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from the how-bad-can-something-called-the-dismal-science-be? dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Economics affects us all, so why do so many remain ignorant of the fundamentals? Murray Rothbard said: "[I]t is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
Personally I'm tired of having to defend economics against both the mainstream advocates (with their broken models) and their critics (who tar economics with one brush). I take the time to educate myself and speak out, based on reason, not angry ignorance, and not on smugness, numerology, and appeals to the authority Lord Keynes.
There is a deep-seated tendency for people to misapply physical science techniques to the social sciences. This has resulted in mainstream economics degenerating into a modern day numerology. However there are intellectually sound schools of economics that do not attempt to treat human actions like Newtonian atoms.
This article from The Mises Institute discusses how and why mainstream economics has lost its way.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 19 2016, @03:29PM
There is a lot of irony in making all those insults and then turning around and holding up the Lord Mises as an authority.
Indeed, though there's a clue in the sentence you quoted about what Mises was really about -- i.e., "based on reason."
That doesn't mean what most people think it does. Here it refers to rationalism [wikipedia.org], which, philosophically, is pretty much the opposite of "science" as commonly understood today. Modern science derives its method from empiricism, i.e., the belief that we can learn from data in the world, which can be used to refine our hypotheses and theories.
Rationalism, in the more technical sense, appeals to "pure reason" and formal logic as the only basis for "true" knowledge. For example, if you observe something in the real world that contradicts your theory, you don't assume your theory could be falsified, instead you assume that something's wrong with the world. Rather than correcting or revising your theory (or even rejecting it entirely), which an empirical scientist might do, you assume that you simply made a bad observation, or you didn't understand this observation correctly and once you do, it will obviously conform to the TRUTH you KNOW to be true, through private deduction in your own head from unproven (but "True") axioms.
In science, the rationalist perspective was pretty much categorically rejected in the 17th century at the height of the "Scientific Revolution." In fact, some would argue that was actually what the Scientific Revolution was really about -- the immediate generations of intellectuals afterward certainly thought so. If you look at 18th century commentators looking back, they don't talk about Kepler and Galileo and Newton and a revolution in astronomy -- they talk about Descartes and other folks rejecting Aristotle and "rationalist" pedantry in favor of a something closer to our modern empiricism.
So, for a fan of Mises to be putting forth a headline on the flaws in "economic science" -- it's beyond irony. It almost seems like this submission could have been written as satire. If you don't believe me about the Mises folks and their anti-empirical basis -- Read their own website [mises.org], with its explicit rejection of empiricism and lauding of "a priori" truths.
By the way, none of this is to say that "mainstream" economics is good or the model of good "science" -- in many cases, it is also far from it. But for a Mises groupie to lecture the world on "science" is laughable.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 19 2016, @07:01PM
"Rationalism" in the sense you are using it should usually be specified as "Continental Rationalism", and the empiricism as "British Empiricism" The lineage of these Continental Libertarian Economic types runs more from the school of "Positivism" [wikipedia.org], roughly founded by Auguste Comte some time after the French Revolution. This school aims at the rational analysis of empirical facts, but mostly at removing all metaphysics, religion, politics, and artsy-fartsy stuff from science. But in the case of Libertarianism, they are literally hoist by their own petard!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday December 19 2016, @08:30PM
While I mostly agree with your qualifiers, I can't say that I agree with your characterization of the Mises folks as coming out of Positivism. To the contrary, the link I noted in my previous post from the Mises website explicitly rejects Positivism, embraces (Continental) Rationalism, and views empiricism (British or otherwise) as fundamentally limited and unable to address the types of economic and political questions the Mises folks want to claim to answer.
I'm NOT saying all followers of Mises necessarily agree with this perspective, and some of them are indeed more in the Positivist tradition. But the essay I linked isn't the only place among Mises materials that I've seen explicit rejections of empiricism and an embrace of old-school rationalist epistemologies.
(Score: 1) by segwonk on Wednesday December 21 2016, @07:43AM
Apologies: Off topic.
Just wanted to say to both you, AthanasiusKircher, and aristarchus - I really appreciate your insightful, informative and above all, civilized posts. I look forward to reading SN to see what I can learn for the day. Thank you so much! [Of course there are many other contributors I enjoy as well, but I was inspired to say something now for some reason.]
.......go til ya know.