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Agreed. But I don’t think economics is off the hook here either. To me it’s the social science that best masquerades as a “hard” science while still make huge j

Agreed. But I don’t think economics is off the hook here either. To me it’s the social science that best masquerades as a “hard” science while still make huge jumps in logic that are rarely justified in the papers I’ve read.

peatmoss 2y ago
I studiously avoided making a normative statement that economics should take over this role. Any personal preferences I have here are separate from my beliefs about what I predict to happen. :-) I ~agree with you about the quality of econ papers. In some cases, I see the quantitative facility of econ papers as being better than similar studies executed by e.g. sociologists. But in some cases, flashy quant skills are used to distract from more fundamental issues. Assuming my prediction that social science research shifts to econ comes to pass, I think the natural pressure will be to drag econ's present quality bar downward.
- graemep 2y ago
  > But in some cases, flashy quant skills are used to distract from more fundamental issues. I agree, I sometimes thing economists like quantitive approaches because it makes them feel like "real scientists" and numbers have an air of credibility. It look a lot of arguing to let my MSc dissertation supervisor let me do one on financial theory (which I am good at) rather than econometrics (which i struggled with).
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    Worst offenders of liking quant approches to feel like real scientists may be when psychologists use formulas to describe their theory like they're a mathematician. All it does is making their theories obtuse, while no math actually happens... I think the problem is more with the institutions and incentives e.g. to publish a lot for funding, than it is with social sciences as a thing. Qual stuff is much lower effort... And to be clear I think Qual has a place there, it just shouldn't be the only thing and it certainly shouldn't be masquerading as quant... But going all quant in social sciences could quickly become harmful if it isn't tempered with some qual/experiential studies. There needs to be a better balance imho.
- Tarsul 2y ago
  Love your use of ~ in "~agree". Such a nice shortcut. Might steal that :D
UweSchmidt 2y ago
While we're bashing economics, something I truly miss is that no new high level economic systems are being discussed prominently. As important as fusion in physics or cancer treatment in medicine, we badly need to explore and discuss something beyond the heavily ideologized systems of capitalism, communism and feed this to politics to communicate these potential options to the voters. Say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism, which is old and half forgotten. It appears as economics is kind of muted, students and professors beholden to an ideology themselves or feeling the need to appease potential employers who are usually politicized institutions with no room for intellectual curiosity. What else remains in terms of practical economics besides determining the inflation rate (oops, that one is also politicized)?
- amelius 2y ago
  Yes economic system is highly flawed. Elon Musk owns $400B. Earth will become uninhabitable after 1 billion years from now (when the heat of the Sun becomes too large for us). This means that Musk, if he lived that long, would be able to spend $400 every day until the death of all life on Earth. This is 15 times the current average daily income worldwide. If this is not insane, then what is?
  - narrator 2y ago
    You're looking at the world as a poor person. If you had Elon's brilliance you'd probably quit after you made $5 million dollars or so and definitely after you sold Zip2 back in the 1990s and spent the rest of your life on the beach. The only reason he's still working as hard as he does is not because he wants to spend that on himself. He wants the glory of going to Mars and having a positive impact on humanity and that requires control of the activities of large companies like SpaceX, etc. which requires ownership stakes in those companies that are valued in the billions. One of the reasons that he campaigned so hard for Trump is that Kamala's proposed wealth taxes on unrealized capital gains were going to take his companies from him and he'd have to sell to Vanguard or Blackrock, who would give control of the companies to Boeing-tier mediocrity which would mean that we'd never get to Mars. There have been so many companies where the founders sold out and retired because they had enough money and they got bought by big conglomerates who destroyed those companies with mediocre management and neglect. This is the great thing about Elon, he just keeps building and leveraging all that money to create bigger and bigger companies using his creativity and management ability to achieve his goal of launching an era of space exploration.
immibis 2y ago
New Zealand has a conservative government since the most recent election. Economists help conservatives stay in power, while sociologists and so on help conservatives stay out of power. Conservatives are very quid pro quo. That's the difference. It has nothing to do with the content of the research.
snakeyjake 2y ago
? Economics research is a series of cults who all predict different outcomes for the same series of inputs based on how the original founder of the cult, I mean school, felt about the king and his ability to tax the wealthy several centuries ago. There are several trillion social sciences more rigorous than economics. As far as I can tell economic researchers actively discourage experimentation because the results of an actual well-run valid experiment would ruin everyone's career.

