RE: [asa] A parable of three investors

>>>A little more serious: the problem with this as an analogy is that
securities and commodities markets are established by people according to
certain predetermined legal rules. Those rules function as sort of
epistemic presuppositions concerning what is "true" about the market in
question. Given those presuppositions, one can look at historical data and
discern patterns that will likely obtain in the future. One such pattern
may be that companies with high p/e ratios tend to be riskier investments
than those with low p/e ratios, or that commodities tend to serve as a hedge
against bear markets. But these are just tendencies, which may or may not
obtain with regard to any given investment, or which may be overriden by
other factors (such as "destructive" technologies or unforseen world
events). So, even owning all the important presuppositions, the best one
can do is suggest opportunities and risks regarding the future of the
markets. There is no real positivism in investing.
 
Trying to port this over to Biblical interpretation doesn't work because the
argument is precisely about the presuppositions. We aren't given
predetermined legal rules about how to interpret the text. We have to
develop those rules based on experience, reason, history, etc. The question
about how to relate different sorts of extrabiblical evidence to the text is
a question about presuppositions, not a question of a applying a known
principle derived from more foundational presuppositions (such as the
principle that companies with higher p/e ratios tend to be riskier
investments). Moreover, as with investing, even when the relevant
presuppositions are reasonably clear, the principles derived from them
usually are guides rather than firm rules. Sometimes the Googles of the
world turn out to be good investments despite conventional wisdom about p/e
ratios.
 <<
 
Talk about not being able to follow a parable. ITS A PARABLE! However,
this illustrates that you want the parable to be accurate and historically
or scientifically true. Why wouldn't that desire flow to the Bible itself?
Are we better off if everytime we gave a choice, we chose an intepretation
of the Bible which makes it false
 
Why do you want THIS parable to be true, but NOT the stories of Genesis?
This is curious indeed!
 
Below brought me into contact with some of John Maynard Keynes sayings. I
found this one which seems to be ignored by most christian
apologists--something my PARABLE was griping about. Keynes said:
 
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? "
 
It is precisely this inability on all sides of the apologetical question
that drives me mad. Facts don't matter, beliefs do.
 
A couple of more comments. The market, my friend is irrational and
unpredictable. Legal rules are not what I am speaking of here anyway. No law
tells the market or a company stock to go up or down. John Maynard Keynes
wrote:"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
 
I also would recommend this quotation from Keynes, "Words ought to be a
little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking." New
Statesman and Nation (15 July 1933)
 
As to postivism, yes there is. If you make the right choice you get
rewarded. If you don't, you don't. The positivists wanted verification.
The market gives it in abundance. Kuhn wants falsification. The market gives
that as well.

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Received on Sat Oct 28 21:59:13 2006