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Economics is a social science and as such, is not really amenable to the methods of falsification or experimentation that work well in physics or chemistry. In

by rsj_hn 5y ago

Economics is a social science and as such, is not really amenable to the methods of falsification or experimentation that work well in physics or chemistry. In short, it's not really a science. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do your best to be logical and factual as much as possible, but at the end of the day you will produce mostly unfalsifiable theorizing. Really you need more modest goals, for example to at least try to approach the subject objectively rather than via sentimental moralizing. Even that is a massive effort. Imagine a physicist decrying how "wrong" it is for gravity to be weaker than the other forces. You would laugh at such a person and immediately classify them as not a real physicist. So you can use that as a filter to exclude much of heterodox economics and economists as a start. That's the battle being waged -- objectivity -- not falsifiability.

lottin 5y ago
If social sciences are not sciences, what are they? Please, explain. Also I'd like to know how falsifiability applies to the big bang theory. Thank you!
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Falsifiability applies to the big bang theory because the big bang theory is not about the general concept of "a" big bang, but about specific models of how exactly the events very shortly after the big bang happened, which make testable predictions about all the consequences of those very early events - the distribution of matter and energy in the universe, properties of cosmic microwave background, etc; such models can predict observations/measurements (of ancients events) that we have not yet made, and be falsified if those observations disagree with the model predictions.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Falsifiability is feasible to some degree -- e.g. in history you can hypothesize that a civilization had copper and then look for evidence of copper artifacts. But in the physical sciences you have well-formed mathematical models that make very specific and precise predictions and can be tested to a high degree of accuracy. That specificity allows you to set threshholds like 5 sigma for acceptance of a result as being verified. "Did we find copper" is a bit different, and thus there is a fuzziness in history that you don't have in physics or chemistry, which is why we don't view history as being a science even though it benefits from use of the scientific method. Everything -- cooking, dating, gardening -- can make use of the scientific method, but at issue here is the trust that the public places in accepted findings of science and such trust is not justified in the fuzzier fields. People need to add big error bars in their heads when listening to results from social sciences and much smaller error bars when listening to results from physics.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  A good rule of thumb is that fields which style themselves by adding "science" to their name are not sciences. An economist friend of mine told me that, and it stuck. In fact if you are a physicist you don't go around insisting to people that you are a scientist and what you do is science and if they disagree with you they are anti-science. You just say "hey, this is physics". So far, this rule of thumb has not let me down. FYI, you may want to read Feynman's lecture on Cargo Cult Science -- that is avoiding the trappings of science while not actually having the rigour and intellectual honesty of true science. A good link is here: https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm I enjoy economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, etc, but they are most definately not science.
  - lottin 5y ago
    > good rule of thumb is that fields which style themselves by adding "science" to their name are not sciences And this is your whole argument? Isn't physics a "natural science" and therefore not science according your rule of thumb. This discussion is stupid. If you want to argue that social sciences are not science, all you have to do is show that social sciences don't follow the scientific methodology. If you can't show that, you should shut up and stop wasting everybody's time.

by rsj_hn 5y ago

lottin 5y ago

If social sciences are not sciences, what are they? Please, explain. Also I'd like to know how falsifiability applies to the big bang theory. Thank you!

PeterisP 5y ago
Falsifiability applies to the big bang theory because the big bang theory is not about the general concept of "a" big bang, but about specific models of how exactly the events very shortly after the big bang happened, which make testable predictions about all the consequences of those very early events - the distribution of matter and energy in the universe, properties of cosmic microwave background, etc; such models can predict observations/measurements (of ancients events) that we have not yet made, and be falsified if those observations disagree with the model predictions.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Falsifiability is feasible to some degree -- e.g. in history you can hypothesize that a civilization had copper and then look for evidence of copper artifacts. But in the physical sciences you have well-formed mathematical models that make very specific and precise predictions and can be tested to a high degree of accuracy. That specificity allows you to set threshholds like 5 sigma for acceptance of a result as being verified. "Did we find copper" is a bit different, and thus there is a fuzziness in history that you don't have in physics or chemistry, which is why we don't view history as being a science even though it benefits from use of the scientific method. Everything -- cooking, dating, gardening -- can make use of the scientific method, but at issue here is the trust that the public places in accepted findings of science and such trust is not justified in the fuzzier fields. People need to add big error bars in their heads when listening to results from social sciences and much smaller error bars when listening to results from physics.
rsj_hn 5y ago
A good rule of thumb is that fields which style themselves by adding "science" to their name are not sciences. An economist friend of mine told me that, and it stuck. In fact if you are a physicist you don't go around insisting to people that you are a scientist and what you do is science and if they disagree with you they are anti-science. You just say "hey, this is physics". So far, this rule of thumb has not let me down. FYI, you may want to read Feynman's lecture on Cargo Cult Science -- that is avoiding the trappings of science while not actually having the rigour and intellectual honesty of true science. A good link is here: https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm I enjoy economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, etc, but they are most definately not science.
- lottin 5y ago
  > good rule of thumb is that fields which style themselves by adding "science" to their name are not sciences And this is your whole argument? Isn't physics a "natural science" and therefore not science according your rule of thumb. This discussion is stupid. If you want to argue that social sciences are not science, all you have to do is show that social sciences don't follow the scientific methodology. If you can't show that, you should shut up and stop wasting everybody's time.