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Economics is basically social psychology with some numbers sprinkled in.
Don’t forget gambling.
I struggle to consider it scientific because it bakes in so many fundamental assumptions without questioning them. At least mainstream economics.
As someone that tries to be a bit of a generalist. Neoclassical economics is the one field of study where I have less respect for the field the more I learn about it and the problems that it tries to tackle.
true! maybe with some biology, anthropology, network effects, game theory churned in
Fake numbers with fake relationships between them.
Economics is a funny one as ultimately it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many) that people often incorrectly lump in with maths.
Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments on an actual economy though beyond models and simulation. And as anyone who has watched a Gary Stevenson video or two will know, your average academic economist is pretty bad at models and simulations.
Though I guess even bad experiments are still experiments
Edit: typo
Most of them are pretty bad at anthro too tbh lol
If they were good at stuff they wouldn’t be economists
Source: I’m an economist
Gary Stevenson is also an overconfident blow hard who thinks because he made money on the stock market he knows more than everyone. I’m a psychologist not an economist, I don’t like economics, but this is all still wildly off base from what actually happens in academia. Economist don’t run randomized control trial (RCT) style experiments. They use completely different techniques with different statistical methods to test assumptions. Are these as high quality for causal reasoning as a RCT study? No absolutely not. However I think the average person would be shocked at how much of every field of science does not confirm their studies to that gold standard and how difficult it is to match that exact specific scenario statistically.
it’s a focused & technical strand of anthropology (which I believe is considered a science by many)
…
Anthropology, as in what cultural arts are like in different groups of humanity? How is that a science? I even wanted to go into this field
Of course it is! We’re just animals, after all. Is documenting the behavior of different species of beetles a science? The only difference is that we can replicate behavior through culture, not just genes.
Kinda tough for an academic to run meaningful experiments
The actual foundation of economics.
Economics brings the spherical cow issue to its logical extreme with “efficient markets”
If markets are driven by “rational actors” then why is advertising a trillion dollar industry?
They’re just contributing to perfect information, or, uh…
I think a mainstream way of seeing things is that there’s rational agents and non-rational agents, and they behave differently.
I.e. a lot of economy discusses how a rational agent would behave. But economic schools also recognize that not every human is a rational agent, and that’s what advertisement is for. Basically, advertisement is a way to part fools and their money, i.e. give the money to more rational people instead. This is also partially justified with the philosophy that the world would become a better place if all the money (and therefore power) was in the hand of rational people.
all the money (and therefore power) was in the hand of
rationalrich people.This is the real point of econ. It’s all about justifying inequalities.
Under their ideology the rational become rich and thus the most rich must be the most rational. And don’t we want the world to be run by the most rational? Or do you want want those poor, gross, irrational agents?
It’s an overt grift indicative of the deep rot in capitalist ideology.
Economics, as an intellectual discipline, is closer to theology than physics. Its power is proportional to the belief it commands.
Finance is an arbitrary subset of mathematics, cherry picked to retroactively support a given economic model, and applied as its supporting mythology.
It’s entirely imaginary, which means alternatives are only ever a conjuring away.
it is closer to lobbying and propaganda than theology.
A distinction without a difference. Lobbying and propaganda are basically the prophesizing and scripture of politics.
not going to mansplain my perceived difference between the two, but I think we agree on the jist of it
economics is definitely closer to law studies than to theology. i mean, look at all the ownership relations and having to know what is proportional, how to run a business, rules and regulations, and such.
fun fact: theology was a respectable thing in the medieval ages. it was closer to maths/logic and spoke about how to organize a society and run a state. There were lots of influential people who studied maths but were also theologists, and lots of people studied theology and became mathematicians. I mean check out Isaac Newton who revolutionized physics with his maths-approach but also studied theology heavily. Check out Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who revolutionized mathematics but studied philosophy/theology. There’s a lot of overlap.
Theology, back then, was basically a mixture of logic/mathematics/how to organize a society/politics/and some metaphysics and philosophy. It was not a “make up random stuff” thing at all.
All of that changed in the modern age when theology became a cringe-worthy niche with basically no real content. Idk how exactly that happened. In the medieval days, however, it was one of the big three studies: theology (math), law (and economics), medicine.
Another way I often frame my perspective on this is:
Economics is the social control mechanism that filled the void vacated by religion after the Enlightenment.
Mythology was replaced with finance.
… Churches with banks.
… Clergy with economists.
… God with GDP.I don’t see either as inherently problematic systems, but their lack of rigorous foundational attachment to reality informs my argument that they should be applied as subservient tools, as opposed to their current role as dominant, dictatorial weapons.
Yeah theology is “given these base assumptions and this text, interpret the will and nature of the divine.” I can respect a person who studied theology at a respected university in all the ways I can’t respect someone who studied preaching at a Bible college. That said I hold a weird amount of opinions on Christian theology for a pagan
The opposite. Its power is inversely proportional to the belief it commands.
The efficient market hypothesis only works if people don’t believe it.
Finance is an arbitrary subset of mathematics applied to money
Kinda nitpicky but finance is applied math or engineering. Finance people haven’t done much in terms of actual math. There’s no money in math (literally and figuratively).
Economics is just applied statistics with a little sociology mixed in
And simplified until linear relationships appear.
To be fair, my engineering degree also did this.
Good thing I learnt that linearity in my chosen specialty only breaks down in the exotic circumstances of air, room temperature, 1 atm pressure, and distances of <0,5 m or >30 m.
