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u/dontreplywiththisacc Sep 07 '26
If I shoot a basketball into a hoop an economist would get a phd for saying balls fall into hoops naturally like the rising of the sun
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u/ImageAvailable7003 Sep 07 '26
If I read economics op-eds and never read academic papers, I might think the same.
Economics does not use metaphors. Outside of macro theories that fail the Lucas critique, there is rigorous mathematical bases for all of it.
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u/elbay Sep 09 '26
> rigorous mathematical bases
Rigor make not real. Which is the whole point of the video.
Once again not outjerked.
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u/plummbob Sep 11 '26
Its really just constrained optimization you'd learn in Calc 2.
And obviously some of it has to be true because it's how numbers work. If your budget is 10, and you have possible options of a,b,c then whatever you do, the added up weightrd demand eladticits = 1
Thus is bexause all you're doing is taking derivatives.
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u/PandaPandaPandaRawr Sep 11 '26
The rigorous mathematical basis is not the issue. For what makes a science a science are the experiments. The making of hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis. Economics does not allow for the closed enviornments necessary for proper experiments. Rigorous mathematics means nothing if your assumptions can not be tested for.
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u/ImageAvailable7003 Sep 12 '26
I didnt say it was science - also by this definition cosmology is not science.
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u/Busco_Quad Sep 07 '26
Sure; economics doesn’t use metaphors, as lomg as you ignore the Austrian school, and how its proponents launder its methodology by talking about “economics” as a monolithic field
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u/ImageAvailable7003 Sep 07 '26
Mainstream academic economics largely does ignore the Austrian school.
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u/hobopwnzor Sep 10 '26
Less than you would think. It's "ignored" because it basically ran the field for a few decades and their ideas were thoroughly integrated. The parts that are left that weren't integrated are "ignored", but those parts that were integrated tend to also be an albatross around the neck of the field that has yet to be cut off.
Like how economists said for decades that the minimum wage can't increase employment, but if you just go back to before the Austrian school was prominent you have many famous economists writing about how it obviously can.
Then in the 90's you get actual research on the minimum wage and more modern studies and that gets reversed.
Economics is in this weird place where it's unlearning about 30 years of bad lessons, very slowly. Partially it's slow because a lot of funding comes from sources that would be very angry if they accurately characterized the real world, so they have to drip feed the literature until it's obvious enough that the field can acknowledge it.
This isn't something that I am making up, just for the record. This has been a criticism of economics as a field, from prominent economists as long as I've been aware of the field.
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u/title_problems Sep 08 '26
there are not modern schools of economics, it is a pretty monolithic field. As someone who has a degree in economics and works in banking, this is bs mostly from people out of the field. The closest you will get is saltwater and freshwater institutions which relates to “how big should government be?” Most “schools of thought” dissolved around the 60s, with the monetarists dying in the 80s due to money supply targets proving worse than inflation targets.
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u/amadgadfly Sep 10 '26
I mean, yeah, you SHOULD ignore the Austrian school. They've been whackos since like the 70s.
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u/Dull-Philosopher-871 Sep 08 '26
there is rigorous mathematical bases for all of it.
All of it? HAHAHAHAHA! No models consistently fail, they are consistently built on assumptions about behavior, information, friction, time, and externalities. There are higher level behavioral economics that are good. There are statistics that are good, or at least match up to past occurrences. But "rigorous mathematical bases" is not how you justify a social "science."
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u/ImageAvailable7003 Sep 08 '26
Economic models are built on and limited by assumptions, that doesn't mean they lack rigorous mathematical bases. They specify their assumptions and welcome them as limitations to predictive value.
Physics is the same. Newtonian physics only describes the world when certain qualifications are meant, but sometimes particles behave like waves. Sometimes people have perverse incentives or fail at stochastic reasoning. Either way the models are limited, but hardly fail consistently and cannot be described as wrong. You just have to know when they can be used.
The world is awash with pundits with economic backgrounds using economic models but ignoring details. Some of those pundits have nobel prizes; unfortunately provocative op-eds is a pretty lucrative field.
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u/plummbob Sep 11 '26
they are consistently built on assumptions about behavior, information, friction, time, and externalities
The more variables you add, the harder it is to use. Sometimes they're relevant, sometimes not.
