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Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

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Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#81

Post by closeparen »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #71
atmosx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arts? Economics is more of a religion than a science.

If you poke at economists you get the exact same arrogant rage that you get when you poke at fundamentalist religions. Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Compare with poking at Einstein (never accepted quantum mechanics) or Linus Pauling (alternative medicine nutter), Shockley (racist). Poke all you want the physics community doesn't care.

The physics and math communities get plenty agitated at ludicrous pop-sci and Hollywood depictions, cranks who think they are oppressed geniuses with important answers, etc. Approach just about anyone with arrogance and contempt for the methods and body of knowledge they spend their life on, and they won’t be happy about it.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#82

Post by snowwrestler »

coldtea wrote: post #3

Because, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Economists' careers as receivers of grants, policy advisors, members of prestigious think tanks and organizations, and pundits, depends on being good at promoting whatever aligns with the elite's interests. The scientific parts of economics are merely applied math (including game theory), and quite…

Telling scientists to stick to physics and chemistry for "real science" seems like telling rock climbers to stick to ladders for "real climbing."

It's possible to produce useful predictions with small errors when you define very simple systems, which is what the foundational scientific topics have done. Of course it took centuries of hard work to do even that.

Physicists and chemists and biologists and economists all study the same thing. It's just that most chemists use heuristics to avoid dealing with the full physical complexity, and most biologists use heuristics to avoid dealing with the full chemical complexity.

Unfortunately, the jump in complexity from biology to the behavior of a population of humans is still too complex; we don't have great heuristics for that yet.

It seems kind of short-sighted to me to say that the people who are trying to build those aren't doing "real science." I don't understand the theory there... that they haven't figured it all out yet, so it's not worth doing?

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#83

Post by taffer »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #73
coldtea wrote: post #3

Because, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Economists' careers as receivers of grants, policy advisors, members of prestigious think tanks and organizations, and pundits, depends on being good at promoting whatever aligns with the elite's interests. The scientific parts of economics are merely applied math (including game theory), and quite…

Economics as used in policy seems to be mostly about using outrageously nonsensical arguments to justify tax cuts and increase corporate power by cutting regulations that enforce corporate responsibility. The results are predictably grim for everyone who isn't a 0.1%er - sometimes fatally so. There's a side-field of purely academic economics which includes heterodox ideas like MMT, but they - currently - have almost…

And that is exactly what so called climate sceptics say about climate science or what antivaxxers say about conventional medicine.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#85

Post by DFHippie »

geezerjay wrote: post #64
DFHippie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even if it was authored by outstanding academics such as Reinhart or Rogoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority > argue that scientists should be fired for publishing a paper that goes against your political values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

It is not an argument from authority. It's a statement of fact that both authors have published a very long body of work including very high-value contributions to science, and they are not suddenly incompetent idiots just because they've published a paper that a random guy on the interned perceives as being politically inconvenient. And the OP quite literally argued the scientists who authored the paper should be fo…

(Setting aside the argument from authority, which you continue,)

Here is the actual argument:

> full of elementary statistical and programming errors that should’ve gotten its authors fired

Here is your characterization:

> the OP quite literally argued the scientists who authored the paper should be forced out of their job just because they published an academic paper that he found to be politically inconvenient

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#86

Post by taffer »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #71
atmosx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arts? Economics is more of a religion than a science.

If you poke at economists you get the exact same arrogant rage that you get when you poke at fundamentalist religions. Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar. Compare with poking at Einstein (never accepted quantum mechanics) or Linus Pauling (alternative medicine nutter), Shockley (racist). Poke all you want the physics community doesn't care.

> Go ahead poke at Milton Friedman and watch them get really hot under the collar.

Who is them? Do you think economics hasn't made any progress sice the 1970s and everyone is a paleomonetarist?

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#87

Post by pytester »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #67
coldtea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. You've managed to be personally insulting without adding anything of substance, to my comment, Piketty's work, or to the general question of why economists would shun it. I've particularly enjoyed the "elitist contempt of the arts" part (whatever that means, since "contempt of the arts" is usually base, not elitist, not to mention the fact that I don't mention "the arts" at all), and the thought-stopper accus…

I think you'd agree with me that the problems with post WWII "social science", "political science", "psychology", "architecture" are precisely that they're trying to ape the physical sciences and not just be art. And this is utterly true of Economics more than anything. And actually while a lot of arts have been pulling themselves back from that rat hole economics just keeps digging deeper.

The problem with economics is the money riding on it. If one day the consensus becomes "raising the minimum wage by $5 only impacts profit; it doesn't impact employment" then a lot of very rich people stand to lose a lot of money as it becomes more politically palatable.

Economics is the most highly paid soft science for a reason.

Climate science has the same issue but fortunately they have managed to resist the corrupting influence of money.

Their hard science fetish isn't really the issue. Money is.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#88

Post by philippoi »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #67
coldtea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. You've managed to be personally insulting without adding anything of substance, to my comment, Piketty's work, or to the general question of why economists would shun it. I've particularly enjoyed the "elitist contempt of the arts" part (whatever that means, since "contempt of the arts" is usually base, not elitist, not to mention the fact that I don't mention "the arts" at all), and the thought-stopper accus…

I think you'd agree with me that the problems with post WWII "social science", "political science", "psychology", "architecture" are precisely that they're trying to ape the physical sciences and not just be art. And this is utterly true of Economics more than anything. And actually while a lot of arts have been pulling themselves back from that rat hole economics just keeps digging deeper.

"(T)he problems with post WWII "social science", "political science", "psychology", "architecture" are precisely that they're trying to ape the physical sciences and not just be art."

I'm not well versed in areas other than architecture, but I'm really puzzled where you'd go with this thesis with respect to that discipline. Would you care to elaborate further? I'm genuinely curious.

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#89

Post by closeparen »

mcguire wrote: post #18
coldtea wrote: post #3

Because, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!". Economists' careers as receivers of grants, policy advisors, members of prestigious think tanks and organizations, and pundits, depends on being good at promoting whatever aligns with the elite's interests. The scientific parts of economics are merely applied math (including game theory), and quite…

To an extent, I suspect you're right. I further suspect that economists, as a field, will continue to claim that their models, metrics, theories, and policy advice are good, while complaining about the inexplicable rise of populism, right up until somebody sets up a guillotine in front of Goldman-Sachs. (Populism is easy to explain: the peasants are revolting.)

We’ve actually had a taste of a world without Goldman Sachs and its ilk performing their functions: the credit freeze right after the crash. Was that better?

Re: Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)

#90

Post by DataWorker »

yakubin wrote: post #78
Gibbon1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd agree with me that the problems with post WWII "social science", "political science", "psychology", "architecture" are precisely that they're trying to ape the physical sciences and not just be art. And this is utterly true of Economics more than anything. And actually while a lot of arts have been pulling themselves back from that rat hole economics just keeps digging deeper.

Just because something isn't science, doesn't mean that it is art. Social "sciences", psychology and the like are neither. It is true however that they get more and more ridiculous when they try to dress their ideologies in a scientifically-sounding language to get a piece of the cake which is credibility that the hard sciences cooked for themselves, at the same time having remarkably little to do with any science at…

It sounds like you’ve discovered the problems with the softer sciences. You should look into whatever you consider a “real” science and see if it doesn’t have many of the same problems. That would require a bit more effort and intellect, problems in psychology and economics are pretty obvious, but you might be amazed by what you find.
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