4 ms·

As someone with an economics background (BA), and medical research career (concurrent with ML), I can say (subjectively), that this feels different.

vanderZwan 10y ago
Can you also put into words why? Sincere question, not being snarky; I also know the feeling of something feeling off but not knowing how to express it in words (yet).
- bante 10y ago
  (I'm not the person you replied to) In more established field it tends to be that people outside the field exaggerate things because the can't put them into the context of the field i.e. they lack domain knowledge. In "tech" it seem like it's the people in the field that exaggerate things because they can't put them into the context of the world.
- iwintermute 10y ago
  Not op, but also from economics background - the issue with economics in public perception for me is that is't became modern "religion"/ideology and moved far from proper science. Especially "mainstream" economics theory. So the issue is not that it's getting misinterpreted due to lack of understanding. The issue there is that it's getting unscientific and politicised purposefully.
  - FabHK 10y ago
    Great book on this is James Kwak's "Economism" - the abuse of purported economic insight for political purposes. As just one simple example, good old Hekscher-Olin trade theory (a neat general equilibrium model with 2 countries, 2 goods, and 2 factors of production, capital and labor) "shows" that free trade is a good thing, leading to a Pareto improvement. But of course, that's predicated on a whole host of assumptions that might or might not hold, and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the "winners" compensate the "losers", through redistribution. So, the economic case for free trade more or less includes the case for redistribution and compensation of those negatively affected by it - but that's often conveniently left out by proponents.
    - VHRanger 10y ago
      Right, but this is a political problem. H-O (or Ricardian trade) is about the simplest model of trade you can come up with to show the concept. It's not like economists don't know there are problems in distribution of wealth -- one of the most discussed papers last year (see these podcasts [1] [2]) talks about the effects of China massively expanding trade with the US in early 2000s on some parts of the country. Pretty much everyone has known for half a century what trade does, there's a political and logistical problem in redistribution, though (counties tend to get devastated, and people don't like to move). Interestingly, trade has extremely similar labor market effects to automation. [1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/david_autor_on_1.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/david_autor_on_1.ht... [2] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/
    - notahacker 10y ago
      Popular economics and popular "AI" as described in the article both seem like situations where everybody with an idea to push cites popularisation of research conclusions without understanding the limitations to the models and people with actual expertise in the field are often happy to play along with these hyperbolic, caveat-free popularisations because it helps their end goals. Sure, the economics profession and its popularisers might be a little more incentivised by political aims and AI research and AI's hypers and commercialisers a little more by money, but both fields suffer from the fact whilst researchers agonise over tradeoffs between tractability and predictive accuracy and fitting and overfitting and wonder whether the class of problem they're looking at is even soluble, the people with the most confidence in their assertions tend to get the column inches, even if they barely know what they're talking about. I only wonder whether it will ultimately lead to similarly widespread middlebrow dismissals[1] of the entire field of AI... [1]for the avoidance of doubt, not an accusation I'm levelling at the poster above
      - iwintermute 10y ago
        Wasn't it the case with the first AI winter? When the field was overhyped, oversold and then imploded?
  - VHRanger 10y ago
    Is you "economics background" a BA, by any chance? The people who say economics "became religion" are usually those whose only exposure to economics is through secondhand knowledge (ie. they read about it in media) or took a handful of undergraduate classes. Take a look at what modern economics research looks like [1]. Seriously, read __any__ of those articles and come tell me with a straight face it's not doing normal science (come up with theory, test with empirical data). Economics is the most scientific it's ever been, most graduate curriculum, and even some undergrad, are veering towards the applied statistics arm of economics because it's what's been most successful in the last 20 years. Granted there are empirical problems in, say, macro, but that's mainly due to lack of data. Economics is also probably the most politicized it's been in a long time at the moment, I agree with you in that. Apart from a few venues like Planet Money or Freakonomics, there isn't much pop-economics like there is pop-science in other fields like physics. Moreover, the incentive to politicize economics is much greater than other sciences. [1] http://www.nber.org/new.html http://www.nber.org/new.html is a good place for free versions of upcoming papers.
    - gone35 10y ago
      Sure. The first NBER paper in [1] features the following jewel (p.34): "B. Calibration To quantitatively decompose the contribution of different factors to the growth of shadow banks and fintech firms, we first have to calibrate the model to the conforming loan market data." I can tell you with a straight face that is not normal science. Economists themselves increasingly recognize so-called "calibration" is a farce.
      - VHRanger 10y ago
        If the paper gets traction and the model specification is indeed not robust, the first thing you'll see in a few months is something like "paper xyz: comment" driving holes in the methodology getting even more traction. Empirical microeconomics is fairly open about methodology flaws and critiques. Also, by the way, you see pretty much the same type of thing in a ton of fMRI neuroscience, medical and psychology studies (even the ones you'll later see on NPR or ted talks). You shouldn't ever believe any one empirical result in basically anything except maybe CERN particle physics type work.

