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‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

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Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

chakkop wrote: post #8

I'm curious - does anyone else think that the equality that matters is equality in material outcomes? I think that would be such a boring world. The real equality that matters is equality in dignity as human beings, equality before the law, equality in our respect to each other. I think the developed world has made monumental strides on these fronts, which are spreading around the world too. (Even though, of course,…

> I'm curious - does anyone else think that the equality that matters is equality in material outcomes?

Maybe not directly, but...

> The real equality that matters is equality in dignity as human beings, equality before the law, equality in our respect to each other.

Material outcomes demonstrably affect all of those things, and cannot avoid doing so, generally, because "material outcomes" are power, and power is fungible, and those are all important areas to which power is applied.

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#82

Post by jamesblonde »

posterboy wrote: post #80
jamesblonde wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedantic and pathetic. I clarified what I meant by money, wealth.

which is not any less abstract and immaterial. There is no unit of wealth you could compare, or if there is, I'd like to know.

Postmodern bullcrap. Tell that to the homeless and malnourished in the US.

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#83

Post by berntb »

coldtea wrote: post #79
berntb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If my claim was true, economists admitting it would be like homeopathists or freudian psychoanalysts saying their fields are non-scientific. It just ain't gonna happen, or it will be marginal at best. You do realize that is how the creationists argue about the biology academics? :-( The problem is that to show something completely wrong (a year or two ago, you'd probably have linked to Picketty?) is a good way to…

> You do realize that is how the creationists argue about the biology academics? :-( You do realize that I don't care who else argues something in a particular way in another domain, as long as an argument is correct in another domain! > The problem is that to show something completely wrong (a year or two ago, you'd probably have linked to Picketty?) is a good way to make a career. Not really. To piss on your own fi…

>> To piss on your own field, is a good way to be considered a pariah, a conspiracy theorist, a nut job etc. Not many grants coming to the self-doubting economist, and policy advisor positions either.

You can say the same for any research area.

>> Like self-deprecating citations from practitioners in the field?

You know yourself that you can find that for most fields. I know I've heard it for biochemistry (regarding over relying on computer modelling for evaluating molecules, a long time ago; I have no idea what people to do now).

It is normal and necessary introspection about what you are doing -- "Do we do the right things? Are we going in a good direction?"

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#84

Post by berntb »

coldtea wrote: post #77
berntb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economy, palaeontology, archaeology, history and astrophysics can use computer models, look for data in the nature etc. Those can disqualify hypotheses. But you can't use the normal scientific method. I asked for references to disqualify economics (which aren't from obvious idealogical sources) -- none are presented. That tells me all I need to know. I don't need the epistemology of Popper or the more modern philosop…

> To disqualify one of these sciences because it isn't hard, you need to explain why don't also disqualify the rest of them. All of them should be disqualified as well, with the exception of astrophysics which IS a hard science. Who said it isn't? Just because you can't directly observe from nearby a remote star to falsify your hypothesis etc doesn't mean you can't look at its energy emissions, radiation shifts due t…

Hmm, fusion and particle physics might be too well known and _relatively_ simple that energy output and spectra can say what happens? You might be correct regarding astrophysics, especially since they do have many billions of examples to study.

Regarding your judgements on the rest of the fields, I'd really see better support for your claims. They will all look different with time, that is what research is, but dismissals of thousands of really smart people's work just need better motivation.

Some people just don't have much of an ideological connection to religion, sports or politics. At a minimum, I doubt that the departments in a majority of the world's economy departments have the same agenda. :-)

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#85

Post by beefield »

pandaman wrote: post #66
berntb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re your point about Palaeontology -- the same goes for economics (and much of astrophysics, for that matter). Which was my point. (The rest isn't relevant for my point and I am not really an expert. So just post a reference if I'm totally wrong. Popper isn't the last word in the philosophy of science anymore, either.) "Scientific method" only discussed in US and not relevant to Popper? :-) As I wrote to Beefield, in…

Sorry, I don't see how it does. Could you show an example of a falsifiable economic theory? Thanks for the hint by the way, but it looks like a non sequitur to me. How does it follow that I don't know something from the Popper's job title?

To be fair, there are falsifiable economic theories. For example some theories regarding market failures, like the adverse selection in asymmetrical information markets[1]. We _could_ observe that there is a market that fulfills the criteria for market of lemons, but prices lemons and cherries distinctively.

My issue with economics is that some of the deep core assumptions (utility maximization, strong form of efficient markets etc.) violate so egregiously the falsifiability test.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#86

Post by beefield »

berntb wrote: post #63
beefield wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I do not know what you mean by scientific method and I have not made any claims about scientific method. I have made a distinction based falsifiability. Falsifiability does not need experiments, but _observations_. You have written your "obvious" point now a few times, but you have not written a single unfalsifiable claim of palaeontology or any of the many other sciences you claim that exists. My hypot…

It is good to look up the scientific method before arguing about Popper. (Hint: It is in the first sentence of the second paragraph on Popper's wikipedia page. Also, your own link had the term as a related link.) Enough for me, bye. Edit: Another hint, Popper was amongst others professor of "logic and scientific method" at the University of London. It is also noted on his Wikipedia page. In short, you argue Popper wi…

I am not quite sure why you want to stick with the scientific method. I brought one very specific idea of Popper, falsification, that I think is relatively ideologue free and very useful to separate science from pseudoscience. And which happens to say that there are fundamental parts of economics that remind much more pseudoscience than proper science.

