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Geology and cosmology don't change because you talk about how you think they work. Adam Smith wrote a book about how he thought the market worked and then merca

Geology and cosmology don't change because you talk about how you think they work. Adam Smith wrote a book about how he thought the market worked and then mercantilism disappeared. It's not the same.

dragonwriter 7y ago
> Adam Smith wrote a book about how he thought the market worked and then mercantilism disappeared. Mercantilism didn't disappear, it just became less dominant. It's still around, and still sometimes ends up being the philosophy that drives policy, though we tend to call it by other names. “Protectionism” is a manifestation of mercantilism, as is worry over trade deficits. Mercantilism isn't a predictive theory of how economics works, it's a public (economic) policy framework. Smith talking about how he thought that economy worked didn't make mercantilism less dominant, him proposing alternative policy based on that description did, though.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  As far as I know there are no rocks that changed due to the gradualism v. catastrophism debate.
  - uxp100 7y ago
    But there are elements, molecules and chemical reactions that may not have existed or occurred until chemistry determined it was possible.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > As far as I know there are no rocks that changed due to the gradualism v. catastrophism debate. But there's a whole lot of how people react to what they see in rocks that did. Predictive economics (the science) produces change in economic policy, in the same way that all science effects how people react to events in the domain of that science.
    - earthboundkid 7y ago
      Humanities are just different from other sciences because the study of humanities causes humans as a mass to behave differently. In other sciences, we are the agents who cause things to happen and observe the results. In humanities, we are both the agents and the patients and we react based on what we learn. Put it this way, if economics was a regular science, you could make a theory of the stock market and predict prices with the same accuracy as a rocket's trajectory or a chemical reaction or the weather. Because it's not a regular science, what happens when you predict stock prices is that the prices change to factor in the predictions!

Geology and cosmology don't change because you talk about how you think they work. Adam Smith wrote a book about how he thought the market worked and then mercantilism disappeared. It's not the same.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> Adam Smith wrote a book about how he thought the market worked and then mercantilism disappeared. Mercantilism didn't disappear, it just became less dominant. It's still around, and still sometimes ends up being the philosophy that drives policy, though we tend to call it by other names. “Protectionism” is a manifestation of mercantilism, as is worry over trade deficits. Mercantilism isn't a predictive theory of how economics works, it's a public (economic) policy framework. Smith talking about how he thought that economy worked didn't make mercantilism less dominant, him proposing alternative policy based on that description did, though.

earthboundkid 7y ago
As far as I know there are no rocks that changed due to the gradualism v. catastrophism debate.
- uxp100 7y ago
  But there are elements, molecules and chemical reactions that may not have existed or occurred until chemistry determined it was possible.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > As far as I know there are no rocks that changed due to the gradualism v. catastrophism debate. But there's a whole lot of how people react to what they see in rocks that did. Predictive economics (the science) produces change in economic policy, in the same way that all science effects how people react to events in the domain of that science.
  - earthboundkid 7y ago
    Humanities are just different from other sciences because the study of humanities causes humans as a mass to behave differently. In other sciences, we are the agents who cause things to happen and observe the results. In humanities, we are both the agents and the patients and we react based on what we learn. Put it this way, if economics was a regular science, you could make a theory of the stock market and predict prices with the same accuracy as a rocket's trajectory or a chemical reaction or the weather. Because it's not a regular science, what happens when you predict stock prices is that the prices change to factor in the predictions!