vanderZwan 10y ago

Can you also put into words why? Sincere question, not being snarky; I also know the feeling of something feeling off but not knowing how to express it in words (yet).

bante 10y ago
(I'm not the person you replied to) In more established field it tends to be that people outside the field exaggerate things because the can't put them into the context of the field i.e. they lack domain knowledge. In "tech" it seem like it's the people in the field that exaggerate things because they can't put them into the context of the world.
iwintermute 10y ago
Not op, but also from economics background - the issue with economics in public perception for me is that is't became modern "religion"/ideology and moved far from proper science. Especially "mainstream" economics theory. So the issue is not that it's getting misinterpreted due to lack of understanding. The issue there is that it's getting unscientific and politicised purposefully.
- FabHK 10y ago
  Great book on this is James Kwak's "Economism" - the abuse of purported economic insight for political purposes. As just one simple example, good old Hekscher-Olin trade theory (a neat general equilibrium model with 2 countries, 2 goods, and 2 factors of production, capital and labor) "shows" that free trade is a good thing, leading to a Pareto improvement. But of course, that's predicated on a whole host of assumptions that might or might not hold, and furthermore predicated on the assumption that the "winners" compensate the "losers", through redistribution. So, the economic case for free trade more or less includes the case for redistribution and compensation of those negatively affected by it - but that's often conveniently left out by proponents.
  - VHRanger 10y ago
    Right, but this is a political problem. H-O (or Ricardian trade) is about the simplest model of trade you can come up with to show the concept. It's not like economists don't know there are problems in distribution of wealth -- one of the most discussed papers last year (see these podcasts [1] [2]) talks about the effects of China massively expanding trade with the US in early 2000s on some parts of the country. Pretty much everyone has known for half a century what trade does, there's a political and logistical problem in redistribution, though (counties tend to get devastated, and people don't like to move). Interestingly, trade has extremely similar labor market effects to automation. [1] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/david_autor_on_1.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/03/david_autor_on_1.ht... [2] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-eat-americas-jobs/
  - notahacker 10y ago
    Popular economics and popular "AI" as described in the article both seem like situations where everybody with an idea to push cites popularisation of research conclusions without understanding the limitations to the models and people with actual expertise in the field are often happy to play along with these hyperbolic, caveat-free popularisations because it helps their end goals. Sure, the economics profession and its popularisers might be a little more incentivised by political aims and AI research and AI's hypers and commercialisers a little more by money, but both fields suffer from the fact whilst researchers agonise over tradeoffs between tractability and predictive accuracy and fitting and overfitting and wonder whether the class of problem they're looking at is even soluble, the people with the most confidence in their assertions tend to get the column inches, even if they barely know what they're talking about. I only wonder whether it will ultimately lead to similarly widespread middlebrow dismissals[1] of the entire field of AI... [1]for the avoidance of doubt, not an accusation I'm levelling at the poster above
    - iwintermute 10y ago
      Wasn't it the case with the first AI winter? When the field was overhyped, oversold and then imploded?
- VHRanger 10y ago
  Is you "economics background" a BA, by any chance? The people who say economics "became religion" are usually those whose only exposure to economics is through secondhand knowledge (ie. they read about it in media) or took a handful of undergraduate classes. Take a look at what modern economics research looks like [1]. Seriously, read __any__ of those articles and come tell me with a straight face it's not doing normal science (come up with theory, test with empirical data). Economics is the most scientific it's ever been, most graduate curriculum, and even some undergrad, are veering towards the applied statistics arm of economics because it's what's been most successful in the last 20 years. Granted there are empirical problems in, say, macro, but that's mainly due to lack of data. Economics is also probably the most politicized it's been in a long time at the moment, I agree with you in that. Apart from a few venues like Planet Money or Freakonomics, there isn't much pop-economics like there is pop-science in other fields like physics. Moreover, the incentive to politicize economics is much greater than other sciences. [1] http://www.nber.org/new.html http://www.nber.org/new.html is a good place for free versions of upcoming papers.
  - gone35 10y ago
    Sure. The first NBER paper in [1] features the following jewel (p.34): "B. Calibration To quantitatively decompose the contribution of different factors to the growth of shadow banks and fintech firms, we first have to calibrate the model to the conforming loan market data." I can tell you with a straight face that is not normal science. Economists themselves increasingly recognize so-called "calibration" is a farce.
    - VHRanger 10y ago
      If the paper gets traction and the model specification is indeed not robust, the first thing you'll see in a few months is something like "paper xyz: comment" driving holes in the methodology getting even more traction. Empirical microeconomics is fairly open about methodology flaws and critiques. Also, by the way, you see pretty much the same type of thing in a ton of fMRI neuroscience, medical and psychology studies (even the ones you'll later see on NPR or ted talks). You shouldn't ever believe any one empirical result in basically anything except maybe CERN particle physics type work.