[kanjus]

What do people think of Marginal Revolution? I get quite a lot of value from the link roundups, but find that the original content (the non-roundup posts) are about praising their ability to make predictions and their own opinion pieces (“recommended throughout”), brushing away criticism, regurgitating opinions of other experts on things they have no clue about, taking low-brow jabs at “the left“, etc.

Case in point: MR authors spent the last months arguing for the herd immunity approach, and bringing up Sweden once a week, and now apparently they were just waiting for data.

I just don’t get why they get so much readership and are seen to be similar to Slate Star Codex, Gwern, etc. (which have their own shortcomings, but are on a different level in terms of their reasoning ability).

[dagw]

The guy behind Marginal Revolution is undeniably a very smart dude and writes a lot of good stuff for various outlets. MR however is often used more as a dumping ground for half thought out ideas floating around in his head and often lacks the rigor and review that his other writing gets. Much of the stuff there is like the first draft for ideas that will either get discarded or turned into a more thoughtful, nuanced and researched piece down the road.

But as I said, he's a smart guy, and on the whole tends to get things more or less right.

[lacker]

Marginal Revolution is a lot more mainstream than Gwern or Slate Star Codex. Tyler Cowen is one of the most influential economists today. His Bloomberg column might have more reach than the MR blog though. So the topics are really different - MR will discuss many issues that are central to the current “national conversation”, with more of a broad-based style of reasoning, whereas Gwern and SSC will go much more into detail on a small set of topics, with more of a “rationalist” style of reasoning. I wouldn’t say they are “seen to be similar”.

Personally, I rate MR quite highly. I just think the reasoning is better-argued and the topics are more often something I’m interested in, compared to basically any other blog. Gwern and SSC are great too though.

[erterbest]

I agree. It feels like a case of someone who've had too much recognition or respect (deserved or not), and now believe they are without fault despite a clear regression in reasoning ability...

[unsrsly]

I certainly agree with you. Part of the core MR game is to flirt with right wing talking points but keep on playing both sides to get attention. This is really unfortunate and distracting when it comes to something like covid that is already so politicized. Their actual analysis of the pandemic has been hopelessly naive and lacking in rigor. If there's one good contribution they've made, it's been pointing out the ways in which certain regulations have hindered the response without adding value. Otherwise, it's only good for the links.

[jjtheblunt]

What's Marginal Revolution?

[foogazi]

Tyler Cowen‘s blog