7 ms·

The idea that awarding a prize to the most respected scientists in a particular field is solely for the purpose of advancing an ideology is in itself extremely

by taffer 7y ago

The idea that awarding a prize to the most respected scientists in a particular field is solely for the purpose of advancing an ideology is in itself extremely anti-intellectual and biased. Have you even looked at the work of the scientists who received the prize?

ernst_klim 7y ago
I doubt that. When you see evaluations like "plot", "neoliberal", "cultural-marxist" etc etc, you're dealing with a heavily ideology-loaded stuff, which is by definition based on selectivity of facts (since the reality never follows ideology, reality can't be fit into ideology, and even soviet union had ideology only on paper).
- jevgeni 7y ago
  Could you please elaborate, because I’m sure am not alone in my complete failure to understand what you mean.
  - ernst_klim 7y ago
    Neither social institution could adhere to any rigid ideology. A social institution, which does not correct basic assumptions and axioms lying in its foundation according to new knowledge and data, is doomed. Any widespread movement or social institution exists under the pressure of new facts, new social norms, hence any social institution is a flexible moving target. Only the heterodox, marginal movements can adhere to a rigid ideology. Mainstream science can't have one, only marginal branches can. Modern economics is not a "neoliberal" plot, of course, there is a strong scientific discussion, various competing theories within it, which are constantly being validated using statistics, and omitted, if proved wrong. Economics today, 25 years ago and 50 years ago vastly differs even in methodology, it's a very vigorous field. To say that this edifice is grounded in some ideology, one needs to omit all that constant scientific discussion, render empirically proved parts as ideological, axioms as "truths" etc. This kind of intellectual dishonesty could come only from a ideology-loaded follower of some heterodox (and usually pseudoscientific) theory, most likely grounded in some ideology (guessing from value judgments of op like "neoliberal" -- left one) rather than verified by empiric data.
    - jevgeni 7y ago
      Very well put! Thank you! I agree.
    - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      I think the problem is many mistake mainstream political opinion for the prevailing scientific opinion. Most economists do not agree with the way our economy is being managed right now. The current political prevailing wind is definitely neoliberal. Of-course most people do not read economics papers.
    - morningseagulls 7y ago
      >Mainstream science can't have one, only marginal branches can. This is like native speakers of a language (say, English) asserting that only non-native speakers of their language have accents. You do, you just speak with an accent that's considered to be standard. >This kind of intellectual dishonesty could come only from a ideology-loaded follower of some heterodox (and usually pseudoscientific) theory, most likely grounded in some ideology (guessing from value judgments of op like "neoliberal" -- left one) rather than verified by empiric data. And mainstream (i.e. neoclassical) economics[0] does that, even in the face of mathematical reality, let alone empirical data.[1] The ignorance of the implications of the SMD theorem,[2] because it implies that the aggregation problem remains unsolved and the fundamental breakdown of the "law" of demand, was a profoundly anti-intellectual move. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_economics [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269064 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenschein%E2%80%93Mantel%E2%80%93Debreu_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenschein%E2%80%93Mantel%E2...
      - ernst_klim 7y ago
        > The ignorance of the implications of the SMD theorem You are confusing different things together. Mainstream exists in a form it is not because Mainstream translates the Truth™, but because there are no better theories yet. Newton's mechanics is worse than Einstein theory in describing celestial bodies' movements, yet the former was better than anything until the latter appeared. I have a lot to argue against neoclassical economy, especially about its view of a person as a profit-driven (rational, as they call it) degenerate, or fondness of regressions in the mid of chaos. Yet it changes in the right direction, behavioral economics appeared, regressions are taken with a grain of salt now, rational choice is heavily criticized. The problem is that no heterodox theory provides both an axiomatic basis and empirical framework to compete mainstream economic science. What would you propose instead of Neoclassical economics? Nothing? It's not ignorance to accept theory that is not always true, it's stupidity to omit theory without having anything better, as Lakatos would say. As for ideology, I don't see such a thing. People in mainstream science vary from Joseph "We all need to follow Venezuela example" Stiglitz to post Austrians like William White.
ianleeclark 7y ago
> The idea that awarding a prize to the most respected scientists in a particular field is solely for the purpose of advancing an ideology is in itself extremely anti-intellectual and biased. Man, if you want to hear about anti-intellectualism and bias, go and look at the SMD theorem. Economists will continue to assume that Macroeconomic demand curves will continue to slope downward.
- taffer 7y ago