peatmoss 2y ago

I studiously avoided making a normative statement that economics should take over this role. Any personal preferences I have here are separate from my beliefs about what I predict to happen. :-) I ~agree with you about the quality of econ papers. In some cases, I see the quantitative facility of econ papers as being better than similar studies executed by e.g. sociologists. But in some cases, flashy quant skills are used to distract from more fundamental issues. Assuming my prediction that social science research shifts to econ comes to pass, I think the natural pressure will be to drag econ's present quality bar downward.

graemep 2y ago
> But in some cases, flashy quant skills are used to distract from more fundamental issues. I agree, I sometimes thing economists like quantitive approaches because it makes them feel like "real scientists" and numbers have an air of credibility. It look a lot of arguing to let my MSc dissertation supervisor let me do one on financial theory (which I am good at) rather than econometrics (which i struggled with).
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  Worst offenders of liking quant approches to feel like real scientists may be when psychologists use formulas to describe their theory like they're a mathematician. All it does is making their theories obtuse, while no math actually happens... I think the problem is more with the institutions and incentives e.g. to publish a lot for funding, than it is with social sciences as a thing. Qual stuff is much lower effort... And to be clear I think Qual has a place there, it just shouldn't be the only thing and it certainly shouldn't be masquerading as quant... But going all quant in social sciences could quickly become harmful if it isn't tempered with some qual/experiential studies. There needs to be a better balance imho.
Tarsul 2y ago
Love your use of ~ in "~agree". Such a nice shortcut. Might steal that :D

UweSchmidt 2y ago

While we're bashing economics, something I truly miss is that no new high level economic systems are being discussed prominently. As important as fusion in physics or cancer treatment in medicine, we badly need to explore and discuss something beyond the heavily ideologized systems of capitalism, communism and feed this to politics to communicate these potential options to the voters. Say, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism, which is old and half forgotten. It appears as economics is kind of muted, students and professors beholden to an ideology themselves or feeling the need to appease potential employers who are usually politicized institutions with no room for intellectual curiosity. What else remains in terms of practical economics besides determining the inflation rate (oops, that one is also politicized)?

amelius 2y ago
Yes economic system is highly flawed. Elon Musk owns $400B. Earth will become uninhabitable after 1 billion years from now (when the heat of the Sun becomes too large for us). This means that Musk, if he lived that long, would be able to spend $400 every day until the death of all life on Earth. This is 15 times the current average daily income worldwide. If this is not insane, then what is?
- narrator 2y ago
  You're looking at the world as a poor person. If you had Elon's brilliance you'd probably quit after you made $5 million dollars or so and definitely after you sold Zip2 back in the 1990s and spent the rest of your life on the beach. The only reason he's still working as hard as he does is not because he wants to spend that on himself. He wants the glory of going to Mars and having a positive impact on humanity and that requires control of the activities of large companies like SpaceX, etc. which requires ownership stakes in those companies that are valued in the billions. One of the reasons that he campaigned so hard for Trump is that Kamala's proposed wealth taxes on unrealized capital gains were going to take his companies from him and he'd have to sell to Vanguard or Blackrock, who would give control of the companies to Boeing-tier mediocrity which would mean that we'd never get to Mars. There have been so many companies where the founders sold out and retired because they had enough money and they got bought by big conglomerates who destroyed those companies with mediocre management and neglect. This is the great thing about Elon, he just keeps building and leveraging all that money to create bigger and bigger companies using his creativity and management ability to achieve his goal of launching an era of space exploration.

immibis 2y ago

New Zealand has a conservative government since the most recent election. Economists help conservatives stay in power, while sociologists and so on help conservatives stay out of power. Conservatives are very quid pro quo. That's the difference. It has nothing to do with the content of the research.

snakeyjake 2y ago

? Economics research is a series of cults who all predict different outcomes for the same series of inputs based on how the original founder of the cult, I mean school, felt about the king and his ability to tax the wealthy several centuries ago. There are several trillion social sciences more rigorous than economics. As far as I can tell economic researchers actively discourage experimentation because the results of an actual well-run valid experiment would ruin everyone's career.