> I call it organized religion with equations, superstition. The only way to become free of superstition is through overcoming. But you need to study. I’ve always pissed off my academic colleagues and other economists who actually believe that is real science what they are doing.
> Our mathematical models of the weather can be judged by objective reality. If I am a meteorologist and come up with a prediction that tomorrow there is going to be a heatwave in Leicester square, all we have to do is to wait until tomorrow to see if I’m right or wrong. The weather will either confirm or junk my theories about it.
> Let’s say that I have the same kind of computer model and actual machine and data mining that the meteorologist does, but instead of using it to predict the weather I use it to predict the stock exchange. And suppose that I was somebody very highly respected as a predictor of stock exchange changes and let’s say that today, I were to predict that tomorrow is going to be a major crash in the stock exchange. There might be because I predicted it! In society and in the economy, our beliefs about the phenomenon under study are part of the phenomenon under study.
> ~ Yanis Varoufakis
Anyone who says otherwise is trying to convince you why the poor should exist.