/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12392609
It's a social science, which as a rule means that it tends more toward descriptivism than reliable predictive modelling, and has to rely on case studies more so than any actual experiment because of the subject matter being so hard to do experiments on. Measurements used, like GDP, also struggle epistemologically because they may have been defined according to naive assumptions that later turned out to be flawed, and so don't actually measure what people assume they do.

>subscripts the market force instead of the category
Brainlet larper detetected

>economics
>>>/x/

>>12392609
I'm in the field. No, economics is not even close to a science. Legit work comes from mathematical economics (applied math subfield) and econometrics (statistics subfield). Anything else is one hundred percent either bogus or misleading.

Does it make testable predictions?

>>12392609
Not really

>>12392609
No

>>12392609
Are sciences with the prefix or suffix "science" lesser sciences?

If biology is a science, economics is

>>12392609
If a hypothesis is testable, those tests can be replicated and it can make predictions then it is a scientific hypothesis.
Mainstream economics (neoclassical synthesis) checks all those boxes. Stuff like marxism and "modern-day-austrians" is not. Unfortunately those are the ones you hear the most about online.

Modern day marxism simply ignores experimental data and the need for testable hypothesis. The labor-value theory and its variations are either untestable or fail tests.
"Modern-day-austrians" simply reject the need for experiments and use only deductive reasoning.

>>12393103
I'm pretty sure Austrian economics isn't even testable and was never adopted anywhere for obvious reasons.

>>12392609
Nope
t. 1st year econ PhD

>>12393119
Some stuff was testable and they made valuable contributions. For example Marshall credits the naming and insight of marginal utility to an austrian economist. Hayek made contributions to macro economics and the study business cycle, even though nowadays New Keneysianism is more accepted.

Please don't confuse ancaps with the austrian school. Nowadays ancaps are the ones keeping the "austrian school" alive because it more or less aligns it self with their ethical argument. Which is just silly since ethics is not empirical.
As a rule austrians didn't argue for the abolishment of the state, only for its reduction to a bare minimum.

>>12393161
I agree Anon, and I am also a 1st Year Econ Phd. What program are you at?

>>12393103
>>12393103
>those tests can be replicated
>checks all those boxes
Could you name them?
t. econoob

I thought about gunning for an Econ phD since they make great money and I found microeconomics interesting. Then I took macro and learned about fractional reserve banking. Got the fuck out

>>12392618
what

>>12392609
>Is economics actually a science?
no.

There are three sciences:
>biology
>physics
>chemistry

>>12395246
you forgot math, dear brainlet

>>12393103
You had a chance to take Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen seriously and incorporate the labour theory of value in your field, but instead you chose to be a system of beliefs / religion that is toxic to humanity's long term prospects.

Now you'll always be nothing more than an incredibly destructive meme and a sad joke.

No. It's mostly pseudoscience

>>12394646
Economics is a broad field, here are a few:
The law of downward sloping demand curve;
The black-scholes model for option prices;
Governments can (to a certain extend and on the short term) regulate the trade-off between money supply(inflation) and employments/economy-output.

>>12395274
What test does he propose to the labor theory of value?
What solution does he offer to the transformation problem?

>>12395274
On further investigation I found out that he was a critic of marxism. You are a fucking pseud. Stop name dropping books you didn't read.

>>12392609
Actually, that image is just accounting.

>>12392609
Yes, but a very demanding field of science. Compared to other hard sciences like physics and biology, it is not enough for economist only know some graduate-level mathematical tools, but also the intuition behind economic phenomena. The reason for this that in some cases, mathematical tools may lack the rigor to describe economic phenomena, and conventional statistical tools may not be enough to test the hypotheses. In these situations, more brainwork is needed than just mindless pen-and-paper calculations. In these situations, you need intuition. To develop this intuition takes years of hard work and studying of literature on economics. This is why a good mathematician may not necessary be a good economist, but a good economist will probably excel in other hard sciences too.

>>12395640
>mathematical tools may lack the rigor to describe economic phenomena, and conventional statistical tools may not be enough to test the hypotheses
Pls explain.

>>12392609
You can use scientific method in economics but does not mean all content of economics is a science.

>>12392609
Not really. It is more a field of philosophy in which *some* of the practitioners tend to accept mathematical and scientific arguments to narrow their theories. Of course I say some because no matter how many times you remind communists of all the famines and genocides they caused they refuse to accept the empirical evidence and care only about their philosophical pseudo-arguments.

>>12395751
>*some* of the practitioners tend to accept mathematical and scientific arguments to narrow their theories
Care to elaborate?

