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I don't know if I agree with a lot of these and I don't know why these falsehoods pertain specifically to programmers and not the general populace. "People are

I don't know if I agree with a lot of these and I don't know why these falsehoods pertain specifically to programmers and not the general populace. "People are rational actors." should be number 1 and most of the other points are redundant. Much of this is just behavioral economics à la Kahneman and Tversky.

ardy42 8y ago
> "People are rational actors." should be number 1 and most of the other points are redundant. I disagree. The first three points are the most important because they reflect the deepest false assumptions that are most often on display when someone brings up economics around here. To caricature the attitude, imagine someone swaggering in citing "basic supply and demand" to justify some socially harmful action or outcome by saying the laws of physics say a corporation must act that way.
- metalchianti 8y ago
  I understand what you're saying but in my opinion the statement "People are NOT rational actors" leads directly to "Economics is NOT simple", "Econ-101 is NOT a comprehensive overview of the field", and "Economics is NOT morally neutral".
  - ardy42 8y ago
    You're correct, but in the same way that you'd be correct in saying you can derive most of modern mathematics from the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. Textbooks still go through the individual results rather than just stopping at an enumeration of the axioms. I think the first three points get to the main body of the actual errors many people make in the exact way they make them: overconfidence in their understanding and in their ability to be neutral.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    But these lists aren't just a list of axioms, from which the corollaries are left as an exercise to the reader.
  - qubex 8y ago
    It's a bit paradoxical and self-referential for a list of supposed Falsehoods to be enunciated and to include “Econ-101 is NOT a comprehensive...” as an item... having further reduced economics to an even lesser level of sophistication.
dwd 8y ago
Correct, you could generalise it further as: people believe economics reflects reality, not that they are simplistic models used to facilitate a political idea. The only economist I've heard of coming close to creating an all encompassing model is Steve Keen. It was through his work on debt cycles that he called the GFC before it occured. https://hackernoon.com/debunking-economics-and-why-bitcoin-will-fail-with-steve-keen-51f51eb9a477 https://hackernoon.com/debunking-economics-and-why-bitcoin-w...
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Economics do reflect reality but not in advance necessarily - granted in that case it is a reflection after reality comes knocking and it is clear that maybe mercantilism was a bad idea after all of their colonies revolted over a lack of representation and misrule bad enough they started doing /better/ economically after severing ties with their large home country. In hindsight that suggests majorly underutilizing the potential of the colony and colonists.

ardy42 8y ago

> "People are rational actors." should be number 1 and most of the other points are redundant. I disagree. The first three points are the most important because they reflect the deepest false assumptions that are most often on display when someone brings up economics around here. To caricature the attitude, imagine someone swaggering in citing "basic supply and demand" to justify some socially harmful action or outcome by saying the laws of physics say a corporation must act that way.

metalchianti 8y ago
I understand what you're saying but in my opinion the statement "People are NOT rational actors" leads directly to "Economics is NOT simple", "Econ-101 is NOT a comprehensive overview of the field", and "Economics is NOT morally neutral".
- ardy42 8y ago
  You're correct, but in the same way that you'd be correct in saying you can derive most of modern mathematics from the axioms of Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. Textbooks still go through the individual results rather than just stopping at an enumeration of the axioms. I think the first three points get to the main body of the actual errors many people make in the exact way they make them: overconfidence in their understanding and in their ability to be neutral.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  But these lists aren't just a list of axioms, from which the corollaries are left as an exercise to the reader.
- qubex 8y ago
  It's a bit paradoxical and self-referential for a list of supposed Falsehoods to be enunciated and to include “Econ-101 is NOT a comprehensive...” as an item... having further reduced economics to an even lesser level of sophistication.

dwd 8y ago

Correct, you could generalise it further as: people believe economics reflects reality, not that they are simplistic models used to facilitate a political idea. The only economist I've heard of coming close to creating an all encompassing model is Steve Keen. It was through his work on debt cycles that he called the GFC before it occured. https://hackernoon.com/debunking-economics-and-why-bitcoin-will-fail-with-steve-keen-51f51eb9a477 https://hackernoon.com/debunking-economics-and-why-bitcoin-w...

Nasrudith 8y ago
Economics do reflect reality but not in advance necessarily - granted in that case it is a reflection after reality comes knocking and it is clear that maybe mercantilism was a bad idea after all of their colonies revolted over a lack of representation and misrule bad enough they started doing /better/ economically after severing ties with their large home country. In hindsight that suggests majorly underutilizing the potential of the colony and colonists.