This [post-keynesian economics] literature has produced not just a diagnosis of the [cluelessness] problem but a set of practical heuristics and institutional responses that could meaningfully supplement EA analysis in situations of deep uncertainty.
Cheers I will take a look. Though I suspect if you are responding to the arguments in these particular papers, and those papers don’t draw on post-keynsianism, I worry they won’t have put forward the strongest possible case.
Keep in mind post-keynsianism has been developing these ideas of how to manage cluelessness for more than 100 years.
Can I suggest perhaps using a chatbot to critique your analysis so that you can see where post-keynsians may agree and disagree with you. To get an idea, this was a summary I was able to generate for DiGiovanni’s post (I promise I will read it later but just wanted to get something back to you quickly):
Post-Keynesians would read DiGiovanni’s post as a talented insider finally arriving at conclusions Keynes/PKs have held since the 20s, but stopping just short of the full break. They’d applaud the demolition of the six EA approaches. They’d say the positive alternative shouldn’t be “imprecise UEV plus near-term welfare” but rather a non-probabilistic framework built around conventions, weight of evidence, option-value preservation, and institutional robustness — and they’d point out that PKs have been developing exactly this toolkit, largely ignored by the EA and rationalist communities, for years.
Further, the article stays entirely inside a probabilistic framework — even its critique of expected value uses expected value concepts (UEV, credences, imprecise probabilities). From a PK view, the deeper missed point is that genuine uncertainty isn’t just hard to quantify, it’s unquantifiable in principle, and no refinement of the probability calculus fixes that.
The other big gap is the absence of a positive theory of action under true uncertainty. Keynes, Shackle, and Davidson all had answers — conventions, weight of evidence, option-value preservation — but DiGiovanni ends up in a kind of paralysis (“suspend judgment”) without drawing on this tradition. PKs would also flag the missing institutional dimension: the article assumes the problem is individual decision-making under uncertainty, when the Keynesian answer was always partly collective — build institutions that reduce the damage uncertainty can do, rather than trying to calculate through it.
The chatbot completely misses DiGiovanni’s point fwiw aha. Literally all of the objections it raises are explicitly addressed in what I’ve linked or elsewhere in his sequence. :)
No pressure to read anything, though. It’s a thorny topic and understanding all the complex details takes time.
lol embarrassing. Looks like it didn’t actually read it. Will try again…
Would be very interested to hear from you though, if you do your own analysis of what PK would critique from those posts. (You will be far better placed than me to make sure it doesn’t miss things)
Fwiw, DiGiovanni and myself argue that following such heuristics is not an appropriate response to the deep-uncertainty situation EAs (at least impartial ones) face. We don’t directly respond to the literature you cite, but rather to the arguments found in the following refs you might be interested in: Thorstad & Mogensen 2020; Tomasik 2015; The Global Priorities Institute 2024, §§1.2.1 and 4.2.1; Grant & Quiggin 2013.
Thanks for posting this :)
Cheers I will take a look. Though I suspect if you are responding to the arguments in these particular papers, and those papers don’t draw on post-keynsianism, I worry they won’t have put forward the strongest possible case.
Keep in mind post-keynsianism has been developing these ideas of how to manage cluelessness for more than 100 years.
Can I suggest perhaps using a chatbot to critique your analysis so that you can see where post-keynsians may agree and disagree with you. To get an idea, this was a summary I was able to generate for DiGiovanni’s post (I promise I will read it later but just wanted to get something back to you quickly):
Post-Keynesians would read DiGiovanni’s post as a talented insider finally arriving at conclusions Keynes/PKs have held since the 20s, but stopping just short of the full break. They’d applaud the demolition of the six EA approaches. They’d say the positive alternative shouldn’t be “imprecise UEV plus near-term welfare” but rather a non-probabilistic framework built around conventions, weight of evidence, option-value preservation, and institutional robustness — and they’d point out that PKs have been developing exactly this toolkit, largely ignored by the EA and rationalist communities, for years.
Further, the article stays entirely inside a probabilistic framework — even its critique of expected value uses expected value concepts (UEV, credences, imprecise probabilities). From a PK view, the deeper missed point is that genuine uncertainty isn’t just hard to quantify, it’s unquantifiable in principle, and no refinement of the probability calculus fixes that.
The other big gap is the absence of a positive theory of action under true uncertainty. Keynes, Shackle, and Davidson all had answers — conventions, weight of evidence, option-value preservation — but DiGiovanni ends up in a kind of paralysis (“suspend judgment”) without drawing on this tradition. PKs would also flag the missing institutional dimension: the article assumes the problem is individual decision-making under uncertainty, when the Keynesian answer was always partly collective — build institutions that reduce the damage uncertainty can do, rather than trying to calculate through it.
The chatbot completely misses DiGiovanni’s point fwiw aha. Literally all of the objections it raises are explicitly addressed in what I’ve linked or elsewhere in his sequence. :)
No pressure to read anything, though. It’s a thorny topic and understanding all the complex details takes time.
lol embarrassing. Looks like it didn’t actually read it. Will try again…
Would be very interested to hear from you though, if you do your own analysis of what PK would critique from those posts. (You will be far better placed than me to make sure it doesn’t miss things)