Economics started as a branch of philosophy that got a lot of support because it draw a lot of support for its theory from maths.
Then, more recently, a good number of very inteligent people noticed the behaviours of economic models could be better predict and understood by using very simple psychological analysis and models.
I remember reading an article by two physicists where they just picked the oh-so-precious math of a given economic model, analysed it using the methods used to analyse physics and concluded the model was faulty by x+y+z.
No science started out as a “hard science”. Psychology is hard to quantify yet, because our currently available options for measurements are insufficient.
? That would still be biology and therefore reducible to chemistry and physics.
The approach of “everything is reducible to physics” is actually a philosophical theory that tries to describe what is reality. Is the material world everything that exists? Or are our thoughts (our knowing of things) actually a different reality? Etc.
In the end, the differentiation into the different sciences is simply an aid for people. I wouldn’t pay it that much attention because it really doesn’t tell you anything.
Being reducible is part of it, but I think reproducible is more important. Psychology is not reproducible. You can get statistical equivalents, but not exact reproduction of results.
I think being reducible is all of it. Even if it’s reproducable you can know THAT something is true, but not WHY it’s true. I think the why, or at least the ability and intention to get there, makes something a hard science.
Ceteris paribus, or all things equal is a super common economics phrase. It’s basically impossible to maintain in the real world. Economics used to be considered philosophy for a reason. As someone with a economics degree I do pretty much agree with you.
The “hard science” part of it is using past data to build models. You’re still more or less trying to tie the figures into a theory of why they happened that may or may not be true. There are so many factors it’s impossible to know. For instance I truly believe that the stronger anti-monopoly enforcement and higher taxes played a major role in America’s success and the rise of the middle class from post WW2-80s. I have to admit that there are an insane amount of other factors at play here that might invalidate all the trends during the same time though. Every other developed countries info structure being bombed to the ground giving the US a huge start not being the least of which.
Economics is an extremely broad field, encompassing things that are closely related to psychology (e.g. behavioral economics), and things that are related to physics and natural science (e.g ecological economics), as well as pure mathematics (e.g. game theory) so trying to say it has more in common with one than the other is kind of a vacuous statement or category error.
To those who are angry at normative claims and policy prescriptions from the economic orthodoxy/zeitgeist, I understand your frustration. I would say what you’re angry at is not economics itself (which is simply the study of scarcity and related human behavior) but economics done badly. Such as the Chicago school.
Setting aside the emotional baggage related to these issues, there are some really beautiful and fascinating topics in economics that borrow very directly from statistical physics in the analysis of financial time series data (and also apply to a wide variety of fields like network traffic, the distribution of metals in ore, turbulent flows in fluid dynamics, and the distribution of galaxies in space), originally identified by Benoit Mandelbrot.
It’s crazy how much people will vehemently defend a position with little to no knowledge of the subject. It’s easy to just pin it on the dunning-kruger effect, but in this case I think it’s definitely tied to how much people despise economists. Which I find kinda funny since it’s like getting angry at the weatherman for bad weather.
Also, are there any communities dedicated to actually discussing economics? I’d really like to spitball actual solutions to a shitty economy rather than the wishful thinking capitalists & communists rely on.
I can sympathize with them, as the way economic thought is portrayed in popular journalism makes it seem like ivory tower eggheads concocting overly-mathematized models to support bad policies. And I do believe there is some truth to this, with bad economists hiding shitty ideas behind the veneer of respectability that math provides. Science and technology are almost fetishized in our culture, especially by those who don’t really study them academically, and I believe disingenuous economists and politicians use this fact to their advantage.
What they must realize is that whatever flaws they might identify to overhaul these bad economic models leads to… more economics! Hopefully better economics. But they’re still participating in the field known as economics.
For instance, noting that the “homo economicus” doesn’t exist IRL isn’t really the gotcha that many people think it is. Rather, anybody doing economics properly is acutely aware of this fact, and is just exploring the limits of what such a simplifying assumption can yield. E.g. a surprisingly large mileage from the very parsimonious axioms of utility given by Von Neumann and Morgenstern. The really interesting and difficult part is thinking about how and why real life data deviates from the predictions made by the simple assumptions.
Behavioral economics was my favorite and I’d say it’s tied closely to game at its core, they’re both trying to predict human choices game theory just tries to quantify it with math. None of it is “pure math” it’s all theory with math attempting to support it. It’s only in like the last 100 years math even came into economic theory. I always enjoyed reading theory from the less recent economists (before they were even called economists) because it’s more pure theory/philosophy.
numerology surely. Because you can properly use mathematical operations and statisticsl tools in ways that are physically meaningless.
A sled-dog laden with taxidermied heads goes faster and faster as heads are removed. The economist is surprised but the biologist is not when removing the final head doesn’t make the dog run even faster, but stops it dead.
The invisible hand is just bullshit and prices in our economy are often centrally planned by a monopoly or a cartel that decides how an industry ought to set prices.
Not the OP and IMO centrally planned prices doesn’t really apply to cartels, but a cartel set price that nearly everyone is familiar with is OPEC+ prices for petroleum.
I think Aesthelete better cleared up what I am trying to say using OPEC as an example. Other versions of this behavior is in Dairy / Milk in the US. They’re wasting millions of gallons of milk in order to keep the price higher where it’s set by a central planner in the industry. Farmers will choose certain days to sell their crop as to try and get the highest price - and this is an innocent behavior - but capitalism literally has a built-in mechanism to encourage this form of price stability. Another bad example is poultry production in the US. There’s 4 companies only, and small farmers actually license and rent all of the stuff from the big 4. These farmers are treated so terribly, and at the end of the day they don’t actually get to sell or set the price. The central company does.
Mine wasn’t random. By showing up to spout some one liner you didn’t come up with, you’re acting as an instrument of someone else’s leverage, instead of as a participant in the discussion.
Hard science — inquiry into the nature of the “hard materials” like rocks.
Social science — inquiry into shared meanings on the material stuff around us, including the “hard materials” like mountains, and “soft intangible stuff” like taboos and beliefs, prices, and demand.
A lot of people assume “hard” means the serious stuff and social science as the easy and abstract stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Economics is a social science. Sadly, the fascination with it being “hard” is largely to be seen as the cool tough stuff. Inferiority complex, if you may.
I would actually love to hear you elaborate on that.
In what way sociologists work harder than economists?
I’d argue that when it comes to science, you can’t study economics without studying sociology and politics. Because then you will be lacking context. Wouldn’t that mean more research?
Add comment