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"Yet too many economists believe their quantitative tools and theoretical lenses are the only ones that count as “scientific,” leading them to dismiss disciplin

"Yet too many economists believe their quantitative tools and theoretical lenses are the only ones that count as “scientific,” leading them to dismiss disciplines that rely more on qualitative analysis and verbal theorizing" Sorry if I don't want to trust the fate of the nation's economy to someone's well intentioned verbal theorizing and 'qualitative' analysis. What could go wrong? (lol) I thought HN liked and trusted the scientific process and quantitative research methods over verbal theorizing and hand waving.

ajuc 8y ago
"More fiction is written in excel than in word". Better not to have a model than to follow a wrong model.
- charliesharding 8y ago
  Better not to have an economy than to have a flawed economy
  - ajuc 8y ago
    Non sequitur.
beat 8y ago
Social outcome is a political problem, not a scientific one. We should decide what we want society to look like, and use the scientifically/mathematically understood systems of economics to steer us in that direction. I don't think the market-driven ideals of 1980s economics were intended to deliver the results we are seeing today. They would not have predicted the drastic disparities, or the insecurity of working people. Therefore, even on a scientific basis, they're kinda fails.
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  I think it's likely that they were intended to deliver the results we see today. The public-facing rhetoric supporting those policies notwithstanding.
  - beat 8y ago
    I'm not that cynical. I find the whole concept of attributing malice as the primary motive of those whom I disagree with to be one of the most basic (and common) of political failures. No, I think they actually believed what they were saying. They believed the rising tide lifts all boats, and none of them would get swamped.
    - fallingfrog 8y ago
      But while those policies didn’t benefit the public they did benefit the people who formulated the policies. That’s the smoking gun. When someone shoots themselves in the foot it is likely an accident. If someone shoots me in the foot and somehow winds up with my wallet in their hands, I’m inclined to think it was intentional.
      - goodpoint 8y ago
        "smoking gun" is an understatement. neo-liberalism: "a modified form of liberalism tending to favour free-market capitalism." The movement has been very right wing, pro-corporate and pro-billionaire since the beginning.
        antidesitter 8y ago
        What do you mean by "right wing" here? Do you just mean "capitalist"?
        fallingfrog 8y ago
        The term “right wing” comes from revolutionary era France, where in the general assembly the aristocracy sat on the right, and everyone else sat on the left. In the modern world the “aristocracy” would be the capitalist class, so yes, anything that benefits the capitalist class is right wing, in that sense.
        antidesitter 8y ago
- antidesitter 8y ago
  > the market-driven ideals of 1980s economics... they're kinda fails On what basis? The share of people living in extreme poverty globally has gone down from 43% to less than 10% since 1980. Global literacy rates have climbed from 70% to 86% in the same period. Global child mortality has gone down from 11% to 4% in the same period. Global life expectancy has climbed from 63 to 72 in the same period. It's ironic that you claim they're failing on a "scientific" basis.
  - beat 8y ago
    I both agree and disagree. I agree that the world is getting much better, very rapidly. I disagree that this is a consequence of neoliberal economic policies. Rather, it's a consequence of technological advances that have little to do with economics. Vaccination isn't a neoliberal triumph.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    It is about the 1,5 million homeless children in the USA [1] It is about the income inequality which has increased since the '70s in the USA [2] It is about tax avoidance in the USA, and increasing taxation for the very rich, and how the discussion about it is being avoided as recently happened on Fox News or at the conference in Davos, Switzerland [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite... [3] https://twitter.com/rcbregman https://twitter.com/rcbregman
    - charliesharding 8y ago