>>12395754
Well a good example is the concept of UBI which is very popular nowadays. Despite some people wanting to just force it, there are others who designed experiments around it.

Denmark famously designed to test an UBI-like scheme with a tiny population of unemployed people and their results were positive. I.e. an actual scientific experiment was carried out and the results were measured. For us that at least implies that a bigger test should be tried to see what happens.

I also remember reading that something similar is now being done in Korea. So at least we know that scientific arguments are informing the decisions of economists.

>>12392638
>economics is not even close to a science
this.

for me its looking into a crystal ball.
25% real correlations, 25% appearance, 25% persuasion, 25% fraud
at least in the meantime

>>12395765
My question is why did you said "*some*" and then brought up communists? Communism is non-existent in economics nowadays. Economics research is experimentation like you mentioned.

>>12395776
>Communism is non-existent in economics nowadays
First, don't like. For a notable example you have Richard Wolff and for the rest literally just google marxian economists and find the ones who aren't dead yet.

But beyond that communists are just the extreme example of economists with their heads clearly too far up their own ass to see reality. But they are not the only group. You need only look at the World Economic Forum with their new "Great Reset" to realize that once again a new group of economists is having their brains melt with the strong smell of their own shit.

>>12395784
>Richard Wolff
Is that one of those randoms with terrible papers that ignores criticism? Like Cockshott and Shaikh?
I had not heard of the great-reset meme yet.

no economics is just an academic construct that those in power can use to justify their shitty decisions (that they know are bad but they do anyway to enrich themselves and their friends)

>>12395819
>Is that one of those randoms with terrible papers that ignores criticism?
He's pretty notorious at least for academic standards.
>I had not heard of the great-reset meme yet.
Let me give you a quick rundown. Pic related, by the way.

>YOU VILL EAT ZE BUG
>YOU VILL OWN NOZING
>YOU VILL DESTROY YOUR VALUES
>AND YOU VILL LIKE IT

>>12395828
>He's pretty notorious at least for academic standards.
What are his contributions? He founded a marxist periodic and published books but that by itself does not make him relevant academically or whatever he writes good science.
The fact that marxists need a periodic dedicated to marxism only shows how irrelevant it is in mainstream economics.
>Let me give you a quick rundown. Pic related, by the way.
Sounds like a /pol/ conspiracy theory. From what I looked up seems like carbon taxes and the likes.

>>12395844
You can watch for yourself here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omAk1gMyw7E&ab_channel=%C3%A9l%C3%A9ment%C3%A6sth%C3%A9tique

Key points:
>You will own nothing
>You will rent everything
>The US will no longer be the world superpower
>Western values will be tested to the breaking point

And you vill eat ze fucking bug.

>>12394827
books on fractional reserve banking?

>>12395864
Link on the video: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030
It is just one of those futurism things we. It is from 2016 and there is no mention of the great reset on the page.
Furthermore:
>You will own nothing
>You will rent everything
All products will have become services. “I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes,” writes Danish MP Ida Auken. Shopping is a distant memory in the city of 2030, whose inhabitants have cracked clean energy and borrow what they need on demand.

>The US will no longer be the world superpower
US dominance is over. We have a handful of global powers. Nation states will have staged a comeback, writes Robert Muggah, Research Director at the Igarapé Institute. Instead of a single force, a handful of countries – the U.S., Russia, China, Germany, India and Japan chief among them – show semi-imperial tendencies.

>Western values will be tested to the breaking point
The values that built the West will have been tested to breaking point. We forget the checks and balances that bolster our democracies at our peril, writes Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.

This is getting off topic.

>>12392609
anything can be a science if you use an input/output model.

>>12395575
>muh grof
>muh posperity
>muh jerbs
>NOM NOM NOM NOM

economics is just a branch of ecology that uses the word "money" instead of "energy" and "business" instead of "animal"

>>12396752
Marxism is a religion and not science.

>>12396876
amazing take

>>12397127
and neither is economics, because it was decided that the only possible bridge between it and actual, real world energy/resource flows (labour theory of value) was "marxist drivel".

>>12397174
>because it was decided that the only possible bridge between it and actual, real world energy/resource flows (labour theory of value) was "marxist drivel"
Nice conspiracy theory.
Tell me a experiment that could falsify the labor theory of value, then show me the results of said experiments.

>>12397200
>famous artist uses inexpensive materials and relatively tiny amount of time and physical energy to create a work valued at $$$$$$$
how does LTV explain this?

