/lit/ - Literature

And have you read Adam Smith?

Economics isn't the field of /lit/ go to /biz/ for that.

>>5757387

Go and ask how many Physicist have read the Principia. We are not Humanity majors that need to read primary sources.

>>5757384

Although modern economics, as you described, consists mainly of crunching numbers and running computer simulations, I believe that it's important to see the distinction between the different kinds of economics that are being discussed. I feel that the kind that is being discussed here is more of the ideological basis to economics rather than the technicalities.

>>5757394
I really care little about economics, but mate the math in your science is often just for show and your epistemology kinda if ridiculous.
There were articles lately about how abductive reasoning even works better than deductive.
The whole thing looks to me like when philosophy start to use symbolic logic to look more rigorous.

>>5757398

It's still funny to me when insults are being thrown around because people disagree over the influence of Austrian Economics.

Even people who were trained as Austrians doesn't believe in it.

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm

>>5757394
I mean there is the joke about the guy asking a top physicist top statistician and top economist to find a system to win the horse race. The first two give up, the economist calls the guy and screams "I've got the solution! I've got the solution!" "Well tell me!" "Let's assume that horse racing is a system of perfect competition..." "I don't care about the details does it work?" "Well...it turns out that most races are not quite perfect...but if they were..."

>>5757384
>we spend all our time crunching numbers and doing theoretical shit
>meanwhile every actual economy is going to hell in a handbasket
Nice job, asshats.
We really need whatever the hell it is you think you're doing.

>>5757402

It's easy to bash the methodology, but unless someone comes along and offer us a better alternative, we'll keep on using what sort of works.

>>5757384
>implying economics is science
>implying even marxist bullshit isn't a more valid approach to the field

>>5757406

I personally don't believe in Austrian Economics either, but I was more talking about the essence of the conversations here.

>>5757414

You've clearly never done anything quantitative in nature. You think Physics, Statistics, and Math doesn't make assumptions? Why don't you go to your car insurance company and ask them to stop assuming the stochastic process is not stationary?

Plus, Perfect competition is only a bench mark, no practical application of economic theory actually assumes that. There's more to Economic theory than perfect competition.

>>5757442

You're obviously not representative of the average poster on /lit/. Just look at what the others are posting in this thread.

Typical lazy jabs at the profession that they've heard from someone else once upon a time like the ones posted in this thread is what I assumes me when I read them in other ones.

>>5757419
The fact is that it's not working.
And as long as you keep going "hurr durr my complex mathematical models" instead of reading historians and sociologists it's gonna keep sucking.

It's the same problem that physics got and the reason why there has not been any theoretical advancement since the positing of the standard model (that is for a whole generation).
If you read Lee Smolin's the trouble with physics you'll see that the problem, according to him, it's that after Feynman everyone wants to be a calculating machine, which does not necessary equate with erudition and creativity.

It's the same problem that Piketty denounced about how economics is done in the US and why he left MIT.

So yeah the short dick attitude "look at my math bitches" that you showed in the first post certainly won't help your discipline.

>>5757457
>why doesn't /lit/ take my descriptive numbers seriously

>>5757462
Yeah, you guys are clinging to stuff that doesn't work.
Sort of like the whole Aristotlean thing.

>>5757462

Yea, I agree our methodology is not perfect, but like I've said, anyone can critic, but it's much harder to offer an better alternative.

There are Academics who read works from Historian, but no one is publishing alternative to decision theory that underpins our analysis. Yea, we can make it more realistic, but the result is going to be intractable and useless pile of mess that theoretical physicist finding themselves in.

And don't give us the "use word instead" BS. Words are not rigorous, that's why the natural sciences don't build their models with words.

>>5757468

Because you don't understand them?

Shocking.

>>5757445
I'be trained as a philosopher of math and as an epistemologist.

Math can get away with assumptions because it does not make predictions but defines objects.

Physics confirms their predictions with experimentation, which economical science can't do since its a social science. And that is the problem with it, it does not have the experimentation/reproducibility part of the natural sciences. I think that economics has to deal sooner or later with what it means having a historical and political object as its focus.

>>5757478
How does your work benefit anyone in any way?