In college - Assume everything is linear
Later - Everything is not linear
Tell us you dont understand economics without telling us…
Supply demand curves are usually drawn with straight lines.
never once in my economics education did they do that. not just because it’s easier to draw a curve than a straight line, but because the shape of the curve defines the type of good. maybe your economics education was just… bad?
Type economics supply and demand curve into Google images for more data points than your personal experience.
ooo, everyday people (not economists) can put bad images up on the internet
This is from an encyclopedia. Here’s another
Did your economics training teach you to ignore data?
Economics is just fascist sociology.
maybe pay attention to more than chicago
Don’t forget the other sibling: IT. Theoretical Computer Science is basically a form of mathematics, with all its algorithms and data structures that you can study and do proofs about.
Save some potato salad for cousin Music!
Music is entirely math though. Just arranged all pretty like.
like, i know some people insist music is math, but in my opinion that music is always lacking emotion. i prefer my music more on the side of folk song: not much math but a lot of passion in it.
I like both. Classical and prog rock both famously have a lot of math in them and I love them as genres. But also I kinda want a banjo to belt out some Seeger
Writing a png file by hand currently and ngl this feels like 90% law school (or whatever these “rules” fall under) and 10% math.
Laugh while you can, number boy.
Any “scientific” field that produces Art Laffer is a fraud.
Dude isn’t even a low point in econ. People like him are the reason econ exists.
I’m so tired of this flack that economics gets, that it is somehow “lesser” because it is a “soft science.”
Economics does run randomised control trials. Economics does adhere to testable hypotheses. Economics does use rigorous statistics/maths.
You how sometimes grants/government programs are randomly allocated? Those are live, randomised control trials, and if you read the fine print you’ll find a project number for researchers studying the effects of rental subsidies, health insurance, etc, one of which being the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. Those cancerous recommender algorithms, which are the culmination of millions of live A/B tests? Developed by the Econ PhDs poached by Big tech.
Oregon Medicaid health experiment - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experiment
It is true that many hypotheses cannot have experiments run. But this makes it even more impressive when economists find natural experiments. For example, the 2021 Nobel Laureates Card, Angrist, and Imbens studied the effects of minimum wage by looking at the towns on the border of New Jersey/New York, which had implemented different minimum wages. They found that increasing minimum wage did not increase unemployment, completely contrary to ahem conservative wisdom.
The Prize in Economic Sciences 2021 - Popular science background - NobelPrize.org - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/popular-information/
In contrast, many of the supposed “hard” sciences cannot run experiments either, or also adhere to untestable simplifying assumptions. Ecology, physics, geology (just to name a few) all study systems which are too large and complex to run experiments, yet the general public does not perceive them as “soft”.
The difference is that economics is unfortunately one of those fields where lots of unqualified people (read politicians) have lots of strong opinions about, and in turn has a disproportionate influence on everyone. Those criticised austerity measures in the wake of the GFC? That was due to politicians implementing the policies of the infamous “Growth in a Time of Debt” by Reinhart-Rogoff paper, which was published as a “proceeding” and hence not peer reviewed. During the peer review process was found to contain numerous errors including incorrect excel formulas. It didn’t matter - policymakers liked the conclusion, and rushed its implementation anyway.
Growth in a Time of Debt - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt
If you look into any awful policy, you will see a similar pattern. Even Milton Friedman, as an ultra hard libertarian for advocated for lowering taxes and abolishing all government benefit programs, recognised that poor people need some assistance, and so actually advocated for replacing benefits with a universal negative income tax (an even more extreme version of UBI). It didn’t matter - policymakers of the Reagan Thatcher era heard the lowering taxes and cutting welfare part, and didn’t do the UBI.
It’s a field full of grifters that get lifted up because they tell rich people what they want to hear.
The Chicago School is the driving force behind the rise of neoliberalism, the movement right of Western democracies, and the return of fascism in America.
Yes, there’s good work done in the field. But economists could prove definitively that capitalism is killing us all and that socialism is the only solution to organizing civilisation, and the only economists being platformed would continue to be neoliberal shit heels.
True if your too much of a flunky there’s still the Austrian School
Oh don’t get me started on the I’m afraid of math Austrian school
Its to economics what flat earth is to physics
it’s 90% lobbying and propaganda, 10% math
Economics does run randomised Control trials. Economics does adhere to testable hypotheses. Economics does use rigorous statistics/maths.
Psychology too mate. Both use the scientific method, but the premise that all experiments are under full control doesn’t apply to them.
I always considered economics, philosophy, theology and law as (important) academic subjects which are not sciences.
A PhD is a doctor of philosophy.
Indeed. But the sense of these words changed since they were adopted. Originally they just meant “teacher of general studies”.
I like to think that they evolved in parallel, as Philosophy underpins all interpretations.
While I get your point and don’t necessarily disagree, I do think it’s important to give philosophy a little more credit. Philosophy was what eventually came up with the idea of proving your claims and providing evidence to back that up. Logic and the scientific method were the creations of philosophy. Math was originally a philosophy/religion/cult(the Cult of Pythagoras for one example)devoted to numbers and believing them to be the ultimate answer to the universes questions.
Philosophy is a soft science, sure, but it’s core teachings are fundamental for everything else.
By dubbing econ “dismal science” adherents exaggerate;
The “dismal”'s fine - it’s “science” where they patently prevaricate.99% of the time it’s just astrology for men.
ITT: People who have never studied economics incorrectly diagnosing all of its problems
ITT: People incapable of justifying the scientific basis of economics.
Math is doing the heavy lifting, economics is just borrowing the muscles and hoping no one notices. 😄
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