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Philosophy professors talking about something they don't fully understand. Analytic solutions are almost always prefferable when they are available because they
by spikels 13y ago
Philosophy professors talking about something they don't fully understand. Analytic solutions are almost always prefferable when they are available because they are much easier to analyze. Naturally economists will prefer models with analytic solutions. However when simulation is required to understand something economists embrace it as is common in finance, pricing theory and even macroeconomics.
I guess the point is to bash economists. And why is this even on HN? From 2007?
- dllthomas 13y agoIt's on HN because someone had referenced it in a different discussion, it looked interesting and I wanted to see what people had to say about it, so I submitted it. It's on the front page because people voted it up more than they voted other things up.
- dj-wonk 13y agospikels, The authors most likely see your point (and hear it all the time), but I'm not sure if you see their arguments and perspective. Yes, philosophy can be less than useful at times. But sometimes it simply doesn't get credit because other disciplines borrow its ideas, simplify them, and use them on a day-to-day basis. In doing so, other fields often create orthodoxies (e.g. practices where certain beliefs are so baked in that you don't think about them). That's fine for getting stuff done, but it can be dangerous when the ideas really aren't resting on bedrock and need reexamination from time to time. The key point of the paper, as I see it, is to talk about why the field of economics is missing the boat on simulation.