      1 - Yes, numbers are high but by your own source, you can see the rate has not been increasing since 1980. 2 - Hand waving about income inequality is fine, it's an issue.. but what do you think should be done about it? Tax the rich just enough so that they don't leave and take their wealth somewhere else? How do we find that threshold? 3 - Tax avoidance is a law issue, not an economics issue. If it's legal, businesses will do it. I saw the conference in Davos. It was just a guy saying "but what about tax avoidance?". This was not brave or insightful, it was just more hand waving and blaming the ones who have been pillars of industry, creating jobs, products, and economic prosperity.
eeZah7Ux 8y ago
You are making a strawman. "the scientific process" has very little to do with economics.
- charliesharding 8y ago
  Making a strawman by quoting directly from the article where the author was criticizing traditional economists for relying on quantitative analysis as prescribed by the scientific method?
  - eeZah7Ux 8y ago
    Yes, and you are doing it again. "Yet too many economists believe their quantitative tools and theoretical lenses are the only ones that count as “scientific,” ..." Economist want to believe that economics is "scientific", while is clearly not, and you keep hinting that they are "relying on quantitative analysis as prescribed by the scientific method".
    - charliesharding 8y ago
      Are you saying that the scientific method cannot be applied to economics? :O While qualitative analysis can be considered empirical, it's not something often seen when money is concerned and the stakes are high. Most often you will see papers relying on qualitative methods in the "soft sciences" such as social science. Not to mention "verbal theorizing".. this is the kind of stuff that gets laughed out of real conversations.
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        Saying that the qualitative stuff is unscientific doesn't make the quantitative stuff scientific - just quantitative. At least, I think that's eeZah7Ux's point.
      - cannabis_sam 8y ago
        Economics IS a soft science, that’s the point people are trying to get across. I would also suggest you look up what you call ”the scientific method”, it’s a misconception that there is one abstract scientific method to apply to all fields of research. The process of science necesserally differ between formal, natural and social science. I personally like to summarize economics as ”the art of pretending that sociology (social science) is physics (natural science), by abusing math (formal science).”
tanderson92 8y ago
Right, we certainly would never have a global credit crisis, blowup, and ill-justified austerity based on rigorous quantitative financial economics. On the topic of the article: The desire to focus on questioning whether a framework for economic analysis and planning is achieving outcomes for humans that we want isn't properly and morally substituted by 'rigor' papering over one's policy preferences if those human outcomes are at odds with the human outcomes we want. If that makes less sense than I intended, let me simplify: A key part of the scientific method is examination of whether what you are doing is even working.
- charliesharding 8y ago
  You're totally right, there are issues. However, I think the current system is better than the alternatives I've heard. I would never claim that it's perfect and I'm always open to slow, small tweaks over time. The stakes are too high to drastically overhaul or throw out the same system that has resulted in our prosperity over the past 100 years.
RobertoG 8y ago
One thing is the metrics and, another, the model that you use to understand the metrics and to make predictions. The problem is that you can make a model to justify whatever you want. "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." John von Neumann. For instance, metrics tell us that public health system are more efficient, but this is anathema to the "neoliberal mindset" and, therefore, to their models. That's without taking into account the big interests that are passed as sound economics. Just check who finance many of the think tanks that publish economic recommendations. We could also talk about development economics and the recipes sold by the IMF.
rmah 8y ago
Yeah, I too will trust models built from statistical analysis over "thinking". As a side note, in the financial world -- where being right means making money and being wrong means losing money -- the quants now rule the trading floor because statistics based models run circles around people "thinking" all day long. Qualitative analysis and verbal theorizing.... lol
dalbasal 8y ago
The two "neoliberals" identified in this article are Hayek and Friedman. Hayek absolutely did not believe that his "quantitive and theoretical lens" counts as scientific. Apart from economics he's known as an opponent of scientism. I don't believe Friedman believed his theories to be scientific either.