>>12397227
It doesn't. Marxists on the other hand would say that either:
1. It is an aberration created by the bourgeois culture and therefore does not count or;
2: That you have to take into account all the hours that went into the education of the artist and her professors and they professors, etc plus all the hours that went into promoting previous work. All of those things of course are basically untestable.

Of course there is always the case where an artist is simply lucky.

>>12397257
Both those explainations are objectionable

Economics is a joke. They spend all day jerking off over highly complex mathematical models, but when it comes to actually explaining reality, they fall back on econ 101 shit and complain about people not being rational enough.

Big "if reality doesn't match my model, reality is wrong" vibes.

>>12397342
Yes.

>>12397200
>>12397227
>>12397257
art isn't a commodity or a good or a service. what some delusional rich piece of shit is willing to pay for whatever retarded shit happens to be in vogue to impress is fuckwit buddies is completely irrelevant.

if you can't see how man hours of labour is proportional to value, then you're also a fuckwit retard

>>12397227
Not that guy but LTV argues that the economic value of a good depends on the "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. It does not take some silly """efficient market""" stance that the price of something is a perfect representation of the labor value.

The simple answer is high art prices represent commodity fetishism.

A more materialist take is to view not the price of a single work of art, but to look at the art market as a whole as a massive global trading operation that functions primarily to launder money, evade taxes and provide another avenue for capital growth. In that context paying high prices for art makes sense because you're buying both the art itself and the art as a complex financial instrument.

>>12397200
>>12397227
>>12397257
"art", and ferraris aren't a commodity or a good or a service. what some abherant delusional rich piece of shit is willing to pay for whatever pile of garbage happens to be in vogue to impress is fuckwit buddies is completely irrelevant.
but for things which actual humans need and use constantly, if you can't see how man hours of labour is proportional to value, then you're also a fuckwit retard

>>12397379
>art isn't a commodity or a good
It is. Anything that can be traded in the market is a good.
>if you can't see how man hours of labour is proportional to value, then you're also a fuckwit retard
Your intuition is not empiricism or science. Marxism is a religion.

>>12397375
>It does not take some silly """efficient market""" stance that the price of something is a perfect representation of the labor value.
This only brings more problems for the LTV, because it says that value comes solely from labor. If you don't have something to measure, such as price, then you can't test the hypothesis.

>The simple answer is high art prices represent commodity fetishism.
Acknowledging the existence of something like commodity fetishism only makes the LTV even harder to test.

>A more materialist take is to view not the price of a single work of art, but to look at the art market as a whole as a massive global trading operation that functions primarily to launder money, evade taxes and provide another avenue for capital growth. In that context paying high prices for art makes sense because you're buying both the art itself and the art as a complex financial instrument.
Nice history, I for one could see it being true, but it is an untestable hypothesis and therefore not science.

>>12397392
that's pretty rich how """economists""" (like you) reject labour theory of value because it's "not science" LOL

are you people actually serious? cuz Im laughing right now.

>>12397397
Tell me a experiment that could falsify the labor theory of value, then show me the results of said experiments.

>>12397392
>Nice history
>I for one could see it being true

lmao money laundering has been the main driver of the art economy for decades. It's not even a secret. Every investment bank has an art department for a reason.

There's a reason why when Jho Low went on the run he took Picassos instead of cash.

>>12397407
You understand that the LTV says that all value comes from labor and only labor right?
1. How does that explanation close the gap between the low work hours and the high price?
2. How do you test that it is valid for every low-effort super-expensive art piece?

>>12397399
Propose an alternative theory of value and design an experiment that could falsify that theory.

You won't. I'll wait.

>>12397433
>Propose an alternative theory of value and design an experiment that could falsify that theory.
It is a pointless endeavor, measure what you can measure and go from there. That is how it is done in economic science and why it obtained the status of science.
Can I measure a correlation of labor, capital and land with the output of a company? Yes. Therefore those are the factors of production.

"Value" theories are the "ether" of economics.

But even if I had tried to come up with an alternative theory and failed, that would not prove the LTV of right. It has to stand on its own legs and pass its own tests. Otherwise it would be like saying that Allah is real because the Christian god didn't pass experiments.

>>12392609
In the current state, no.

>>12397457
lmao look at this guy he thinks value just appears out of thin air for no reason

>>12397464
>lmao look at this guy he thinks electromagnetic and gravitational waves just propagate on vacuum for no reason
There must be an aether right?

Seriously: If you can't test it then you can't say anything about it. Marxism has become a religion. Hold economics to the same standards you hold physics, both affect your life greatly.
I used to be a marxism sympathizer but I reviewed my believes in the face of empirical evidence. There is no shame in doing so.

