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.
The missing link in cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
To learn more about science, turn off your electronic device and go outside and look around a bit. Nature is calling you. Go on. The internet will still be here.
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
I was the most emotional of the flight directors. Space really got me all honked up.
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
The main reason why people should care about research in fundamental physics is the same reason they care about astronomy and cosmology. People, children, want to know what we're made out of, how it works, and why the universe is the way it is.
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