Some of the best theorizing comes after collecting data because then you become aware of another reality.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of data collection in understanding complex realities.
Robert J. Shiller's quote suggests that the most insightful theories emerge when one has a solid foundation of data. By gathering and analyzing information, we open ourselves up to new perspectives and truths about the world that we might not have recognized otherwise. This highlights the value of empirical evidence in enriching our understanding of various phenomena.
In practice
In a presentation on market trends, this quote can illustrate the importance of data-driven decision-making.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.
Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.
Perhaps most ridiculous of all is the suggestion that we 'keep' our radioactive garbage for the use of our descendants. This 'solution', I think, requires an immediate poll of the next 20,000 generations.
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.
Scientific discovery may not be better than sex, but the satisfaction lasts longer.
Thus science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths; neither with the collection of observations, nor with the invention of experiments, but with the critical discussion of myths, and of magical techniques and practices.
The question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, let alone of belief. The issue is simply one of risk management.
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