> Its not really that analogous. Theoretical physics is at least in theory still predictive, though it may be vert distant from the pragmatics of verification.

> Its not really that analogous. Theoretical physics is at least in theory still predictive, though it may be vert distant from the pragmatics of verification. Sure, I intended the "cranked up a few notches" to cover the difference, but could have been clearer. Think things that don't even have a clear path to verifiability or testability, but continue to generate papers (string theory, maybe) but even more speculative. > There are areas of political/economic science that are like that, but political/economic philosophy is predominantly normative rather than predictive (Austrian school economics, despite being called “economics” rather than “economic philosophy” and despite occasionally making fact rather than value claims is, and fairly openly admits to being, part of this.) Absolutely! Part of the trouble is that to chart a course in politics or economics, you have to choose a desired outcome with winners and losers, so there's inherently a normative aspect to it. There's a whole lot of "ought" involved that's practically unavoidable. Throw in conflicts of interest and it's a hell of a mess. It's like if no-one had been able to agree on where Apollo 11's Eagle should land, and also they're already in flight, and also gravity doesn't always do what we think it does, and also several of the people involved are being paid to shill for particular landing sites, even if the spacecraft can't physically reach them within its fuel budget, but they've got some really fancy-looking explanations about the whole "gravity is weird sometimes" thing so maybe they're not full of shit? To pick on the Austrians in particular (hey, you brought them up, not me, I only posted a complaint about their broad political sphere's style of argument without naming them :-) ) they've got a bad case of presenting their ethical egoism as also satisfying consequentialist approaches better than any other framework, just by happy coincidence. This should set off one's alarm bells at full volume, but it sure does help them cast a wide net when evangelizing.