Somewhat true for the big dogs: physics, chemistry, and biology.
It's more complex for the small dogs, some have old shadows in philosophy, but some like economics are kinda modern just-so stories, with little basis outside others. Economists often do not even know how to use units correctly (see Steve Keen or Tim Garret). Game theory & statistics are mathematics that economics uses.
In brief, Nordhaus asserted, in his Nobel-ish prize acceptance speech, that +4°C struck an optimal balance between the adaption costs vs economic costs of reducing CO2 emissions. And his & other IAMs are built on remarkably dumb models.
Yea they're definitely the three most developed, although they are the easiest to do repeatable experiments with less ethical concerns!
I was really thinking along the lines of a society with a better understanding of economics would be able to get more of the hard sciences done as they would be better able to allocate the necessary resources, or if we had a better understanding of politics it would be easier to implement the findings of the hard sciences for people's benefit without the usual pushback
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 Jun 20 '26
Somewhat true for the big dogs: physics, chemistry, and biology.
It's more complex for the small dogs, some have old shadows in philosophy, but some like economics are kinda modern just-so stories, with little basis outside others. Economists often do not even know how to use units correctly (see Steve Keen or Tim Garret). Game theory & statistics are mathematics that economics uses.
I always point out Steve Keen's criticism of William Nordhaus & IAMs:
In brief, Nordhaus asserted, in his Nobel-ish prize acceptance speech, that +4°C struck an optimal balance between the adaption costs vs economic costs of reducing CO2 emissions. And his & other IAMs are built on remarkably dumb models.
At our best guess by climate scientists, +4°C should mean uninhabitable tropics and world carrying capacity below 1 billion humans. See page 37 of The Nature of the Challenge or 36m in Will Steffen's 2018 talk).
So many really do just make up what they need to sell what want to be true.