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Would it be fair to say that the balance should be sought in the aggregate, not in the individual?
No, I don't think that's preferrable. That just leads to pointless disagreements based on both sides having an inaccurate understanding
Is there a guide? Understanding academic economists for Dummies?
Good idea. I might make a post about this for Pleb Economist. If I had to give a short answer, I'd probably focus on:
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Academic economics is better at understanding the past than predicting the future
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Academic economics is better at highlighting tradeoffs than making decisions
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Many academic economists make claims that go way beyond what's justified by the evidence, so take what they say with a grain of salt.
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Even when they don't, other people use their research to make irresponsible claims. It's an unfortunate aspect of the profession that the economists themselves have little control over.
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No, I don't think that's preferrable. That just leads to pointless disagreements based on both sides having an inaccurate understanding
The problem with that is that there will always be dissent for the sake of dissent, right? But you're probably right that some sort of middle truth is preferable. I sometimes wonder how we get there from polarization. How does society depolarize?
I might make a post about this for Pleb Economist.
That'd be awesome.
Even when they don't, other people use their research to make irresponsible claims. It's an unfortunate aspect of the profession that the economists themselves have little control over.
This happens even to me and I'm not an academic. I've seen whole theories being ascribed to some code even though I thought I'd made it crystal clear. It's at times hard to take the blame for not stating things unambiguously enough when it happens, which is also part of how I get to "dissent for the sake of dissent".
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Understanding academic economists for Dummies?