June 7th, 2011

John Holbo, blogging at Crooked Timber:

The highest quality signals are given off by friends disagreeing with friends and enemies agreeing with enemies.

He’s writing about peer review, but the truth is of wider application.

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6 Responses to “Thought for the day”

  1. koreyel says:

    Friend Wimberley…
    I’ll have to disagree with you.

    The highest quality signals are the smoke signals that hide the tracks of our oligarchs.

    We’re supposed to fret about Lance’s 2001 urine test…
    We’re supposed to gawk at Wiener’s step-ins…
    We’re supposed to scowl at Edward’s indictment…
    We’re supposed to bray at Palin’s history lessons…

    Meanwhile…

    The fact that the Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein lied to Congress goes unattended and forgotten.

  2. Chaz says:

    This is why so many centrists pine for bipartisan solutions. They are incapable of evaluating policies themselves, and judge everything by how many people agree to it.

  3. joel hanes says:

    “Only the enemy shows you where you are weak”

  4. paul says:

    It’s one of those “a great nation will fall” sorts of truths. It’s pretty clear in both cases that there’s an important signal, but much less clear what it is.

  5. Ed Whitney says:

    But koreyel:

    What can you be talking about? Just consider how the Peter Diamond scandal has burst across all the news media for the past several days. Why, you can scarcely look at TV news or visit a news-related website without seeing banner headlines denouncing Richard Shelby for having blocked his nomination to the Federal Reserve at a time when our country’s future hangs in a precarious balance, and a Nobel Laureate with special expertise on unemployment could provide the kind of leadership that is so desperately needed in a crisis like the one we face. The deafening chorus calling for Shelby’s resignation in the face of this scandal, the horror of the political pundits of all persuasions at this unconscionable sabotage of the country’s prospects for economic recovery, the constant drumbeats of nothing but “Peter Diamond, Peter Diamond, Peter Diamond” all testify against what you are trying to insinuate.

  6. Wonks Anonymous says:

    I think in law the have the term “admission against interest”.