This year’s Nobel prizes prompt soul-searching among economists

At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.”

God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?”

> The prize, awarded in early October, recognised the laureates’ efforts to use randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to answer social-science questions.

There is a really brutal dynamic involved. It is hard to be uncertain and make a decision. However, when dealing with problems more complicated than assembling a sandwich, it is nigh impossible to be certain about anything.

We all know software so here is a software example - if I walk up to a new computer, fire up a web browser and go to news.ycombinator.com, will it work? Probably, but there are many things that could go wrong - configuration, hardware, new bugs, old bugs, etc. But I can't afford to worry about any of that because I only have 8 hours in a day and I have to just assume it will work out. Usually it does. If it doesn't, then I start exploring what the system is doing and why.

But this happens with everything and quietly trains people to approach complicated situations with great confidence and pick up the pieces if (and only if) someone or something flags that there is a problem. This approach doesn't work for policy but there is a constant influx of people who think this way getting into positions of power and making policy decisions.

It is a fact that these questions of evidence are well known and indeed ancient, but there is constant and heavy pressure on culture to backslide and stop accepting that there is uncertainty that needs to be controlled. Making decisions while being uncertain is hard and by-and-large has to be learned. Even learning it as a skill is hard because it is about how we behave more than about what we know. Figuring out how to embed those behaviours at culturally at scale is a component why the Enlightenment was a big deal.

But, ultimately, I think the researchers would probably answer with something closer to "I don't care if it's economics. I consider it both interesting and relevant", and so would the Nobel judges.