correct" cultural formation, in this case Puritan biblicism, and the officeholder is empowered only as the specially trained bearer and interpreter of that cultural tradition. The "laity" generally conceive of this high cultural training - whether centered around biblicism or some other intellectually legitimating principle like reason or rationality - as being endowed with an automatic efficacy that need simply be applied to any problem to generate a univocal solution. The biblical truth is eternal and immutable, claimed Thomas Hooker, "but the alteration grows, according to God's most just judgment, and their own deservings."

Such belief gives rise to the second formal requirement, that officially authorized bearers of the cultural tradition must always agree in their public formulations or at least not disagree. If this condition is violated, the laity may come to see the cultural tradition as an amorphous collection of expressions or principles manipulated by "mandarins" for their own aggrandizement.

The third requirement is that all public expression of the culturally able must be bestowed on these public acts, including forced attendance, titulary homage, and silent obedience. Finally, to ensure the stability of the entire system, unauthorized cultural expressions must be carefully monitored and severely suppressed when they contradict or threaten to "desacralize" the authorized formulas."
 

If you need to stockpile some crack you are in the right place.
 

consensus reality. You mean... there's another kind? (irony, folks).
 

The Blackadder Says:

Kind of puts talk about the "reality-based community" in a new light.
 

Bob, I think Bertrand has put his finger on the "problem" that seems to bother you so much: religions - indeed, moral codes of all kinds - work in precisely the same way.

Don`t you understand the role of shared moral codes - which evolve to suit changed circumstances (i.e., it`s "wrong" to litter, to keep slaves or to make racist, bigoted or ant-gay remarks) in our societies?

Are all shared consensuses "Orwellian" (which I thought involved a heavy-handed state role), or only non-Christian ones?

Or are you simply complaining that you don`t like DeLong`s effort to enlist public support, since you disagree with him?

On this note, do you remember Gene Callahan`s post on how a libertarian society might employ moral suasion as a key lever in addressing concerns about man`s roles in climate change?

TT
 

Hm, isn't the "consensus reality" trick how Gene_Callahan usually tries to win philosophical debates?

"Hey, our little academic circle decided that your view was wrong, so, out it goes. Oh yeah, I mean, I hear your yammering about how you produced actual 'applications' of your position, like mechanical computation machines, men on the moon, powered human flight, blah blah blah. But see, we here *agree* with each other, and we worked hard, and got these nice titles and everything. And you know what? That's what *really* matters in life."

Mutat the mutandis and you've got DeLong's position.
 

I agree. "consensus reality" is an odd choice of words for someone who actually means "reality".
 

Silas,

> "Oh yeah, I mean, I hear your yammering about how you produced actual 'applications' of your position, like mechanical computation machines, men on the moon, powered human flight..."

How are these examples applications of the position that everything, even consciousness, can be reduced to the movements of subatomic particles?

Your examples only show that once you understand how these particles behave, you can build computers and space shuttles.

Just wanted to point that out.
 

Andrew: I didn't advance that argument in my comment. I was just saying that practical results are a stronger kind of evidence than a clique's consensus -- you can't bribe, deceive, or wield your social status over nature.

I *did* advance the point about reductionism in the previous exchange with Gene, where you will find my answer: that making advances is predicated on some kind of reductionism, and antireductionist philosophies have historically been wrong in "proving" what could be done. You'll see (in the exchange) that taking that route leads you into believing that the study of birds is different from the study of aerodynamics and therefore the latter can't tell you anything about bird flight.

By the way, were you aware of the correspondence between logical truths and thermodynamically reversible processes?
 

Oops, here's the correct link.
 

Hi Silas,

> "I didn't advance that argument in my comment. I was just saying that practical results are a stronger kind of evidence than a clique's consensus -- you can't bribe, deceive, or wield your social status over nature."

Ahh, okay. Like I said, I just wanted to make that point.

> "By the way, were you aware of the correspondence between logical truths and thermodynamically reversible processes?"

I saw your comment about it. I wasn't exactly sure how to respond (I was out of my depth), and since you and Gene where carrying on the discussion, I thought I would drop it.

I should look into it though, thanks for bringing it up again.
 

""consensus reality" trick how Gene_Callahan usually tries to win philosophical debates?"

Silas, while I think your observation is fair, it seems to me the more telling point is that Gene`s own behavior belies his arguments that there are objective, universal moral truths.

Instead, we each perceive our own reality, influenced by incoming information, including the beliefs of others and apparent gaps between our mental map of reality and incoming information.

Our reliance on an apparent "consensus" should not be ignored. As a society of individuals, we are significantly affected by what others believe, and we often find we are weaker than we hope when faced with consensus views that we disagree with.

Further, each of us lacks the ability to independently confirm the validity of the beliefs about reality that we accept into our mental maps.

As a result, the "appeal to" authority, popularity, etc. fallacies are not simply rife, but unavoidable.

Further, scientists are finding that "consensus decision-making" processes are at work not only in groups of individuals, but even at more fundamental levels of personal perception, at the level of groups of neurons:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/ants_and_neurons/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH9-4V357R7-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1028980427&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=387f4778be933c406159a3815767e196
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html
 

Since no one has said it before... Maybe, someone (well, you Bob) should suggest to Mr. DeLong that he changes the motto of his blog to:
J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Consensus Reality with Both Hands?

It will explain a lot, with minimal effort, and at a glance.
 

Hello Dr. Murphy,

You did great tonight at Loyola University Maryland. Awesome speech.

Thanks
 

De Long lives the leftist bubble where lying, BS and deep dishonesty are OK -- so long as you are serving "the cause".

This is Orwell's world, and it is where De Long lives and breathes.
 

Remember when the Stalinist left put the word "objectively" before things as a modifier?

"Consensus" is De Long's never version of that ...
 

Will people get real? DeLong and others on the left are, from a libertarian/Austrian vantage, clearly wrong about a lot of things and stuck in a groupthink that to them seems quite clearly correct. But are they evil liars, or simply self-deceived?

Those who fall into demonization of others are themselves self-righteous victims of the self-same problem of partisan groupthink.

Groupthink is the norm, not the exception, of the human experience. Why? Because our greatest long-term threat has always been other groups of humans, so we feel a need to band together, and are constantly suspicious of other groups. Humans are ot unique in this behavior:

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/where-tasty-morsels-fear-to-tread/?tham=&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a3
 

You guys are overthinking De Long. He's not that complicated. He is clearly influenced by post-modernist thought that says there is no such thing as objective truth. Everything is opinion. The best we can hope for is to develop a consensus. So De Long is just admitting that their is no such thing as true economics, only consensus.

Then, when he adds "with the rest of us" appeals to authority, which humans have done since day one. He's saying "Members of my group are the high priests of economics so you have to follow us."
 

"[DeLong] is clearly influenced by post-modernist thought that says there is no such thing as objective truth."

Right, Roger. And all of the groupthink that we can observe in the history of man, as well as schooling and other collective behavior in other animals, isn`t objectively real either, but likewise just a product of post-modernist thought that says there is no such thing as objective truth.