[lbo-talk] gore vidal is an old, cranky prick

[Eubulides]

Ted Winslow wrote:
>  Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
>> But there is not one iota of excuse for the gross stupidity that one can
>> judge the validity of a propositon by a characterization of the person
>> who prnounces it. It is either gross ignorance to do so or a serious
>> psychological problem if one is unable to consider a proposition in
>> abstractin fromt personality.
> 
> You can, though, do what you're doing here, i.e. explain, having shown 
> on rational grounds that an ad hominem argument is mistaken, persistence 
> in ad hominem as an expression of a "psychological problem".
> 
> This you will be required to do if you want to explain the most recent 
> financial crisis.
> 
> You will need to explain, for instance, the particular individual David 
> Li's misidentification of a rational method for measuring the risk of 
> correlated default with a mathematical formula based on the premise that 
> existing market prices already embodied such a method.  Then you will 
> have to explain why the "quant" mentality dominant in financial 
> derivative markets unreasonably embraced the formula as a measure of the 
> actual risk.
> 
> This had the result that the risk of correlated default on mortgage 
> backed securities on which correlated default was practically certain 
> was judged to be close to non-existent which led, in turn, to the 
> explosive growth both of these securities and of "insurance" against 
> their default.
> 
> So a "serious psychological problem" of "particular people" played a key 
> role in generating the conditions from which the crisis emerged when the 
> practically certain correlated default actually occurred.
> 
> Ted

=====================

Large scale epistemological errors and their adverse consequences are 
not necessarily indicative of psychological problems by the agents who 
make them. Would you say the history of medical diagnostics  over the 
last 200 years -- an error riddled epistemology if ever there was one -- 
is indicative of "serious psychological problems of "particular people"?

I've yet to see any evidence that Warren Buffett and many other wealthy 
people are psychopaths/sociopaths in the sense you've indicated 
capitalists to suffer from over your various posts over the years.

Ian