  All models are wrong by definition. The purpose of a model is to be a simplification of reality in order to gain insights and not to perfectly replicate reality. In physics, there is even the metaphor of the spherical cow[1] to make fun of the need to simplify things in order to understand them. Just because a model is simple doesn't mean that it is bad or worse than a model with more complex assumptions. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19991009000912/http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xray/research/snrs/spherical_cow.html https://web.archive.org/web/19991009000912/http://lheawww.gs...
  - ianleeclark 7y ago
    > All models are wrong by definition. I would agree. > Just because a model is simple doesn't mean that it is bad or worse than a model with more complex assumptions. I'm not condemning it being simple. If we were just talking about small or exceptional exclusions to the rules like Giffen or Veblen goods, then I wouldn't have made the above post. We're talking about fundamentally incorrect building blocks that aren't even acknowledged in the literature.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >In physics, there is even the metaphor of the spherical cow[1] to make fun of the need to simplify things in order to understand them. It's a joke to remind us of a sobering fact: that unreal assumptions lead to unreal results. >Just because a model is simple doesn't mean that it is bad or worse than a model with more complex assumptions. But if a model with more complex assumptions is a better approximation to reality than a model with simpler assumptions, would you not adopt the former? What has happened in economics is that people have clung on to, say, Newtonian mechanics, instead of embracing Einstein's relativity. Even this does not quite adequately express the enormity of the inertia that you see in economics, because at least Newtonian mechanics is right most of the time, whereas neoclassical economics is wrong most of the time. The SMD theorem guarantees, for example, that most market demand curves will NEVER satisfy the fundamental neoclassical "law" of demand. Let me also point out that your comment is rehashing Friedman's positivism.[0] Even in quantum mechanics, which has for decades been dominated by the positivism of the Copenhagen interpretation, people are now transcending that positivism because they've come to the realisation that quantum mechanics can't be advanced without overcoming the crutch of positivism. And Friedman's assertions about assumptions are unsound anyway.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in_Positive_Economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in_Positive_Economics [1] For a critique of Friedman's argument about assumptions in models, see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1981.tb01195.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6435....
jhbadger 7y ago
It's hardly "anti-intellectual" to note that unlike the actual prizes funded by Nobel over a century ago, the economics "Nobel" was created by the Swedish Central Bank only 50 years ago. That's not exactly an unbiased source. If there was no chemistry prize and Dow Chemical or Bayer stepped in to create one, it wouldn't be anywhere as respected as the actual Chemistry Nobel, would it?
- jevgeni 7y ago
  I like how this is going towards “Swedish Central Bank is a for-profit organisation”
- taffer 7y ago
  The anti-intellectual part was to claim that the awarding of prizes to prominent scientists only served to promote a certain ideology. It is like saying that the Nobel Prize for Medicine would exist only to promote orthodox medicine. > If there was no chemistry prize and Dow Chemical or Bayer stepped in to create one, it wouldn't be anywhere as respected as the actual Chemistry Nobel, would it? The Nobel Prize was created by the owner of a Swedish chemical and weapons company. I don't see what's so great about it. And as for the Swedish Central Bank, I think Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head: Oh, and cue the usual complaints that this isn’t a “real” Nobel. Hey, this is just a prize given by a bunch of Swedes, as opposed to the other prizes, which are given out by, um, bunches of Swedes.
  - hedvig 7y ago
    I think its still fair to say that economics is not a science the way medicine is.
    - morningseagulls 7y ago
      >I think its still fair to say that economics is not a science the way medicine is. Which is very unfortunate, because like medicine, the practice of economics has the power to influence decisions and affect lives.
    - 7y ago
badpun 7y ago
Economics is not a science though.
- me_me_me 7y ago
  Therefore economist created their own award and pushed it as 'nobel' price in economics. Quite hilarious .
- throwaway8879 7y ago
  It is a science, just a very dismal one!
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
The Nobel for Economics is not down to Mr Nobel. It was instituted by the Swedish Central Bank, and I think the selection committee is organised differently to the real Nobels. Edit: Brain having a moment off - s/Swiss/Swedish/
- exoque 7y ago
  The swedish central bank, not the swiss.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  The selection processes for the real Nobels differ significantly in their organization, for what it's worth, though it's mostly Peace vs all the others... In particular, for the Peace prize the Norwegian Parliament appoints a 5-person committee that then selects the prize winner, while for the others various Swedish academic institutions select a committee that then proposes laureates back to a larger body that votes on them.
jtolmar 7y ago
> The idea that awarding a prize to the most respected scientists in a particular field is solely for the purpose of advancing an ideology is in itself extremely anti-intellectual and biased. The very idea of it is anti-intellectual? That's absurd. There's nothing magical about awarding prizes to scientists that prevents it from being done with a motivation. The committee famously cancelled the prize for a year to avoid awarding it to Einstein, since he was a Jew with radical political beliefs.