ajuc 8y ago

"More fiction is written in excel than in word". Better not to have a model than to follow a wrong model.

charliesharding 8y ago
Better not to have an economy than to have a flawed economy
- ajuc 8y ago
  Non sequitur.

beat 8y ago

Social outcome is a political problem, not a scientific one. We should decide what we want society to look like, and use the scientifically/mathematically understood systems of economics to steer us in that direction. I don't think the market-driven ideals of 1980s economics were intended to deliver the results we are seeing today. They would not have predicted the drastic disparities, or the insecurity of working people. Therefore, even on a scientific basis, they're kinda fails.

fallingfrog 8y ago
I think it's likely that they were intended to deliver the results we see today. The public-facing rhetoric supporting those policies notwithstanding.
- beat 8y ago
  I'm not that cynical. I find the whole concept of attributing malice as the primary motive of those whom I disagree with to be one of the most basic (and common) of political failures. No, I think they actually believed what they were saying. They believed the rising tide lifts all boats, and none of them would get swamped.
  - fallingfrog 8y ago
    But while those policies didn’t benefit the public they did benefit the people who formulated the policies. That’s the smoking gun. When someone shoots themselves in the foot it is likely an accident. If someone shoots me in the foot and somehow winds up with my wallet in their hands, I’m inclined to think it was intentional.
    - goodpoint 8y ago
      "smoking gun" is an understatement. neo-liberalism: "a modified form of liberalism tending to favour free-market capitalism." The movement has been very right wing, pro-corporate and pro-billionaire since the beginning.
      - antidesitter 8y ago
        What do you mean by "right wing" here? Do you just mean "capitalist"?
        fallingfrog 8y ago
        The term “right wing” comes from revolutionary era France, where in the general assembly the aristocracy sat on the right, and everyone else sat on the left. In the modern world the “aristocracy” would be the capitalist class, so yes, anything that benefits the capitalist class is right wing, in that sense.
        antidesitter 8y ago
antidesitter 8y ago
> the market-driven ideals of 1980s economics... they're kinda fails On what basis? The share of people living in extreme poverty globally has gone down from 43% to less than 10% since 1980. Global literacy rates have climbed from 70% to 86% in the same period. Global child mortality has gone down from 11% to 4% in the same period. Global life expectancy has climbed from 63 to 72 in the same period. It's ironic that you claim they're failing on a "scientific" basis.
- beat 8y ago
  I both agree and disagree. I agree that the world is getting much better, very rapidly. I disagree that this is a consequence of neoliberal economic policies. Rather, it's a consequence of technological advances that have little to do with economics. Vaccination isn't a neoliberal triumph.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  It is about the 1,5 million homeless children in the USA [1] It is about the income inequality which has increased since the '70s in the USA [2] It is about tax avoidance in the USA, and increasing taxation for the very rich, and how the discussion about it is being avoided as recently happened on Fox News or at the conference in Davos, Switzerland [3] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite... [3] https://twitter.com/rcbregman https://twitter.com/rcbregman
  - charliesharding 8y ago
    1 - Yes, numbers are high but by your own source, you can see the rate has not been increasing since 1980. 2 - Hand waving about income inequality is fine, it's an issue.. but what do you think should be done about it? Tax the rich just enough so that they don't leave and take their wealth somewhere else? How do we find that threshold? 3 - Tax avoidance is a law issue, not an economics issue. If it's legal, businesses will do it. I saw the conference in Davos. It was just a guy saying "but what about tax avoidance?". This was not brave or insightful, it was just more hand waving and blaming the ones who have been pillars of industry, creating jobs, products, and economic prosperity.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago

You are making a strawman. "the scientific process" has very little to do with economics.

charliesharding 8y ago
Making a strawman by quoting directly from the article where the author was criticizing traditional economists for relying on quantitative analysis as prescribed by the scientific method?
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  Yes, and you are doing it again. "Yet too many economists believe their quantitative tools and theoretical lenses are the only ones that count as “scientific,” ..." Economist want to believe that economics is "scientific", while is clearly not, and you keep hinting that they are "relying on quantitative analysis as prescribed by the scientific method".
  - charliesharding 8y ago
    Are you saying that the scientific method cannot be applied to economics? :O While qualitative analysis can be considered empirical, it's not something often seen when money is concerned and the stakes are high. Most often you will see papers relying on qualitative methods in the "soft sciences" such as social science. Not to mention "verbal theorizing".. this is the kind of stuff that gets laughed out of real conversations.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Saying that the qualitative stuff is unscientific doesn't make the quantitative stuff scientific - just quantitative. At least, I think that's eeZah7Ux's point.
    - cannabis_sam 8y ago
      Economics IS a soft science, that’s the point people are trying to get across. I would also suggest you look up what you call ”the scientific method”, it’s a misconception that there is one abstract scientific method to apply to all fields of research. The process of science necesserally differ between formal, natural and social science. I personally like to summarize economics as ”the art of pretending that sociology (social science) is physics (natural science), by abusing math (formal science).”

tanderson92 8y ago

Right, we certainly would never have a global credit crisis, blowup, and ill-justified austerity based on rigorous quantitative financial economics. On the topic of the article: The desire to focus on questioning whether a framework for economic analysis and planning is achieving outcomes for humans that we want isn't properly and morally substituted by 'rigor' papering over one's policy preferences if those human outcomes are at odds with the human outcomes we want. If that makes less sense than I intended, let me simplify: A key part of the scientific method is examination of whether what you are doing is even working.

charliesharding 8y ago
You're totally right, there are issues. However, I think the current system is better than the alternatives I've heard. I would never claim that it's perfect and I'm always open to slow, small tweaks over time. The stakes are too high to drastically overhaul or throw out the same system that has resulted in our prosperity over the past 100 years.

RobertoG 8y ago

One thing is the metrics and, another, the model that you use to understand the metrics and to make predictions. The problem is that you can make a model to justify whatever you want. "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." John von Neumann. For instance, metrics tell us that public health system are more efficient, but this is anathema to the "neoliberal mindset" and, therefore, to their models. That's without taking into account the big interests that are passed as sound economics. Just check who finance many of the think tanks that publish economic recommendations. We could also talk about development economics and the recipes sold by the IMF.

rmah 8y ago

Yeah, I too will trust models built from statistical analysis over "thinking". As a side note, in the financial world -- where being right means making money and being wrong means losing money -- the quants now rule the trading floor because statistics based models run circles around people "thinking" all day long. Qualitative analysis and verbal theorizing.... lol

dalbasal 8y ago

The two "neoliberals" identified in this article are Hayek and Friedman. Hayek absolutely did not believe that his "quantitive and theoretical lens" counts as scientific. Apart from economics he's known as an opponent of scientism. I don't believe Friedman believed his theories to be scientific either.