>>5757416

>every actual economy is going to hell in a handbasket

Where am I? Reddit?

>>5757499

Ask your government that hires us, or the investment banks handling your retirement fund.

>>5757488

>I think that economics has to deal sooner or later with what it means having a historical and political object as its focus.

Political Scientists need to take this into account too. I've met too many "Political Scientists" who only give a shit about numbers and formulas while offhandedly dismissing any exploration of the context in which all of that is presented

/lit/ has been taken over by /pol/tards in the last year or so.

>>5757502
>retirement fund
LOL
So the banks and the governments are your references? And you wonder why nobody likes you?
Seriously, though, you must be trolling.

>>5757499

>Comprehensive understanding of economics to present to the public and to elected officials so that they can act on economic data to make the most beneficial economic decisions

Sure is "useless"

>>5757540

No point trying to sing to the deaf.

ITT: the single hurting butt that both stemfags and humanitards can jointly laugh at

>>5757553

This is a valid point, but then it's not an issue with economics rather an issue with the very foundations of the political system.

>>5757389
Economics is perfectly fine in /lit/ man.

>>5757394
Well that is okay for scientific fields: ones that are based on observation.

However think about the social sciences: one of these is Economics. It wouldn't be that hard to try and grasp where these concepts you equate with numbers are derived from. Simplistic, intrinsic definitions are fine, but I am helping you immensely by reminding you that things as they are now would not have applied 100 years ago. 200 years ago economic models would not have helped anyone.

This is because the actual form, the way things were exchanged, of the economy was different.

>>5757520

it's your duty to tell them to fuck off at every point

>>5757384
lol economists are a joke

enjoy spending your days being puzzled by ttt undergraduate-level math and getting trolled by fieckers on ejmr

>>5757384
Credit based economics is doomed to fail from the big, gaping human factor that will erroneously try to liquidate future earnings without there ever being any earnings.

>>5757384
I've had multiple people who've done economics at bachelors tell me that what they're being taught, the models and mathematical models basically don't work in the real economy.

Running mathematical models on a dynamic system seems really stupid. If the system is always fluctuating, then the models are never going to be 100% true. Schools of economic thought can be useful for framing economic phenomenon, which other models fail at.

>>5757384

It's funny how many "economists" have no clue about what makes actual literature, and yet still think they can pass off for an actual troll on internet literature boards.

This thread makes me want to kill something.

As a history student I feel like I should take an economics class or two, but I also feel like I have a basic understanding of a few economic principles just from history classes I've taken. I've also been reading Marx :^)

i would love some reading recommendations from OP, beyond Picketty.

>>5757384
I'm an economist and i laugh at other economists than don't know shit about economics outside of neoclassical economics.
Let's see if your models predict the next crisis, i'm sure the millionth time's the charm!

>>5757488
I assune everyone here is tslking macro? Because micro is pretty fucking tested. With macro you just have to look for natural experiments, whoch is hard to dk but some exist.

>>5757384
Working economists are pretty funny indeed.

>>5757731
That's what statistics is for.

>>5757384

>Economics
Pure ideology. The real world doesn't match up against your mathematical models and never will even under a theoretical Utopian free market; equilibrium prices can never be reached.

Political Economy > "Economics"

>>5760678
what? micro is often even more hilariously divorced from the real world than macro is? long run average cost curves? purely derived from theory, not practice

>>5757742
Some great literature, like Capital and The Wealth of Nations, have been works in economics.

>>5760939
Not to mention that utlity is an unfalsifiable concept and that they pretend is an ordinal or a cardinal concept depending on what they are trying to prove.
Also, rational expectations is retarded and game theory as an accurate representation of human behaviour is not only as retarded but has also been falsified every time it has been tested.

>>5757499
How about if the Fed had pretended not to know about anything about economics and letting the US economy collapse in 2008 like it did 1929?

>>5760967

>game theory as an accurate representation of human behaviour is not only as retarded but has also been falsified every time it has been tested.

"Game theory" is not an hypothesis about human behavior, its a tool for working through theoretical and practical problems. It also completely destroys a foundational tenet of a certain branch of economic thinking--that rationally self-interested individuals working only to their own advantage produce, in spite of themselves, optimal outcomes.

