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1) A Bloomberg terminal can tell me prices, volumes, who's buying ect. They can't tell me about my marginal utility had I bought an extra unit because I didn't
by irixusr 11y ago
1) A Bloomberg terminal can tell me prices, volumes, who's buying ect. They can't tell me about my marginal utility had I bought an extra unit because I didn't buy it. Furthermore, a BT works with dollars, euros and Yen. Not utility. There is a mapping that assumes $US -> utility. But that's not necessarily a valid map.
Surely economists use a functional form for utility in their models. My objection is that utility (if it exists) has a functional form that is unknowable to us. That they've chosen a functional form and called it a day is not the same (a bit like when I choose B3LYP for my DFT functional, validated it a bit and, ultimately, called it a day w/ a smile)
2) I think my language has seemed a bit caustic because I was annoyed at OP's proposal for a Turing test to allow a debate. I think the conversation should definately include economics. And ethics. Now, 60 years after we built the interstates we're starting to realize the damage we caused by ignoring other voices (sometimes the damage was willful - see Ryan Gravel '99 thesis). Perhaps we would be wise to listen to others before we make societal decisions (TARP's an upcoming one that comes to mind)
I'm working on Bayesian models right now so I do appreciate the power of modern computational techniques.
Anyway, ethics has an "economic" streak to it with utilitarianism. For what it's worth I'm more of a Kantian, but I appreciate what a utilitarianist adds to the discussion.
3) Predictive models are all false. But some are more false than other, no? Newton is smack on for anything the vast majority of engineers will ever do.
Economics, while I respect the points, seems to have had a bit of a bad predictive streak. It's great at predicting what has happened when it'd fed what happened before. But that's modeling after the fact.
Again, I don't think the economics is BS or should be discounted. History also has poor predictive capabilities and yet we learn from it. But I make no secret at getting annoyed at the suggestion I have to do a Turing test on Tirole's life work when the fundamentals of the field are in question.
- copsarebastards 11y ago> There is a mapping that assumes $US -> utility. But that's not necessarily a valid map. That's exactly what I'm saying isn't happening. You're attacking a straw man. Very few people are stupid enough to believe that any one number is a perfect measure of utility. Certainly not any economist I know of. > Surely economists use a functional form for utility in their models. My objection is that utility (if it exists) has a functional form that is unknowable to us. That's true, and also completely irrelevant, because no economist I know of is claiming that they can measure utility perfectly. At the very best, they can estimate an approximation of utility that maps roughly to the things that they or their audience value. Obviously USD isn't utility, but if you're claiming that therefore economic models which measure things in USD are completely useless, you're just wrong. USD are useful for measuring utility in a lot of situations. > Predictive models are all false. But some are more false than other, no? No, things are either true or false, there is no middle ground. What I think you're trying to say, though, is what I said earlier: "The question is not whether they're false, it's what the margin of error is in relation to reality." > Economics, while I respect the points, seems to have had a bit of a bad predictive streak. It's great at predicting what has happened when it'd fed what happened before. But that's modeling after the fact. Let's not forget that the alternative you're proposing is to treat literally everyone's opinion on economic issues as valid. Yes, the accuracy bar for what passes as an economic prediction is pretty low. I don't see how this is argument that we should set the bar even lower. > But I make no secret at getting annoyed at the suggestion I have to do a Turing test on Tirole's life work when the fundamentals of the field are in question. If you're going to claim that the fundamentals of a field are in question, you might first want to know what the fundamentals of the field are. Given you think that economics deals in generalized utility, you'll excuse me if I don't take your questioning of the fundamentals of economics very seriously. Economists are quite aware that dollars and any other single-number measures aren't utility. That's incredibly obvious. Are you really so arrogant that you think you're the first person to notice this despite literally thousands of very smart people devoting their lives to studying this?
- irixusr 11y agoArrogant? I've been called worse things by better people. If I may, we've degenerated into a boring match of hair splitting, projecting what we wish the other had said and now we're about to fall into ad-hominems. I'm not going there.
- copsarebastards 11y agoIt's strange that you think you haven't gone there with that post. I'm sorry to call you arrogant, but I don't know how else to describe someone who thinks they've invalidated millions of man-hours of scholarly work without even understanding what the thing is they are invalidating. The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong here.