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What makes economics a weak science, weaker than many other humanities, is the habitual absence of experimental evidence. It's of course hard to have a number o

by brnt 4y ago

What makes economics a weak science, weaker than many other humanities, is the habitual absence of experimental evidence. It's of course hard to have a number of double blind histories of the world economy, yet that is what it takes to be a hard science. If you accept that it never can be (many economists try hard to pretend otherwise!), then you have to accept (again, many don't) that building mathematical models for human behavior (without rigorous validation) is no more scientific then some of the worst stereotypes people have for the social sciences. Yet, economics _is_ a social science, through and through. It studies human behavior. Just because currency lets you quantify and calculate more easily than other kinds of behavior, does not make it fundamentally different.

barfingclouds 4y ago
Well can’t you observe past behavior with great detail? How would that be soft?
uonpopular_th 4y ago
I used to agree until I saw what has happened to biology in the last few years. Economics is a science as good as any other. It's just that a lot of people with a lot of money want it to say something so it does. No science is insulated from its practitioners being bought out and the few with principles being silenced.
- sethaurus 4y ago
  > I used to agree until I saw what has happened to biology in the last few years. I'm missing the context here — could you expand on what's happened to biology?
  - uonpopular_th 4y ago
    The bureaucrats who should have been enabling and coordinating scientists instead decided what the policy should be for Covid19 and ruined the lives/careers of anyone who did not fall in line. The worst of these decisions by far was the policy that covid was spread by aerosols and not airborne: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 This was nothing short of Lysenkoism in the 21st century.
lordnacho 4y ago
We do get observational evidence, the only problem is it tells us the opposite of what we thought, eg minimum wage evidence contradicts what theory would say. Somehow this doesn't seem to matter though, we still teach the theory.
- imtringued 4y ago
  It is actually very easy to build a theory that disproves the idea of minimumg wage affecting employment. If we assume the economy is already in perfect equilibrium then raising the minimum wage will cause inflation but the wages will adjust upwards with the same coefficient vs the minimum wage. Another factor is that if you give money to people who haven't met their basic needs yet is that they will spend their money faster which means it circulates faster which will generate another employment opportunity. This is effectively a scheduling problem akin to starvation in process/thread scheduling in the kernel. If you ignore a specific thread too much then it can block other threads and result in underutilization of resources. The latter tells you that you shouldn't prioritize the needs of the wealthy so that "wealth trickles down".
  - jvmfjvfjvf 4y ago
    A $50 minimum wage wouldn't affect unemployment? Why not make it $100?
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      If it works at $100, why not? As long as you're clear about what tradeoffs you're making, and as a society we still want no employment effect, if it works at $100, what's the problem? You only have something to discuss if it's clear that unemployment will rise, and even so you need to decide how much is tolerable in exchange for whatever you get out of raising the minimum wage.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        Do you have even the slightest doubt that unemployment would rise significantly if the minimum wage were suddenly raised to $100/hr? I am certain that it would.
imtringued 4y ago
>the habitual absence of experimental evidence. You can run economic experiments. That isn't the problem. The bigger problem is the unstated assumption of a perfectly liquid economy even in the absence of money and the fact that the mathematical models are supposed to drive reality and not the other way around. Homo sapiens is supposed to mimic homo economics.
jvmfjvfjvf 4y ago
Do you make the same claim about climate science?
- jackmott 4y ago
  [dead]

by brnt 4y ago

barfingclouds 4y ago

Well can’t you observe past behavior with great detail? How would that be soft?

uonpopular_th 4y ago

I used to agree until I saw what has happened to biology in the last few years. Economics is a science as good as any other. It's just that a lot of people with a lot of money want it to say something so it does. No science is insulated from its practitioners being bought out and the few with principles being silenced.

sethaurus 4y ago
> I used to agree until I saw what has happened to biology in the last few years. I'm missing the context here — could you expand on what's happened to biology?
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  The bureaucrats who should have been enabling and coordinating scientists instead decided what the policy should be for Covid19 and ruined the lives/careers of anyone who did not fall in line. The worst of these decisions by far was the policy that covid was spread by aerosols and not airborne: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7 This was nothing short of Lysenkoism in the 21st century.

lordnacho 4y ago

We do get observational evidence, the only problem is it tells us the opposite of what we thought, eg minimum wage evidence contradicts what theory would say. Somehow this doesn't seem to matter though, we still teach the theory.

imtringued 4y ago
It is actually very easy to build a theory that disproves the idea of minimumg wage affecting employment. If we assume the economy is already in perfect equilibrium then raising the minimum wage will cause inflation but the wages will adjust upwards with the same coefficient vs the minimum wage. Another factor is that if you give money to people who haven't met their basic needs yet is that they will spend their money faster which means it circulates faster which will generate another employment opportunity. This is effectively a scheduling problem akin to starvation in process/thread scheduling in the kernel. If you ignore a specific thread too much then it can block other threads and result in underutilization of resources. The latter tells you that you shouldn't prioritize the needs of the wealthy so that "wealth trickles down".
- jvmfjvfjvf 4y ago
  A $50 minimum wage wouldn't affect unemployment? Why not make it $100?
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    If it works at $100, why not? As long as you're clear about what tradeoffs you're making, and as a society we still want no employment effect, if it works at $100, what's the problem? You only have something to discuss if it's clear that unemployment will rise, and even so you need to decide how much is tolerable in exchange for whatever you get out of raising the minimum wage.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      Do you have even the slightest doubt that unemployment would rise significantly if the minimum wage were suddenly raised to $100/hr? I am certain that it would.

imtringued 4y ago

>the habitual absence of experimental evidence. You can run economic experiments. That isn't the problem. The bigger problem is the unstated assumption of a perfectly liquid economy even in the absence of money and the fact that the mathematical models are supposed to drive reality and not the other way around. Homo sapiens is supposed to mimic homo economics.

jvmfjvfjvf 4y ago

Do you make the same claim about climate science?

jackmott 4y ago
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