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Economics is for me the prime example, even more so than psychology. They layer mathamatical models upon models to make it look like "hard" science. But even th

Economics is for me the prime example, even more so than psychology. They layer mathamatical models upon models to make it look like "hard" science. But even the most basic assumptions are disputed and you can basically find an economist (even from a reputable institution) for pretty much any position about any topic. No economic theory has ever been found that would be capable to make even modest correct predictions (beyond very basic "rules of thumb" which pretty much have been established by Adam Smith and a couple of following generations). It would be fine with me, if they owned up to the fact that its a social science which can deliver some interesting models to think about the past. But every day you see economists on TV steadfastly claiming that they know whats going on and what's going to happen. Their chance is pretty much always 50/50. Surprisingly, they can't even agree on the role of entirely artificial constructs with a small number of participants (no "invisible hand" involved) like the TARGET2 mechanism of the ECB [1]. It's all just completely arbitrary. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARGET2#Intra-system_credit_facilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARGET2#Intra-system_credit_fa...

_0ffh 6y ago
It's a scam, and the best predictor of success as an economist is being politically useful as a scientific fig leaf for one interest group or another, sadly.
vishnugupta 6y ago
Unsurprisingly I learned more about economics from historians, anthropologists (Adam Tooze, David Graeber) than practicing economists. I’m currently enjoying reading “What’s Wrong with Economics”[1] which expands on some of the points you make. Recommended if you haven’t come across it yet. [1] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300249873/whats-wrong-economics https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300249873/whats-wrong-ec...
henvic 6y ago
Economics is key to social engineering. Many concepts and core ideas of different schools of thought are completely loved and sponsored by actors interested in an agenda (say, maintaining their status quo or inflation https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/). For example, we have the Keynesians saying that government spending is good. Guess who is going to sponsor this point-of-view? People who benefit from making the state spend or who believe the state has utter importance in defining society (as they call it, economic planning). Others will downfall resort to mathematical formulations as they were absolute truth, and their premisses might contain a lot of prejudice. I myself love the Austrian School of economics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School) approach of the likes of Carl Menger and Mises, and their approach based on praxeology or individualism, and I never thought it could be abused for interest groups until I started seeing how many people are abusing its idea of subject value to promote Bitcoin as the solution to everything (when I believe Bitcoin with its proof-of-work strategy has more issues than benefits).
tim333 6y ago
It's kind of shocking the damage bad economics can do or has done too. It's not something relatively harmless like astrology.
atrettel 6y ago
Economics can attract people making wild claims because it is difficult to truly prove or disprove some claims in the subject. Still, there is good science done in economics, though conducting science is more difficult in fields like economics than others. I think it is important to distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics here. It is possible to conduct controlled experiments in microeconomics, but in general it is difficult and often impossible to conduct controlled experiments in macroeconomics. For example, you simply cannot take half the population and apply one policy to them and take the other half and apply a "placebo" and see what the results are. The scale and ethical problems prevent such experiments. Instead, macroeconomists like to use "natural experiments" (as they call it) that occur at discontinuities in current policies. For example, let's say that some policy has an income cut off at X USD/year. People making less than that can use the program, but people making more than that cannot. You can look at people making X-1 USD/year and compare them to people making X+1 USD/year. The slight difference in income is basically negligible, so in effect you are studying the effect of the policy, but only at a particular income level unfortunately. Note that the difficulties using the scientific method continue to other fields like weather prediction. In these fields scientists can conduct observational studies but not experimental (controlled) studies, since we do not have the means (or even the desire) to effect the phenomena in such a way to verify or falsify some questions directly. Indirect (and far more clever) methods are still possible, though.
- dr_faustus 6y ago
  But isnt meteorology a good example of a science capable of producing models with high accuracy (albeit just for a couple of days in advance) in absence of lab conditions. I can't think of a single economic model as accurate as modern weather models (or even climate models).
  - jjk166 6y ago
    Well if we had recessions as frequently as we had hurricanes, I imagine we'd get quite good at predicting them
  - atrettel 6y ago
ghgdynb1 6y ago
Here’s the thing to understand: the “economists” you’re watching on TV are not representative of the field, and TV economics is hardly a better source of information on economics than Facebook is on immunology. Confusing the cargo-cult for the real thing is the actual mistake here. I think it’s easy to claim all the economists at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and UChicago have no clue what they’re doing, and you could design a market better than Vickrey himself by throwing darts at a wall. But the reality is that while they do disagree about a great deal, this disagreement isn’t different from the disagreement you see on the cutting edge of cancer biology or physics. And sure, you’ll be able to find “Marxist Economists” for every Nobel Prize winner with a PhD in mathematics, but if you stick with the respectable academics (and especially with those focusing on microeconomics and game theory) they tend to agree about much more than you’d expect.