>>12397479
>empirical evidence

So logically you also reject all economic theory based on human beings acting as rational consumers.

>>12395252
Math is not a science in it's purest form. There is a reason it is differentiated in STEM

>>12397498
actually yes, retard, that's what behavioral economics accounts for. People are irrational, but they're generally predictably irrational, meaning that there are still equilibria accounting for irrationality. See Richard Thaler, Nobel winner.

>>12392609
this is my first time on /sci/. Is it always this much of a shitshow? This whole thread is people repeating criticisms that were mostly resolved in like 1940.

>>12397498
No, because we can test that "they" are in fact rational. Compare the economic behavior of a human being and a dog for instance. The dog can't even comprehend the concept of a savings account.
Are human beings always 100% rational? Of course not. But given an economic phenomena you can always propose the explanation that it is the fruit of irrationality and then try to falsify that hypothesis. If everyone fails to prove it false over and over again, then you start to believe it is true.

For the same reason I don't reject the perfect-sphere-planets of newtonian mechanics.

>>12397518
>this is my first time on /sci/. Is it always this much of a shitshow? This whole thread is people repeating criticisms that were mostly resolved in like 1940.
Don't click on any thread that could be even slightly related to:
>iq
>race
>race and iq
>corona
>5g
>corona and 5g
>fast than light travel
>doing math without the reals
>solving the riemann hypothesis

>>12397457
>economic science and why it obtained the status of science
economics has never been a science and never will but. it is a system of believes to rationalize the activities of greedy, materialistic, psychopaths.

>>12397527
dont you dare compare your voodoo cult to physics, you bloated fuck.

>>12392616
Nash equilibrium doesn't seem like a social science to me.

>>12397534
If we can't click on threads that pertain to IQ or race then that precludes us from interacting with threads that pertain to both, logic-let.

>>12397545
>>12397551
If the hypothesis is testable and can make predictions then it is science.
Cope, seeth and dilate.

>>12397551
The Balck-Scholes equation is identical to the equation of brownian motion, both discovered independently and highly tested.
And btw, I'm not an economist, I'm a Mathematician. Now bow before your master, peasant.

>>12392609
For you to even ask that question is the height of idiocy.

>>12397577
>If the hypothesis is testable and can make predictions then it is science.
Yeah man, that's the issue.

>>12397527
>perfect-sphere-planets of newtonian mechanics
perfect sphere planets has nothing to do with newtonian mechanics
but I'm not surprised you're trying sound intelligent while feeling the need to proclaim that you're not a flat-earther
pathetic and stooooopid LOL

>>12397575
Race or IQ threads are bait threads. Race AND IQ threads are basically a /pol/ spawn.
I meant to end with:
>solving the riemann hypothesis without the reals while traveling faster than light
but I forgot to type it.

>>12397583
black-scholes has been widely tested and people make money from its predictions everyday.
The law of downward sloping demand curve has been tested to exhaustion.

>>12395765
>that scientific arguments are informing the decisions of economists.
They are using experiments but they aren’t scientific experiments.
You can never prove causation

>>12397585
To calculate the acceleration of gravity on the surface of a planet you need its "radius", but obviously planets don't have a "radius" because they are not perfect spheres. You can use an approximation or you can test the prediction of variations of your distance to the center of mass (variations of "radius").
brainlet

>>12397602
>imagine isolating variables

>>12397605
It's kindof bitter sweet when you think you're arguing with an idiot online, and then they go ahead and prove it.
On the one hand you were right, they are an actual idiot and that feels good, but on the other hand you end up feeling like crap because as it turns out you just wasted a whole lot of time arguing with an idiot.

Fuck you. Kill yourself.

>>12397633
cope
seeth
dilate
and back to high school
(or the church since marxism is a religion and not science)

>>12397518
>behavioral economics
Ah yes, the field where nothing replicates

>>12397609
You can never prove caution under that model. This is a fundamental fact that you slept through.

>>12398330
That is true for every science then. No matter how many variables you isolate someone can always come up with some small thing that you missed. So you isolate that variable and if the results are positive you just added more evidence to a causal relation.

>>12397567
>Game theory
Well of course not. It's a branch of math that just happens to be applicable to economics.

>>12392609
no, the economy is made up bullshit and modern eceonomic "theory" does nothing but legitimize the status quo
every major company knows that economics isnt a real science, they all operate internal planned economies while "experts" keep on inventing new models that somehow prove they dont work
even basic shit like the supply/demand model are fundamentally broken and have no basis in reality
the stock market is literally astrology for liberals

>>12392609
It is a subjective methodology based on observation and trial and error. It is typically closely related to the political system in a given country. So, not a science. You have capitalist economy, communist economy, socialist economy, etc. You don't have different types of physics with different laws. Think about it.

