Definitely. I’ve seen examples of economists failed attempts at math. It explained a lot about the state of the economy.
Now hold on guys… I think I would put it slightly more useful than reading tea leaves.
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Sociology is an actual science with a methodology and it tries to learn from other sciences.
Economy considers it pure like maths despite the evidences it is not the case.
Economy is pseudo-science at its best.
Economy` is pseudo-science at its best.
This sentence doesn’t even make sense.
Econometrics is highly research driven and evidence based. In it’s simplest form econometrics says if you put prices down you will (usually) sell more of your product. You’d dismiss this observation as pseudo-science?
And even psychology is extremely dubious. Just look at the recent Stanford scandal, and the replication crisis a few year ago…
Unfortunately, publication pressure turned psychology into total junk. You can’t really believe anything unless several other institutions replicated the experiments (and good luck getting funding for that).
You can’t really believe anything unless several other institutions replicated the experiments (and good luck getting funding for that.)
Shouldn’t that be the case with every scientific discipline?
Psychology is “experimental” only in its loosest possible definition.
Wrong
I agree.
Economics, sociology and political science are the trifecta of sciences that cover human societies, rather than human individuals.
Psychology is closer to medicine. It is complex and unpredictable, because humans are complex and unpredictable, but they approach the subject empirically and can actually achieve consistentcy. For example, we are getting really good at helping people with PTSS, ADHD, Autism, learning difficulties, etc.
I would say economics, sociology and political science are at the lowest rung on the “certainty” totempole. These sciences are forever stuck in the “we don’t know what we don’t know, so we are driving blind” mode of operation. They only succeed in analysing and narrating what happened after the fact. At best, they prevent us from repeating some mistakes in the most obvious ways. But they also enable us to repeat old mistakes in novel ways.
The only reason people confuse economics with the hard sciences, is because it has a Nobel prize.
But it really should be seen as an equivalent to the Nobel peace and literature prizes, in a separate league of the physics, medicine and chemistry ones.
Even economists themselves call their science the dismal science.
All this said, Economists are true and capable scientists (well, some are corrupt and biased, but some doctors are, too. That’s not an indictment of the whole field).
Their subject is just difficult to analyze.
I mean, define experimental?
Daniel Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics for his research on the psychology of judgement and decision making, which drives our economic models. He’s a psychologist.
Any definition of experimental that fits psychology will fit economics.
is this a controversial opinion? i think pretty much every economist would tell you it’s a social science
No one who has even the faintest idea of what physics is would be able to conflate it with economics. About the only way the two are related is that they’re both studied by people to the point that you can get a degree that focuses on either.
I think you would be surprised how much math used in physics is used in economics and then there is statistics which is heavily used in both.
Meh, math and statistics are (ab)used pretty much anywhere in science. Carpenters and blacksmiths both use hammers, but so do roofers and geologists.
I think the internet thinks economics is a hard science. I think it’s mostly due to the math involved.
It isn’t a difficult science from a learner’s PoV.
It is, however, difficult in a sense of trying to figure out why in the world what happened happened, and most importantly, making it possible to do again.
That’s because not only can you not experiment, you only gather data from observations, but once you share the product of your studies the reality changes in reacton to it.
In same Physics the object of your studies doesn’t simultaniously study you.
Math gets involved to get a result that is somewhat reproducable. But even then since we can’t factor everything we use degrees of probability/certainty.
Theoretically speaking if we managed to fully understand human behaviour then we coult predict the outcome of everything. As you can imagine, we’re nowhere close to being able to do that.
Back to original post, yes, economics is closer to psychology than it is to physics. At least for the fact that we study human behaviour, but on a different scale. So sociology and political science are the closest, then psychology, next all of biological sciences, and chemistry, physics and everything related come last pretty much.
Math doesn’t fit anywhere here, since it’s a tool for measuring reality and not a study of reality itself.
This wall of text only means that economy is not even a science like psychology or social sciences could be.
Economy is a fraud.
Lmao “economists don’t like my economic views so economics isn’t real”
You literally need a doctor’s in mathematics to be an actual economist.
Doctors of Mathematics know enough about modelling and the Garbage-in-Garbage-Out effect that they would quit the discipline of Economics within a few days of entering it.
In the areas were Economics deals with things with high Political Relevance you need the a salesman mindset - vague and self-decieving - which is almost the diametrical opposite of how Matematicians think.
Lmao what? Economists are dorks man, not salespeople. Do you actually know any economists or is this just an “I’m mad because economists don’t push communism” kind of thing
I worked a decade in Investment Banking.
There is no math involved in economics. Every equation in the field is a definition.
Economics is the hardest social science, because it uses the most math.
It’s somewhere between physics and sociology.