by taffer 7y ago

ernst_klim 7y ago

I doubt that. When you see evaluations like "plot", "neoliberal", "cultural-marxist" etc etc, you're dealing with a heavily ideology-loaded stuff, which is by definition based on selectivity of facts (since the reality never follows ideology, reality can't be fit into ideology, and even soviet union had ideology only on paper).

jevgeni 7y ago
Could you please elaborate, because I’m sure am not alone in my complete failure to understand what you mean.
- ernst_klim 7y ago
  Neither social institution could adhere to any rigid ideology. A social institution, which does not correct basic assumptions and axioms lying in its foundation according to new knowledge and data, is doomed. Any widespread movement or social institution exists under the pressure of new facts, new social norms, hence any social institution is a flexible moving target. Only the heterodox, marginal movements can adhere to a rigid ideology. Mainstream science can't have one, only marginal branches can. Modern economics is not a "neoliberal" plot, of course, there is a strong scientific discussion, various competing theories within it, which are constantly being validated using statistics, and omitted, if proved wrong. Economics today, 25 years ago and 50 years ago vastly differs even in methodology, it's a very vigorous field. To say that this edifice is grounded in some ideology, one needs to omit all that constant scientific discussion, render empirically proved parts as ideological, axioms as "truths" etc. This kind of intellectual dishonesty could come only from a ideology-loaded follower of some heterodox (and usually pseudoscientific) theory, most likely grounded in some ideology (guessing from value judgments of op like "neoliberal" -- left one) rather than verified by empiric data.
  - jevgeni 7y ago
    Very well put! Thank you! I agree.
  - ClumsyPilot 7y ago
    I think the problem is many mistake mainstream political opinion for the prevailing scientific opinion. Most economists do not agree with the way our economy is being managed right now. The current political prevailing wind is definitely neoliberal. Of-course most people do not read economics papers.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >Mainstream science can't have one, only marginal branches can. This is like native speakers of a language (say, English) asserting that only non-native speakers of their language have accents. You do, you just speak with an accent that's considered to be standard. >This kind of intellectual dishonesty could come only from a ideology-loaded follower of some heterodox (and usually pseudoscientific) theory, most likely grounded in some ideology (guessing from value judgments of op like "neoliberal" -- left one) rather than verified by empiric data. And mainstream (i.e. neoclassical) economics[0] does that, even in the face of mathematical reality, let alone empirical data.[1] The ignorance of the implications of the SMD theorem,[2] because it implies that the aggregation problem remains unsolved and the fundamental breakdown of the "law" of demand, was a profoundly anti-intellectual move. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassical_economics [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269064 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenschein%E2%80%93Mantel%E2%80%93Debreu_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnenschein%E2%80%93Mantel%E2...
    - ernst_klim 7y ago
      > The ignorance of the implications of the SMD theorem You are confusing different things together. Mainstream exists in a form it is not because Mainstream translates the Truth™, but because there are no better theories yet. Newton's mechanics is worse than Einstein theory in describing celestial bodies' movements, yet the former was better than anything until the latter appeared. I have a lot to argue against neoclassical economy, especially about its view of a person as a profit-driven (rational, as they call it) degenerate, or fondness of regressions in the mid of chaos. Yet it changes in the right direction, behavioral economics appeared, regressions are taken with a grain of salt now, rational choice is heavily criticized. The problem is that no heterodox theory provides both an axiomatic basis and empirical framework to compete mainstream economic science. What would you propose instead of Neoclassical economics? Nothing? It's not ignorance to accept theory that is not always true, it's stupidity to omit theory without having anything better, as Lakatos would say. As for ideology, I don't see such a thing. People in mainstream science vary from Joseph "We all need to follow Venezuela example" Stiglitz to post Austrians like William White.

ianleeclark 7y ago

> The idea that awarding a prize to the most respected scientists in a particular field is solely for the purpose of advancing an ideology is in itself extremely anti-intellectual and biased. Man, if you want to hear about anti-intellectualism and bias, go and look at the SMD theorem. Economists will continue to assume that Macroeconomic demand curves will continue to slope downward.

