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Comment by blippage | Hacker News Reader

I think it boils down to "hard" vs "soft". Hard subjects, like sending a man to the moon, we're actually surprisingly good at. Soft subjects, mostly in the field of humanities, we're atrocious at. Economics is something we're particularly bad at.

The future is inherently unknowable, second-order effects (let's call it the Law of Unintended Consequences) are either difficult to predict, uncertain, or just plain glossed over simplistically. Additionally there are problems with simplistic thinking, adaptivity of the system (the world doesn't work around "asymptotic", "stable" states, but shifts according to current inputs, acting as positive or negative feedback), unconscious or conscious bias, cupidity, and mal-intent.

When a rocket blows up on the launch pad, on the other hand, that's unambiguously bad. Time to rethink the design.

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> ...Unintended Consequences) are either difficult to predict, uncertain, or just plain glossed over simplistically

This made me laugh a little out loud as I was thinking about how poorly early mask policies were being set. It was the overconfidence of many experts that recommended against wearing masks because we had no (strong) evidence that they'd work. Only ensuring that N95 masks aren't hoarded by consumers is important.

Masks are a terrible example to pick because at the start they were accurately summarizing the state of knowledge, and saying the same thing (that masks don't work) in private E-Mails too.

The idea that they are super important was made up later and then accompanied (in the USA) by this ridiculous lie that it was about stopping hoarding. Sure enough, actual real world data shows no impact of masking on COVID. Masks have become a byword for dishonest fake experts who say whatever is ideologically expedient rather than what is actually true.

You make a great example here. Many folks are not expert in economics or social scientists and they criticize them to no end with no actual understanding. Maybe that's the problem of the scientists/researchers not being able to communicate the statistics and real understanding of uncertainty... which is exactly what Michael Lewis discusses in the article. It's not just lay people, but even scientists in different domains, who should know better, will criticize fields outside their expertise often with no real understanding.

If you want to understand why Americans don't trust experts, look to weaponized disinformation campaigns started by the Soviets, continued on by Koch and big oil. The PBS Frontline special on Big Oil in illuminating. Many resources on the history of Soviet and Russian disinformation campaigns.

These things exploit our fear that politicians lie to us. And not wrongly because some do and that results in terrible things. But they also prevent us from making progress.

The crucial misunderstanding is that economics and social studies are considered "science" or "scientific".

And pretending that they are a big part of the problem.

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