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Comment by Tichy | Hacker News Reader

"In fact, thanks to their blind acceptance of a particular theory of the market, most of these concepts end up failing to accurately predict the future. "

Failing to predict the future does not prove something is not scientific. For example there are simple cellular automatons whose evolution can not be predicted, even though all the rules they follow are known.

Also, what is "the market" supposed to mean?

"Now the interesting thing about this money is that it lost value over time. "

Oh dear, please tell me that it is not the "Freigeld" craze finally reaching HN :-(

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Money lose their money over time due to the increase of money supply versus productivity.

I imagine, if we cut off the printing press, there will be massive deflation.

Yeah, that is why introducing money that is designed to lose value would not be a magic weapon to fix the economy.

We already have money that loses value by design (the target inflation is "a bit over zero").

But that is not inherent to the money, is it? It is the policy of the money issuing entity.

The Freigeld proponents want money that automatically loses value. Like the guy int he article mentioning that "money" in the middle ages would decay (because it was biological stuff). That's why I worried that he might be one of the Freigeld people.

Not inherent in the bills and coins, but in the economic system they're part of. So we could change the system and keep the physical money, of course.

Science is about predictability. If you can't predict behaviors with it so that you can falsify it, it is not science.

But just because some things couldn't be predicted, it doesn't discredit the whole field. For example, maybe it could be a scientific result that the stock market is unpredictable?

It also depends on what you mean by predicting. Does economics have to be able to predict the Dow Jones in 10 years to 5 cent precision to be acknowledged as a science? There are zillions of things to predict in the context of economics.

Also, mathematics is not a science by that definition?

"Failing to predict the future does not prove something is not scientific." Good point, thanks.

But if the technique in question was promoted as a scientific means of doing just that, then you have to question it, and its proponents. LTCM is the example that springs to mind.

Yeh, you make the point. So there are economists who claims that future is unpredictable, like Xiaokai Yang[1]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaokai_Yang

Yeah, but when everybody tells you to invest while the market is about to break down then there must be something wrong with the model.

In general I don't think it is the economists who tell you what stock to buy.

No "what" stock but that you should invest instead of a warning that the economy will break down soon. Most economists (something like 99,9%) failed to do so.

If all of the economists say that economy will break down next Monday, guess what? People will sell stocks in hand, and the economy will go down indeed, besides what is in truth. Since people are adaptive, they make decisions according messages they collected.

It's the job of economists to predict stuff like that to actually prevent it.

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