by Sandwichman
Again in December, 2024, The Wall Avenue Journal carried a function on an economics preprint analysis article that confirmed shocking findings. David Autor and Daron Acemoglu lauded the preprint. “It’s fantastic,” stated Acemoglu. “I was floored,” stated Autor. The 2 economists appeared in a photograph flanking the writer, Aidan Toner-Rodgers. Seems Autor was proper. The paper was implausible, however not in a great way.
On Might 16, The WSJ reported on the unraveling of the story beneath a headline proclaiming “MIT Says It No Longer Stands Behind Student’s AI Research Paper”:”The paper was championed by MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, who gained the 2024 economics Nobel, and David Autor. The 2 stated they had been approached in January by a pc scientist with expertise in supplies science who questioned how the expertise labored, and the way a lab that he wasn’t conscious of had skilled positive aspects in innovation. Unable to resolve these issues, they introduced it to the eye of MIT, which started conducting a assessment.
MIT’s presse launch said it “has no confidence in the provenance, reliability or validity of the data and has no confidence in the veracity of the research contained in the paper.”
Autor was “heartbroken” by the developments, “More than just embarrassing, it’s heartbreaking,” he stated.
Autor’s gullibility has been a recurring concern of the Sandwichman. In 2013, I known as consideration to a 2011 white paper by Autor and Lawrence Katz that claimed:
“Main economists from Paul Samuelson to Paul Krugman have labored to allay the concern that technological advances could cut back general employment, inflicting mass unemployment as staff are displaced by machines. This ‘lump of labor fallacy’—positing that there’s a fastened quantity of labor to be completed in order that elevated labor productiveness reduces employment —is intuitively interesting and demonstrably false.“
There isn’t any extra confidence within the provenance, reliability or validity of the fallacy declare than M.I.T. has within the analysis contained in Toner-Rodgers’s article. Opposite to what Autor and Katz say, it’s the fallacy declare that’s intuitively interesting — to economists — however demonstrably false. I’ve demonstrated the flimsiness of the declare and have simply completed a 10,000 phrase essay detailing its origin and historical past.
In 2014 Autor offered a paper at Jackson Gap, Wyoming containing the next declare:
“Economists have traditionally rejected the issues of the Luddites for example of the ‘lump of labor’ fallacy, the supposition that a rise in labor productiveness inevitably reduces employment as a result of there may be solely a finite quantity of labor to do.“
This struck me as moderately odd as a result of if there may be not “only a finite amount of work to do” there have to be an infinite quantity. That is Marc Andreessen degree mathematical illiteracy. Andreessen blustered the “counterargument” to the alleged lump of labour fallacy “comes from economists such as Milton Friedman, who believe that human wants and needs are infinite, which means there is always more to do.” Human desires and desires can no extra be “infinite” than can the quantity of labor to do. There are a finite variety of individuals on earth and a finite variety of hours within the day. Regardless of how a lot you lengthen the working day and improve labour drive participation the product shall be a finite quantity.
Then in 2020, Autor was interviewed by NPR’s Planet Cash on the American Financial Affiliation convention in San Diego. They had been asking economists “what is the most useful idea in economics?” Autor’s reply was… envelope, please… BIG SURPRISE! The lump-of-labor fallacy! Within the interview, he rehearsed the usual boilerplate about there not being a “finite” quantity of labor to be completed so we aren’t at risk of working out of jobs. Then he certified that with the necessity for job coaching and productiveness positive aspects within the service sector so that they gained’t be WORSE jobs. One begins to marvel how such a pointy cookie could possibly be bamboozled by fraudulent analysis.
Daron Acemoglu seems to be from the identical Planet as Autor. In Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Energy, Prosperity, and Poverty, Acemoglu and his co-author James Robinson wrote that “Luddites” burned down the home of “John Kay, English inventor of the flying shuttle” in 1753. The fictional redresser, Ned Ludd, didn’t seem on the scene till November 1811. The story of the home burning down could also be apocryphal. Early accounts of John Kay’s invention don’t point out it. Later, some sources say that his son, or brother, Robert was the sufferer. But others say that his home was damaged into and the machines in it smashed.
Here’s a cease motion video I made 12 years in the past. David Autor is on the quilt body after which reveals up fifth within the video
