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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
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:05AM (20 children)
All this applies to "climate scientists" as well.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:36AM (18 children)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by jmorris on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:28AM (17 children)
Nope. It belongs in the Religion and Philosophy dept. It makes no falsifiable predictions.... well that isn't exactly right either. It made some that could only be tested by waiting twenty years twenty years ago but those were all wrong. You would have an easier time debating the finer details of transubstantiation with a Jesuit than the climate pause with a typical "climatologist". And another "tell" is their reliance on the Holy Consensus. Science is not driven by consensus, politics is. 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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:52AM (2 children)
By that measure, even astrophysics belongs to Religion and Philosophy... since you don't have you own personal collection of black-holes and supernovae to experiment with.
Or any sciences that are not amenable to experimenting at human scale, observation is the best you can do.
(maybe it's a good time to revise your definition of science?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday August 30 2017, @11:26AM
While I agree that GP went too far in a sarcastic hyperbole, there had been the climategate publications which were only possible by a combination of groupthink and PC. This tainted climate research in my perception and it remains the very challenge of climate research today to stand clear of those factors, IMHO.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:03PM
What in the world are you talking about? Astrophysics puts forth a number of theories that have been tested, and are most certainly falsifiable.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:53AM (5 children)
Why don't you throw geology in there with them, too, for the full moron?
I recommend reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (by Jared Diamond) - its afterward outlines in explicit detail how you don't need double blind studies or controlled variables to conduct experiments. And it's a lot more readable than Darwin's "On the Origin of Species".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mykl on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:44AM (4 children)
I picked this up, all eager to dive into a rich history of human progress. Unfortunately, the first 10 pages of the introduction/prologue turned out to be an apology for all Western progress and explaining why Western Europe was definitely not the smartest civilization (far from it, the author knows 'heaps' of people from other races who he thinks are way smarter!) just because they happened to be the ones that made all these major advances in technology, medicine, government, the arts and many other fields over the past few centuries. It was overbearing and smacked of an attempt to avoid being labelled racist by the PC Police, merely for describing a chronology of events in a particular part of the world at a particular time.
I didn't think I had it in me to be preached to for another several hundred pages. Pity, as the subject matter sounds really interesting.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @07:19AM (2 children)
Truth sure is a hard pill for some people to swallow. To sink below the pinnacle of human achievement, who could bear that?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:43PM (1 child)
White prividege is based on luck, not racial superiority? Who knew!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:30AM
Privilege is based on 1) the desire to push your wishlist onto others, and 2) having sufficient wisdom to compel it.
( Wisdom includes figuring out how to use the other's resources. Having a gun is no good if you can't figure out how to hang onto it.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:27PM
I didn't think I had it in me to be preached to for another several hundred pages. Pity, as the subject matter sounds really interesting.
So you're saying that you couldn't put down your social exceptionalism long enough to read something "really interesting". You're right. it is a pity.
(Score: -1, Troll) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:35AM
Jmorris, do not criticize what you do not understand. It serves no purpose, and only makes you look more ignorant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @07:21AM (3 children)
Can you enlighten us? Awhat does it feel like to be smart and stupid at the same time?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:06AM
Schrödinger's jmorris?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:30AM (1 child)
Well, part of me is offended by your comment and wants to reply in a demeaning fashion but the other half of me isn't sure how to refute what you said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:10PM
Pretty good!
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:17PM (1 child)
Quack! Quack! Quack!
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:18PM
Duckspeak?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:56PM
Climate science makes the following falsifiable prediction:
"CO2 is a greenhouse gas and large quantities will result in significant increase in global temperatures"
"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.
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:52AM
Climate "science" is not scientific because it deliberately ignores enormous steam plumes from power plants [youtube.com] which directly influence major weather patterns.
No mention of this means the reports are bogus.