That doesn’t make any sense. Anything involving math is relatively easy because there’s only one right answer. A lot of people have this backwards because they have shitty math education and seem to think higher maths are akin to some kind of alchemy.
Hard science as in “has a right answer”, as opposed to a soft science that is more subjective.
I’m not referring to difficulty.
Great. I’m not referring to your ideas. I’m referring to popular understanding.
More like astrology, it’s all just correlation til the models fails and then they invent a new one
and then they invent a new one
Well, do they?
Trickle down baby!
https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED153/5efca02de9e21.jpeg
You can use astrology as a very, very crude psychological model.
First you would have to find someone who thought economics were closer to physics.
No, at least someone who graduated kindergarden.
Theres an interesting book on it, literally “Physics of wall street”. Or that was the literal name translated from my language. It explored the similarities between the two, can recommend.
Thanks, looks like an interesting book. Looks like he also wrote on misinformation.
The primary function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
There is a specific area of economics that deals with psychology: behavioral economics.
Also, can we retire using Steven Crowder, who abused his wife for years, as a meme?
My mind did tricks with that last comma , “You know, that funny meme where he abused his wife”
Maybe he did abuse her as a meme, we don’t know his motives
Economics isn’t a science because there’s no way to falsify hypotheses or theories.
Also they can change the way the “world” works to fit a bad hypothesis, whereas in science the hypothesis has to change.
It’s possible to do that in Economics, but most of them are very unethical. It’s not impossible.
For example, you would have to have complete control over an economy to make experimental changes. Say increasing interest rates just for certain subjects and leaving them alone for the control group. It would be very illegal.
Usually economists take advantage of local law changes to observe the results. Like you can look at the effects of increasing minimum wage on unemployment by looking at cities that do it before and after. Or you can compare similar states that when some of them pass a law, but others don’t.
The movie “Trading Places” is a kind of unethical economic experiment, although the record keeping was sparse.
We have video games and simulation to do any sort of things. Politics to try new things.
Economy is pseudo-science.
There’s an assumption there that psychology is not a hard science. An assumption that I agree with though.
No science started out as a “hard science”. Psychology is hard to quantify yet, because our currently available options for measurements are insufficient.
Hard sciences are reducible. Pharmacology reduces to biology, reduces to chemistry, reduces physics.
The hard science of the brain and mind is neuroscience.
Being reducible is part of it, but I think reproducible is more important. Psychology is not reproducible. You can get statistical equivalents, but not exact reproduction of results.
I think being reducible is all of it. Even if it’s reproducable you can know THAT something is true, but not WHY it’s true. I think the why, or at least the ability and intention to get there, makes something a hard science.
? That would still be biology and therefore reducible to chemistry and physics.
The approach of “everything is reducible to physics” is actually a philosophical theory that tries to describe what is reality. Is the material world everything that exists? Or are our thoughts (our knowing of things) actually a different reality? Etc.
In the end, the differentiation into the different sciences is simply an aid for people. I wouldn’t pay it that much attention because it really doesn’t tell you anything.
What would still be biology?
Neuroscience is either in medicine or in biology. And following the weird meme of science hierarchy, neuroscience is just biology.
It reduces to biology. That’s why it’s a hard science. Saying it’s just biology is like saying biology is just chemistry.
Economics started as a branch of philosophy that got a lot of support because it draw a lot of support for its theory from maths.
Then, more recently, a good number of very inteligent people noticed the behaviours of economic models could be better predict and understood by using very simple psychological analysis and models.
I remember reading an article by two physicists where they just picked the oh-so-precious math of a given economic model, analysed it using the methods used to analyse physics and concluded the model was faulty by x+y+z.
Economics is… a very strange thing.
All science started as an offshoot from Philosophy.
Yes but most people tend to think Economics is an offshoot of Mathematics, due to its connection with it.
What connection? It has about as much connection to math as astrology or social science
Social Sciences use statistics and probability mathematics.
Astrology, to what I know, uses a lot of trignometry.
After checking the syllabus for an Economics degree in my country there courses of Calculus, Accounting and Algebra, all mandatory.
Whatevs. That doesn’t make Economics a branch of mathematics
That’s dubious. Considering that economists deliberately ignore strong established psychological theories to make theirs work. Economical theory also runs contrary to a lot of established notions of sociology. Economics is closer to politics than to any science.
Economists are there to perform the job that Theology departments used to do: provide a mystical moral justification of whatever the assholes in charge want to do to everybody else.
Wait, do people actually disagree with this? I thought this was just common knowledge.
Maybe they mistyped psychics? I get all my stock market advice from fortune tellers.
Well, the human mind is based on chemistry/physics sooo
Our econ prof told us “Never trust a statistic you haven’t forged yourself”.