This discussion is _extremely_ easy to bring forward. All you need to do is to tell _one_ properly scientific theory outside economics that is not falsifiable. If you can't do that, we can hopefully agree that economics is one of the rare species that seem to have some (questionable) scientific credibility without too strong foundation on falsifiable thinking.

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#87

Post by berntb »

beefield wrote: post #86
berntb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is good to look up the scientific method before arguing about Popper. (Hint: It is in the first sentence of the second paragraph on Popper's wikipedia page. Also, your own link had the term as a related link.) Enough for me, bye. Edit: Another hint, Popper was amongst others professor of "logic and scientific method" at the University of London. It is also noted on his Wikipedia page. In short, you argue Popper wi…

I am not quite sure why you want to stick with the scientific method. I brought one very specific idea of Popper, falsification, that I think is relatively ideologue free and very useful to separate science from pseudoscience. And which happens to say that there are fundamental parts of economics that remind much more pseudoscience than proper science. This discussion is _extremely_ easy to bring forward. All you nee…

>> why you want to stick with the scientific method.

How can you have an opinion on that, after writing that you don't know what it is -- despite talking about Popper...?

I told you I didn't need that for my argument.

Bye.

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#88

Post by posterboy »

jamesblonde wrote: post #82
posterboy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which is not any less abstract and immaterial. There is no unit of wealth you could compare, or if there is, I'd like to know.

Postmodern bullcrap. Tell that to the homeless and malnourished in the US.

Is your idiocy also material? Maybe you should have it removed.

EDIT: Joking aside, the knowledge how to work a job is valuable, but immaterial. Undernourishment is often a matter of lack of the knowledge how to extract resources from the environment. Of course a lot of wealth is attained by theft. But what's theft of ideas, are ideas material wealth? Sure I'm talking semantics, I try to understand you. I don't assume you are totally wrong, I just tend to assume that my language faculty is sufficient to follow involved arguments. Often erroneously, but therefor I'm skeptic of others as well. I suppose the distinction between material and immaterial is largely immaterial, and the difference between abstract and concrete best hidden from conversation.

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#89

Post by vladTheInhaler »

posterboy wrote: post #88
jamesblonde wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postmodern bullcrap. Tell that to the homeless and malnourished in the US.

Is your idiocy also material? Maybe you should have it removed. EDIT: Joking aside, the knowledge how to work a job is valuable, but immaterial. Undernourishment is often a matter of lack of the knowledge how to extract resources from the environment. Of course a lot of wealth is attained by theft. But what's theft of ideas, are ideas material wealth? Sure I'm talking semantics, I try to understand you. I don't assum…

>I just tend to assume that my language faculty is sufficient to follow involved arguments

Spoiler alert - it's not. You didn't even use the right form of skeptic; you should have written 'skeptical.' Besides being a non-sequitur, your analogy is fatally flawed. It presupposes that it is possible to steal ideas, when in fact it is only possible to copy them. Furthermore, every homeless person knows how to extract resources from the environment: throw a brick in somebody's window and steal their stuff. Resources extracted. If by 'extract resources' you mean 'get a job and be a law-abiding citizen' then I question whether you have ever tried to rebuild a life from absolutely nothing while staying inside the confines of the law. It might be harder than you think.

Re: ‘No Empirical Evidence’ for Thomas Piketty’s Inequality Theory

#90

Post by posterboy »

vladTheInhaler wrote: post #89
posterboy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your idiocy also material? Maybe you should have it removed. EDIT: Joking aside, the knowledge how to work a job is valuable, but immaterial. Undernourishment is often a matter of lack of the knowledge how to extract resources from the environment. Of course a lot of wealth is attained by theft. But what's theft of ideas, are ideas material wealth? Sure I'm talking semantics, I try to understand you. I don't assum…

>I just tend to assume that my language faculty is sufficient to follow involved arguments Spoiler alert - it's not. You didn't even use the right form of skeptic; you should have written 'skeptical.' Besides being a non-sequitur, your analogy is fatally flawed. It presupposes that it is possible to steal ideas, when in fact it is only possible to copy them. Furthermore, every homeless person knows how to extract res…

Fair points, except I was thinking of technological supremacy, specifically the ability to build an aqueduct and that has to come before. It's supposed to be a metaphor for mind over matter and the asymmetry of life that has to be tolerated. Toll~ literally means to account, more or less, so I am not saying bigcorp exploitation was acceptable.

On skeptical, German has different grammar, but we share a large part of the vocabulary. Sometimes I have problems learning Idioms, other times I am unwilling to accept them because I think they are corrupt. I like talking semantics. Of course, the grammar has to be fit for that, so thank you. And please stop insulting other people on here. Don't take anything I say too serious, I am just bored and trying to get into a conversation, which is sad enough.

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