_0ffh 6y ago

It's a scam, and the best predictor of success as an economist is being politically useful as a scientific fig leaf for one interest group or another, sadly.

vishnugupta 6y ago

Unsurprisingly I learned more about economics from historians, anthropologists (Adam Tooze, David Graeber) than practicing economists. I’m currently enjoying reading “What’s Wrong with Economics”[1] which expands on some of the points you make. Recommended if you haven’t come across it yet. [1] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300249873/whats-wrong-economics https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300249873/whats-wrong-ec...

henvic 6y ago

Economics is key to social engineering. Many concepts and core ideas of different schools of thought are completely loved and sponsored by actors interested in an agenda (say, maintaining their status quo or inflation https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/). For example, we have the Keynesians saying that government spending is good. Guess who is going to sponsor this point-of-view? People who benefit from making the state spend or who believe the state has utter importance in defining society (as they call it, economic planning). Others will downfall resort to mathematical formulations as they were absolute truth, and their premisses might contain a lot of prejudice. I myself love the Austrian School of economics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_School) approach of the likes of Carl Menger and Mises, and their approach based on praxeology or individualism, and I never thought it could be abused for interest groups until I started seeing how many people are abusing its idea of subject value to promote Bitcoin as the solution to everything (when I believe Bitcoin with its proof-of-work strategy has more issues than benefits).

tim333 6y ago

It's kind of shocking the damage bad economics can do or has done too. It's not something relatively harmless like astrology.

atrettel 6y ago

Economics can attract people making wild claims because it is difficult to truly prove or disprove some claims in the subject. Still, there is good science done in economics, though conducting science is more difficult in fields like economics than others. I think it is important to distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics here. It is possible to conduct controlled experiments in microeconomics, but in general it is difficult and often impossible to conduct controlled experiments in macroeconomics. For example, you simply cannot take half the population and apply one policy to them and take the other half and apply a "placebo" and see what the results are. The scale and ethical problems prevent such experiments. Instead, macroeconomists like to use "natural experiments" (as they call it) that occur at discontinuities in current policies. For example, let's say that some policy has an income cut off at X USD/year. People making less than that can use the program, but people making more than that cannot. You can look at people making X-1 USD/year and compare them to people making X+1 USD/year. The slight difference in income is basically negligible, so in effect you are studying the effect of the policy, but only at a particular income level unfortunately. Note that the difficulties using the scientific method continue to other fields like weather prediction. In these fields scientists can conduct observational studies but not experimental (controlled) studies, since we do not have the means (or even the desire) to effect the phenomena in such a way to verify or falsify some questions directly. Indirect (and far more clever) methods are still possible, though.

dr_faustus 6y ago
But isnt meteorology a good example of a science capable of producing models with high accuracy (albeit just for a couple of days in advance) in absence of lab conditions. I can't think of a single economic model as accurate as modern weather models (or even climate models).
- jjk166 6y ago
  Well if we had recessions as frequently as we had hurricanes, I imagine we'd get quite good at predicting them
- atrettel 6y ago

ghgdynb1 6y ago

Here’s the thing to understand: the “economists” you’re watching on TV are not representative of the field, and TV economics is hardly a better source of information on economics than Facebook is on immunology. Confusing the cargo-cult for the real thing is the actual mistake here. I think it’s easy to claim all the economists at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and UChicago have no clue what they’re doing, and you could design a market better than Vickrey himself by throwing darts at a wall. But the reality is that while they do disagree about a great deal, this disagreement isn’t different from the disagreement you see on the cutting edge of cancer biology or physics. And sure, you’ll be able to find “Marxist Economists” for every Nobel Prize winner with a PhD in mathematics, but if you stick with the respectable academics (and especially with those focusing on microeconomics and game theory) they tend to agree about much more than you’d expect.