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posted by mrpg on Wednesday August 30 2017, @03:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the A-Star-To-Guide-Us dept.

When Christopher Nolan was promoting his previous film Interstellar, he made the casual observation that "Take a field like economics for example. [Unlike physics] you have real material things and it can't predict anything. It's always wrong." There is a lot more truth in that statement than most academic economists would like to admit.

[...] several famous Keynesian and neo-classical economists, including Paul Romer, [...] criticized the "Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth" and [...] Paul Krugman. In this instance, though, Krugman is mostly correct observing that "As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."

[...] But more fundamentally, as Austrian economist Frank Shostak notes, "In the natural sciences, a laboratory experiment can isolate various elements and their movements. There is no equivalent in the discipline of economics. The employment of econometrics and econometric model-building is an attempt to produce a laboratory where controlled experiments can be conducted."

The result is that economic forecasts are usually just wrong."

"[Levinovitz] approvingly quotes one economist saying "The interest of the profession is in pursuing its analysis in a language that's inaccessible to laypeople and even some economists. What we've done is monopolise this kind of expertise.[...] that gives us power.""

[...] because economics models are mostly useless and cannot predict the future with any sort of certainty, then centrally directing an economy would be effectively like flying blind. The failure of economic models to pan out is simply more proof of the pretense of knowledge. And it's not more knowledge that we need, it's more humility. The humility to know that "wise" bureaucrats are not the best at directing a market "

Economists Are the New Astrologers


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:56PM

    by unauthorized (3776) on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:56PM (#561467)

    It makes no falsifiable predictions

    Climate science makes the following falsifiable prediction:
    "CO2 is a greenhouse gas and large quantities will result in significant increase in global temperatures"

    And another "tell" is their reliance on the Holy Consensus. Science is not driven by consensus, politics is.

    "Consensus" in science means that the best theory has been discovered and nobody has managed to overturn it yet, it does not mean "we all agree to this because our feelings". Scientific consensus is reached when a theory can hold it's ground regardless of how viciously opposing scientists try to disprove it.

    Not to mention that for all intents and purposes, "climatologist" is defined as "one who studies AGW" so saying 95% agree with the theory only makes one wonder what the other 5% are doing since they can't qualify for tenure or funding as heretics.

    Bullshit, the fossil fuel industry would shower anyone with gold if they could prove climate science false. There is no shortage of funding or publicity there.

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