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Danish government makes its new economic model open source

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Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#131

Post by guyomes »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #112
mbar84 wrote: post #67

Economics is not a science like physics. We can't do controlled experiments, we can't falsify hypothesis. This leads to very muddy waters and what you are left with are two kinds of economists: Those who tell people what they want to hear and those nobody listens to. Econometrics gives people everything they want to hear, and with a scientific veneer as a bonus. The HN crowd should however appreciate how susceptible…

Please note that the origins of modern science in Europe lie in astronomy [1]. Astronomy has always has been and is an observational science, yet has been enormously successful at creating models of what we see in the skies. Would you critique astronomy the same ways as economics? What is the critical difference? [1] Yes, there was a lot of simultaneous work in other areas as well.

You might be interested in this book [0]. One idea from the author is that in astronomy, you model the behavior of a set of objects, where each individual object or "atom" of your simulation (planets, rocks) has a behavior simple and easy to model. In economics and social science, the "atoms" of your simulation are human beings, and there is no good intrinsic model for the behavior of a single human beeing.

One of the observation of the author is that models work better if the human beings accept to restrict their behavior and follow simple rules. Another observation is that in social science, it is hard to design models that do a prediction significantly better than "tomorrow will behave the same as yesterday".

[0]: http://www.ens-lyon.fr/en/article/research/your-life-numbers...

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#132

Post by _dain_ »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #112
mbar84 wrote: post #67

Economics is not a science like physics. We can't do controlled experiments, we can't falsify hypothesis. This leads to very muddy waters and what you are left with are two kinds of economists: Those who tell people what they want to hear and those nobody listens to. Econometrics gives people everything they want to hear, and with a scientific veneer as a bonus. The HN crowd should however appreciate how susceptible…

Please note that the origins of modern science in Europe lie in astronomy [1]. Astronomy has always has been and is an observational science, yet has been enormously successful at creating models of what we see in the skies. Would you critique astronomy the same ways as economics? What is the critical difference? [1] Yes, there was a lot of simultaneous work in other areas as well.

>Would you critique astronomy the same ways as economics? What is the critical difference?

Astronomy doesn't fight back, economics does.

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#133

Post by m00dy »

sshine wrote: post #46
m00dy wrote: post #45

Turkish Government needs to take a look at this.

Do you mean the Turkiye government? ;) (Reference to the recent news item that Erdogan made a public statement in which he renamed Turkey to Turkiye in English.)

It is fine by me

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#134

Post by _dain_ »

throwawayboise wrote: post #49
sshine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean the Turkiye government? ;) (Reference to the recent news item that Erdogan made a public statement in which he renamed Turkey to Turkiye in English.)

Do countries get to declare how their names are spelled in other languages?

They do, but only because the English-speaking world is peculiarly susceptible to this sort of manipulation. It started with Burma->Myanmar and Peking->Beijing, something nobody should have taken seriously.

Nobody gets mad that Spaniards say "Londres" instead of London. It's funny how it's mostly despotic regimes that get so twisted up about these foreign linguistic matters.

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#135

Post by streamofdigits »

Open sourcing models that are used for significant policy decisions (affecting others) is somehow required to protect and maybe enhance democracy in the digital age. Applies obviously to the public sector but also to private sector when it operates at large scale as a de-facto regulator / controller / planner of society.

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#136

Post by vishnugupta »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #112
mbar84 wrote: post #67

Economics is not a science like physics. We can't do controlled experiments, we can't falsify hypothesis. This leads to very muddy waters and what you are left with are two kinds of economists: Those who tell people what they want to hear and those nobody listens to. Econometrics gives people everything they want to hear, and with a scientific veneer as a bonus. The HN crowd should however appreciate how susceptible…

Please note that the origins of modern science in Europe lie in astronomy [1]. Astronomy has always has been and is an observational science, yet has been enormously successful at creating models of what we see in the skies. Would you critique astronomy the same ways as economics? What is the critical difference? [1] Yes, there was a lot of simultaneous work in other areas as well.

> What is the critical difference?

  * Observers are also actors. They can and will significantly influence the observed.
  * Once observations are revealed at large it'll have short/long term consequences. There's a good reason fed gives multiple indications before changing any parameters such as interest rates, tapering etc.,
  * Humans don't necessarily act like rational selfish agents (as economists expect) all the time.
  * Economics is often entangled with other aspects such as trade agreements, geopolitics some of which take years and decades to manifest.

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#137

Post by sofixa »

clusterfish wrote: post #71
xunn0026 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me? Of course! Do people get to declare their name and pronoun?

People generally do not get to declare how their name is spelled in a foreign language. It's determined by the government issuing them the document containing their foreign-spelled name. (Depends on the country of course, but this is typical)

Of course they do! For my Bulgarian papers i was asked to spell my name in latin script however i wanted, and when i moved to France I was asked how is my name spelled, and i could change it if i want to (e.g. if i had an s in my name between vowels, in French it'd be read as z; in that case i could have changed the spelling to have ss, which is always read as s).

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#138

Post by toyg »

runeks wrote: post #118
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please note that the origins of modern science in Europe lie in astronomy [1]. Astronomy has always has been and is an observational science, yet has been enormously successful at creating models of what we see in the skies. Would you critique astronomy the same ways as economics? What is the critical difference? [1] Yes, there was a lot of simultaneous work in other areas as well.

> What is the critical difference? Whether the stuff you’re observing can read and understand your observations, and then choose to do the exact opposite.

Schrodinger's cat problem on a social level, basically.

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#139

Post by hgomersall »

viztor wrote: post #108

I read the comment about the unreliability of economics, however I do like to point one thing, most economical model fit well when the economy is doing ok or within a certain range of parameters, until something outside of those safe area happens. Think of 2008, and think of the economical impact of the pandemic. It's impossible to account for in prior models and thoughts as those are nonlinear events almost no one c…

Except that some economists did predict the global financial crisis based on their models. The thing that marked them out was that they were all heterodox economists. Largely the predictions were based on a solid understanding of the financial system, something mainstream economics completely ignores. https://voxeu.org/article/no-one-saw-coming-or-did-they

Re: Danish government makes its new economic model open source

#140

Post by cospaia »

gtsop wrote: post #122
mbar84 wrote: post #67

Economics is not a science like physics. We can't do controlled experiments, we can't falsify hypothesis. This leads to very muddy waters and what you are left with are two kinds of economists: Those who tell people what they want to hear and those nobody listens to. Econometrics gives people everything they want to hear, and with a scientific veneer as a bonus. The HN crowd should however appreciate how susceptible…

> Economics is not a science like physics. It's not that economics can't be a science like physics. It's that (most) economists don't treat it like a science.

No, it can't be a science like physics. It is a science anyway. Just not like physics.
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