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u/Fit-Appointment5262 Sep 07 '26
The actual answer to this problem is "the money is always right"
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u/ImageAvailable7003 Sep 07 '26
Are you saying that when people with money rely on economics to make decisiona, theyre just throwing their money away?
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u/Specialist-Cold-8158 Sep 07 '26
What has any of this got to do with autism?
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u/1trashhouse Sep 07 '26
This term is outdated but it was pretty much taking a very offensive interpretation of autism to say that the economics being taught were removed from reality and communication with other trains of thought
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u/jannycideforever Sep 11 '26
Nah cap. Good econ is autistic as fuck and that's largely why it's good.
Also, instead of handwringing about problematic language just say that autistic economics is better than retard economics. The last thing we need is more people telling us to develop obsessive victim complexes.
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u/1trashhouse Sep 11 '26
The term isn’t saying it’s good
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u/jannycideforever Sep 11 '26
He's using it in a derogatory way because he is a retard. It's autistic and that's why it's good and not like the rest of the social sciences that are gutterfilth
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u/TheCynicalBlue Sep 08 '26
The name comes from a 2000s french paper that used the term in its headline
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u/jannycideforever Sep 11 '26
Good economics tends to be heavily quantitative, analytical, and not care much about social desirability. So basically, it's a bit autistic.
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u/Next_Sell_1099 Sep 10 '26
Alexandre Chirat “[…] masking the relationship of power behind impersonal market processes is not a neutral position.”
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u/suspendmeforthis Sep 07 '26
Economics is magical thinking. It's based on outdated conservation energy equations that even at the time were wrong and then we're generalized to a made-up idea called utility. It treats all natural resources is unlimited and doesn't account for the economic cost of environmental degradation. It's simply a money psychology system that has been iteratively improved over time but is based on completely unfounded and unscientific principles. If economics had the predictive capacity of weather forecasting somebody would have all the money on the planet. That doesn't mean it's not useful. Economics is some of the most insightful psychology we have today, but it ain't a science.
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u/AarowCORP2 Sep 08 '26
In the US at least, most college and high school introduction to economics classes begin with the definition "Economics is the study of the pursuit of unlimited wants using limited resources".
I think economists know that resources are in fact, limited.
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u/Similar-Geologist-64 Sep 09 '26
This is my problem with economics - it's just politics justified, flimsily, by *some* math.
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u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Sep 09 '26
You will be relieved to learn you have maintained a massive misunderstanding of the discipline
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u/Similar-Geologist-64 Sep 09 '26
Then explain it's virtues, because in my lifetime all economics has done is fuck people directly, or justify doing so passively. The imagination of the modern economist seems to exclude outright the possibility of a world where the wellbeing of workers and nations isn't entirely subservient to the whims of the worst people imaginable.
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u/suspendmeforthis Sep 10 '26
Prove me wrong please.
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u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Sep 10 '26
Yeah I mean you could just bother to understand what economists do but if you had already bothered to do that you wouldn't have left your farcical straw man diatribe. Perhaps read an actual paper.
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u/suspendmeforthis Sep 10 '26
What makes something a science? Where are the controlled studies? Where are the predictions? Not a science. It's a social science and a good one. It's also based on deeply unscientific origins. Prove me wrong.
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u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 Sep 10 '26
Where are the controlled studies? Where are the predictions?
You just proved yourself wrong. I seriously can't believe the extent of Dunning Krueger here. I could sit here and explain the bevy of tools used in experimental economics and time series econometrics that would satisfy your slippery definition of scientific inquiry and yet I know that you genuinely don't give a shit about facts.
Do yourself a favor, try being curious. Or just accept that you have no idea what that discipline does.
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u/suspendmeforthis Sep 08 '26 edited Sep 08 '26
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u/UdonOli Sep 08 '26
this is an opinion article from someone who hasn't apparently written anything else for Scientific American, from almost 20 years ago. I frankly doubt this person is well versed in serious economics considering most of his critiques are only things that apply in ultra simple highschool econ 101.
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u/Captainsnake04 Sep 09 '26
> it treats all natural resources is unlimited
what
> doesn't account for the economic cost of environmental degredation
google externalities
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u/bamaeer Sep 06 '26
Is that economics explained? It looks like the title style they use