>>5761006
>"Game theory" is not an hypothesis about human behavior, its a tool for working through theoretical and practical problems.
I didn't claim that it was, i claimed that's how it is used in economics.

>>5761012

And I am telling you that's not how it's used in economics. I study game theory as an economics student.

So what you're saying is that you're proud of being a pseudoscientist that work in an inefficient field for math nerds who aren't good enough to work in fundamental maths or physics ?

Cool story.

>>5761017
How are you not defining human behaviour when your model implies that economic agents make decisions that come from solving a problem using game theory?

>>5757780
Try killing yourself.

>>5760958
Anon is clearly talking about what he perceive to be OP. Unless otherwise proved OP hasn"t written the Wealth of Nation.

You could also debate wether Capital or the Wealth of Nation are "great literature", but that'd be endless.

>>5761032

For empirical testing, game theoretic models act as null hypotheses. Agents within the game are defined as having certain characteristics, but these are not nor are intended to be descriptive of reality--they are ideal constructs--and are limited to the specific game model. The point is to compare the behavior of game theory agents to those of actual, living and breathing human agents engaged in economic behavior. Again, game theory is used to TEST hypotheses, it is not itself an hypothesis.

>>5761075
Please give me an example of a game theory game without rational agents maximizing something.

>>5761118

You don't seem to be understanding what I'm saying.

>>5761126
I do understand. You are saying that game theory is an instrument, like math, and behaviour assumptions are set apart. I'm saying you can't make an economic model using game theory without assuming rational maximizing agents.

>>5757384
>muh STEM

>>5761133

>I'm saying you can't make an economic model using game theory without assuming rational maximizing agents.

This is not really true, but beside the point. Do you understand how models are used to do empirical testing?

>>5761147
I'd like a counterexample.

>>5761152

To what? This is what I mean when I say you don't seem to understand what I'm saying. You can define the behavioral parameters of your model agents any way you'd like. Some ways make prediction and measurement much easier, and some ways are more pertinent to a certain line of inquiry. Where these overlap is where you set your parameters, depending on what your investigating. When you're interested in IDEAL market outcomes, you define your agents as rational utility-maximizers. You can then go onto test actual people and actual markets against this ideal model. It is similar to comparing the behavior of falling objects in total vacuum and in the context of air resistance, etc.

>>5761057
>You could also debate wether Capital or the Wealth of Nation are "great literature",
Hate to be a stickler here, but you really can't. Those two books make it into top lists from critics all the time.

In fact, what makes The Wealth of Nations so good, really is Adam Smith's argumentative style and the way he justifies his arguments. It's like reading a book on philosophy because of how he sets up propositions with a list of justifications and then justifies all of his justifications with historical examples.

>>5761175
I guess it would be more comparative to sociology but they are all similar, and philological philosophy is also similar to this anyway.

>>5761169
Is it so hard to give me a game example where agents aren't rational and aren't maximizing the payoff? It will be easier for both of us.

>>5761134
>economics
>STEM

>economics
>a science

economics belongs on /lit/ because it's muh feels and ideology bullshit

>>5761188

Bill and Jerry are partners. It's their scheduled "date night." Bill would really like to go see a movie, but will only go if Jerry goes. Jerry really wants to go play pool, but will only go if Bill goes. But neither care enough about their own desires to sacrifice the desires of the other for their own gain .

Here you have a modification of a basic "battle of the sexes game." Neither agent, Bill nor Jerry, is a rational utility maximizer, and because of this the model is absolutely useless for telling us anything about potential ideal "market" outcomes.

>>5761206

Only Marxism and Piketty, and to an extent Keynes, are about "MUH FEELS"

>>5761218

Wow.

Just. Wow.

>>5761218
Marx was wrong about a lot of stuff but he was only about "muh feels" in the Manifesto because it was propaganda.

>>5761218
You forgot Mises and Rand

>>5757387
at uchicago, about half the student body majors in econ but the core curriculum means you have to read Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Essentially the difference between Smith and modern economics is that Smith separates the ideas of real value and market value, but economists believe that there is no real value, and a commodity's value is determined by the supply and demand for the commodity.

