Why I want to give up fishing

IN A country overpopulated with opinions, it’s bracing to listen to someone disciplined enough to dispense only the facts. The exchange doesn’t yield an easy headline or two, but it’s a fantastic reminder to keep asking ourselves the question that has challenged (and sustained) philosophers for ages: How do we really know what we know?

For the second time in a month, the University of San Carlos hosted last Friday a Nobel Laureate, for a lecture and discussion that the organizers hope will help promote “a culture of peace.” This time it was Dr. Finn E. Kydland, who in 2004 shared the Nobel Prize for Economics with Dr. Ed Prescott. Using data about the decisions made by households and businesses, the economists demonstrated that business cycles aren’t driven so much by changes in consumer demand, but by technological innovations and shocks, such as a rapid increase in oil prices.

In his talk, Dr. Kydland emphasized the need for governments to avoid policies that protect vested interests, prevent new technology in order to protect old-fashioned industries and enable corruption. For economic policy to be good, he said, it has to be credible, forward-looking and consistent. One student asked how he would characterize the economic policy that has made China one of the fastest-growing economies, and Dr. Kydland carefully responded that he wasn’t confident he had studied China enough to answer that question.

Given the chance to ask Dr. Kydland a few questions during the post-lecture cocktails, I began fishing—as journalists are conditioned to do—for pronouncements I could then use to anchor stories “relevant” to newspaper readers. Dr. Kydland, however, stayed admirably careful. Would adopting a legislated high-wage policy enable countries like the Philippines to lure its overseas workers back? “I’m not sure how it could work in the long run. That’s exactly why economic development is so important, because when it takes place, wages will automatically become higher, even without any interference from the government. That’s exactly what happened in Ireland.”

I asked a few more questions after that, about costly economic policy mistakes and the rising influence of sovereign wealth funds, and the answers were all very useful and interesting to me, but phrased in a manner so cautious that they couldn’t be corralled into a quick, provocative-headline-inducing news story that would fit in 15 newspaper column inches. At some point, I stopped “fishing” and just listened.

And then the day’s real lesson hit me: how hard-earned are the “truths” we allow to seep into public discourse? How often have we allowed spin to masquerade as substance? Few news sources are like Dr. Kydland, careful to comment only on the things he has learned first-hand. In a week crammed with public confessions, I thought it was an important reminder. How do we really know what we know? The rest is mere opinion.

(Appears, strangely enough, in the Op-Ed pages of today's Sun.Star Cebu.)