>>12399051
nice conspiracy theory

>>12399133
>It is typically closely related to the political system in a given country. So, not a science. You have capitalist economy, communist economy, socialist economy, etc.
That is not true. Communism(marxism) doesn't exist in the economic sciences because it and its variations either have been proven false or are unfalsifiable. "Socialism" is not a well defined term and things that fall under it nowadays are mostly normative statements such as "public health care is good", so not science either.
Mainstream economic science consists of a collection of testable (and tested) theories to explain specific things. On the microeconomics side it is neoclassical and on the macroeconomics side it is new keneysian.

>>12399233
>Muh socialism is normative strawman
Any comments on the measured return on investment of educational spending? i.e. that every dollar spent on education is several dollars saved in criminal justice?

>>12399251
Such measures are econometrics, not socialism.
Saying that investing more money on education is better, is a normative statement.
A christian conservative for example could say they prefer to enforce "individual responsibility" instead of "giving things out for free", which is also a normative (moral) matter.
Economics (econometrics) can't say which of those are "correct", only what happens if you choose one or the other.

>>12399276
>Showing that these policies work is economics
>Advocating for policies that work is socialism
Cool.

>>12399281
Work for what? They work to reduce spending but they do not work to "enforce individual responsibility" (according to a christian conservative).
Another example: suppose that very strong racial/gender quotas are shown to end racism/sexism in 30 days but they also reduce the median wealth of the population by, say, 30%.
Do they "work"? Depends on what you want to do and how much you are willing to pay for it. Some people would say it works, some would say it doesn't.

Econometrics/economics can only say "what it is" not "what it ought to be".

>>12399330
I forgot the conclusion: that is why "socialism" is not a science or economics.
(it is a very loosely defined term too)

>>12399330
There's an interesting trick you are using here where you operate on a presupposition that the christian conservative values are morally equivalent to the socialist ones.

What is the GOAL of enforcing "individual responsibility?" It's generally touted as a solution to social ills, but it keep failing to actually cure any of those social ills. Educational spending has been shown to have other benefits than the economic ones, it is blatantly true that spending more in the educational sector is a net benefit, even to the individual's ability to make responsible decisions.

Why, then, do you act as if this moral paradigm of "just take responsibility lmao" has value?

>>12392609
Economics is only a science when it is treated as an application in the theory of dynamical systems.

>>12399348
>What is the GOAL of enforcing "individual responsibility?"
Some christians conservatives could say "following the word of the bible" or something like that. Some could simply say that they think it is the right thing.
There is no objective morality.
You could try arguing with a christian conservative that they should agree with you instead and maybe you will be successful, but that is ethics, not economics.

>>12399348
There's no evidence, except to the contrary, at least in the USA, that more gov spending on education improves anything by anyone's standard.

It's just a public teachers union's excuse to inflate their salaries. The problem with "collective interest", "democratic process" is that it is just a thinly veiled alternative way of achieving absolute selfish goals. Nobody cares about the greater good of your fellow countrymen.

>>12398846
Except the economists insert themselves as a HUGE variable into the subject that they are supposed to observe and study.

Any economist who claims to know what the public good is, and how to achieve it, places themselves above the people as the maker of moral standards, and then lies through their asses about their ability of modeling and shaping the society even if they are given absolute dictatory power.

>>12399656
>Except the economists insert themselves as a HUGE variable into the subject that they are supposed to observe and study.
?????????????
>Any economist who claims to know what the public good is, and how to achieve it, places themselves above the people as the maker of moral standards
This is not economic science. Economists can have opinions based on data but those opinions are not science. See discussion above.

>>12399627
>No evidence
No, there is evidence that educational spending is often misused so that it fails to benefit the students, which dishonest actors like to twist into an argument against educational spending.

Up-to-date research says you can make gains even by just reallocating existing funds to more productive activity in the schools, and that benefit is amplified by adding more funds. Further, if there genuinely was no evidence that spending more on schools has any benefit, it would stand to reason that you could just stop funding schools altogether at no cost to society.

>>12399709
>>12399627
Off-topic. Make your own thread.

>>12399709
>you could just stop funding schools altogether at no cost to society.
stop public funding to public schools.

there will be cost, but a cost that's well worth it.

>>12399734
Off-topic. Make your own thread.