>>5761218
kek. all economics is sniffling ideological crap. we need some feminist and queer economics

>>5761251
Couldn't a modern economist believe that "real value" exists but has no bearing on economics?

For example, I may think a beautiful painting has inherent worth, but still recognize that the only kind of worth that affects economics is the kind backed up by cash.

>studying economics without politics

And please. Econometrics is basically voodoo science.

stick to lit /lit/

>>5761267

It's a major of the empirical aspect of economics. It's the one branch that even heavy skeptics of economics should be interested in. You're just demonstrating your ignorance here, like pretty much everyone else in this thread.

>>5761260
Here's the funny thing: back in the day you used to be able to profit off of arbitrage. You would melt down your pieces into bullion and sell them for the bullion price and then use the money to melt down again and repeat until arbitrage was stopped. But notice, this was only possible because of one factor: money was backed by something. Hell, even the bills of exchange were backed by banks sometimes, or even the currency eventually developed for the public was backed through commodities like gold or silver.

Look up Bretton Woods, the most retarded agreement ever.

>>5761260
Well it has no bearing on the price that people are willing to pay for the painting, or willing to sell it for, so it's not really a part of economic thought. The reason that economics disagrees so fervently with Marx is that typically for an efficient economy to exist, it requires too much information for a central planner to determine every aspect of the economy, whereas when individuals have the choice of where to buy or who to sell to, they will always make decisions that are the most efficient possible. My understanding of Piketty is that he's making a normative claim rather than a descriptive one.
Economic ideas of efficiency are incompatible with social democracy, but it is true that an economist's ideal society has inequality.

>>5761214
Your agents are still working rationally towards their objectives...


I'll give you an example of a game that i had on an exam to explain why game theory is shit (but mostly because i'm bored and the game is fun).

There are 10 pirates ordered from pirate number 1 to pirate number 10. They have stolen 100 golden pieces and have to decide how to distribute them. Each pirate makes a distribution proposition. The distribution is only accepted if the majority of the remaining pirates accept it (inlcluding the pirate proposing it). If the proposal is rejected, the pirate who proposed it is killed and the next one gets to make a proposition. If a pirate is indifferent between accepting or rejecting, he will reject.

I won't spoil the solution. I'll just say that even if every assumption in the game was an accurate representation of reality you wouldn't reach the outcome game theory predicts because people wouldn't be able to see more than a turn forward (aka people aren't rational). This is a problem with game theory that you can't overcome.

>>5761286
That's where behavioral economics and the research of people like Shiller comes in. At that point, though, economics becomes tied to cognitive psychology as a field, so it's going to be a while before the details are worked out in a concrete way, if they are in fact ever worked out.

>>5761292
Which brings us the beggining of the discussion: game theory can't modelize human behaviour and microeconomics is as divorced from reality as macroeconomics.

>>5757384
Hey, OP, do you care if people like Marx as a social theorist and/or think his ideas are applicable in sociology and anthropology?

>>5761310
Yeah, same problem with Heideggerian AI.

>>5761284
>The reason that economics disagrees so fervently with Marx is that typically for an efficient economy to exist, it requires too much information for a central planner to determine every aspect of the economy, whereas when individuals have the choice of where to buy or who to sell to, they will always make decisions that are the most efficient possible.

Marx never proposed any form of centrally planned economy, you're thinking of Marxism-Leninism.

Also the whole Hayek styled arguments against centrally planed economies is completely outdated. It might have held up in the 40s but with the advent of modern information technology and super-computing information retrieval and processing is no longer a problem. read this: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/hayek/hayek.html

>>5761943
The article is interesting, but Nitzan and Bichler have engaged with the thought behind it and really indicated that there is very little underlying empiricism behind it.
The other criticism of centrally planned economies is that they disincentivize hard work and reward underachievement because of the reduction in marginal utility gains from work, and as a result they are generally unsustainable. I have heard professors argue that the reason that societies based on Marxist-Leninist principles fail so often is that people are cynical and choose in general to do only what is required of them. Additionally, when other racial groups or immigrants are introduced into the picture, xenophobia rules and communality quickly dissolves.