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Yeah, it's weird. Early economists clearly didn't have the data or computing capability available to do analysis on the real world. So instead the took some ins
by stupidcar 9y ago
Yeah, it's weird. Early economists clearly didn't have the data or computing capability available to do analysis on the real world. So instead the took some inspiration from it and then built these simplified models, that were at least possible to study and make conclusions about. However, because real-world economic outcomes are so important, politically and socially, people ended up taking their conclusions and trying to apply them back to the real world.
It's as if, after early AI researchers who took some inspiration from biology to create neural networks, the medical establishment then took their results and decided to use them as a guide to performing brain surgery.
- maxxxxx 9y ago"It's as if, after early AI researchers who took some inspiration from biology to create neural networks, the medical establishment then took their results and decided to use them as a guide to performing brain surgery. " I like that analogy.
- beberlei 9y agoIf you read Hayek, Mises ("Human Action", very hard to follow) or later Rothbart ("Man, Economy, State"; easier to read), they all derived the same conclusions entirely based on philosophy rather than the "neoclassical economists" who use mathematical models. And all this was researched and known before math creeped so deeply into economics.
- IshKebab 9y agoVery true, however you make it sound like economists actually do caveat their hilariously simple economic models with "this is a wild guess of how the real world works". Whenever I've read it it has been presented as "this is how a market works" or whatever.