taffer 7y ago
All models are wrong by definition. The purpose of a model is to be a simplification of reality in order to gain insights and not to perfectly replicate reality. In physics, there is even the metaphor of the spherical cow[1] to make fun of the need to simplify things in order to understand them. Just because a model is simple doesn't mean that it is bad or worse than a model with more complex assumptions. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/19991009000912/http://lheawww.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/xray/research/snrs/spherical_cow.html https://web.archive.org/web/19991009000912/http://lheawww.gs...
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > All models are wrong by definition. I would agree. > Just because a model is simple doesn't mean that it is bad or worse than a model with more complex assumptions. I'm not condemning it being simple. If we were just talking about small or exceptional exclusions to the rules like Giffen or Veblen goods, then I wouldn't have made the above post. We're talking about fundamentally incorrect building blocks that aren't even acknowledged in the literature.
- morningseagulls 7y ago
  >In physics, there is even the metaphor of the spherical cow[1] to make fun of the need to simplify things in order to understand them. It's a joke to remind us of a sobering fact: that unreal assumptions lead to unreal results. >Just because a model is simple doesn't mean that it is bad or worse than a model with more complex assumptions. But if a model with more complex assumptions is a better approximation to reality than a model with simpler assumptions, would you not adopt the former? What has happened in economics is that people have clung on to, say, Newtonian mechanics, instead of embracing Einstein's relativity. Even this does not quite adequately express the enormity of the inertia that you see in economics, because at least Newtonian mechanics is right most of the time, whereas neoclassical economics is wrong most of the time. The SMD theorem guarantees, for example, that most market demand curves will NEVER satisfy the fundamental neoclassical "law" of demand. Let me also point out that your comment is rehashing Friedman's positivism.[0] Even in quantum mechanics, which has for decades been dominated by the positivism of the Copenhagen interpretation, people are now transcending that positivism because they've come to the realisation that quantum mechanics can't be advanced without overcoming the crutch of positivism. And Friedman's assertions about assumptions are unsound anyway.[1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in_Positive_Economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_in_Positive_Economics [1] For a critique of Friedman's argument about assumptions in models, see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1981.tb01195.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6435....

jhbadger 7y ago

It's hardly "anti-intellectual" to note that unlike the actual prizes funded by Nobel over a century ago, the economics "Nobel" was created by the Swedish Central Bank only 50 years ago. That's not exactly an unbiased source. If there was no chemistry prize and Dow Chemical or Bayer stepped in to create one, it wouldn't be anywhere as respected as the actual Chemistry Nobel, would it?

jevgeni 7y ago
I like how this is going towards “Swedish Central Bank is a for-profit organisation”
taffer 7y ago
The anti-intellectual part was to claim that the awarding of prizes to prominent scientists only served to promote a certain ideology. It is like saying that the Nobel Prize for Medicine would exist only to promote orthodox medicine. > If there was no chemistry prize and Dow Chemical or Bayer stepped in to create one, it wouldn't be anywhere as respected as the actual Chemistry Nobel, would it? The Nobel Prize was created by the owner of a Swedish chemical and weapons company. I don't see what's so great about it. And as for the Swedish Central Bank, I think Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head: Oh, and cue the usual complaints that this isn’t a “real” Nobel. Hey, this is just a prize given by a bunch of Swedes, as opposed to the other prizes, which are given out by, um, bunches of Swedes.
- hedvig 7y ago
  I think its still fair to say that economics is not a science the way medicine is.
  - morningseagulls 7y ago
    >I think its still fair to say that economics is not a science the way medicine is. Which is very unfortunate, because like medicine, the practice of economics has the power to influence decisions and affect lives.
  - 7y ago

badpun 7y ago

Economics is not a science though.

me_me_me 7y ago
Therefore economist created their own award and pushed it as 'nobel' price in economics. Quite hilarious .
throwaway8879 7y ago
It is a science, just a very dismal one!

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

The Nobel for Economics is not down to Mr Nobel. It was instituted by the Swedish Central Bank, and I think the selection committee is organised differently to the real Nobels. Edit: Brain having a moment off - s/Swiss/Swedish/

exoque 7y ago
The swedish central bank, not the swiss.
bzbarsky 7y ago
The selection processes for the real Nobels differ significantly in their organization, for what it's worth, though it's mostly Peace vs all the others... In particular, for the Peace prize the Norwegian Parliament appoints a 5-person committee that then selects the prize winner, while for the others various Swedish academic institutions select a committee that then proposes laureates back to a larger body that votes on them.

jtolmar 7y ago

> The idea that awarding a prize to the most respected scientists in a particular field is solely for the purpose of advancing an ideology is in itself extremely anti-intellectual and biased. The very idea of it is anti-intellectual? That's absurd. There's nothing magical about awarding prizes to scientists that prevents it from being done with a motivation. The committee famously cancelled the prize for a year to avoid awarding it to Einstein, since he was a Jew with radical political beliefs.