Comment by pastProlog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pastProlog | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> To me it's just astrology for people who know calculus.

> [...]

> While I may disagree with methodology, and I may even argue politically about policy implications based on conclusions various sciences reach

Economics is a science like theology is a science. Some of our skepticism just goes beyond yours. Actually, the word "economics" was created to replace "political economy" by some of the most political of the economists like Jevons and Marshall. I can accept the impartiality of astronomers coming to a consensus of how close the star Proxima Centauri is to earth. Insofar as deciding how the pie should be divided up, to call that a science with people working in good faith is absurd.

> Economics is a science like theology is a science.

No, its not. Economics deals with measurable phenomena in the material world.

> can accept the impartiality of astronomers coming to a consensus of how close the star Proxima Centauri is to earth. Insofar as deciding how the pie should be divided up, to call that a science with people working in good faith is absurd.

Deciding how the pie should be divided up is not within the scope of the science of economics. Predicting how the pie will end up divided given certain starting conditions and policy frameworks, OTOH, is.

Economics does not, unfortunately; deal with falsifiable hypotheses that can be tested.

And it is at best confined to natural experiments since we can't spin up 10,000 civilizations that start with the same resource base but different economic policies.

The fact that you _believe_ economics is a science in spite of the evidence; suggests that you are not as objective as you think you are.

Economics does, in fact, deal with falsifiable hypotheses which can be tested. In fact, a large part of the reason that we know that the rational actor model is flawed in ways besides the assumption of perfect information is by experiments in economics falsifying hypotheses based on that model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com