/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.10416252]

If economics is a science, why can't economists agree on the laws of economics?

[Anonymous No.10416267]

>>10416252
>Science means consensus!
Jesus fucking christ, another brainlet detected here. In fact, the very definition of science requires DIVERSITY of thought. What the fuck are they teaching in schools now?

[Anonymous No.10416273]

>>10416267
t. psychology majorlet

[Anonymous No.10416285]

>>10416273
That's the worst example, as everyone knows psychology has not been able to effectively replicate any of it's founding studies.

[Anonymous No.10416294]

>>10416252
The economy is very complex system and it's quite hard to set up an "experimental setting" in it., so it's easiest to study it using ad-hoc methods.

If you try to do it by first principles, you go from smith and ricardo to marx pretty quickly, and that's certainly not something that's acceptable these days.
Instead economists try to make predictions about mass-psychology which are invalidated when people change their minds

[Anonymous No.10416318]

>>10416285
t. never read any psychology papers

[Anonymous No.10416327]

>>10416252
>If economics is a science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise

[Anonymous No.10416333]

>>10416252
Economics is not a science and economists do not pretend that it is. This debate is literally one of the first things you hear in an introductory econ class.

[Anonymous No.10416341]

>>10416318
Sure, buddy.

[Anonymous No.10416343]

>>10416318
Just because you're a dumbass doesn't mean everyone else is too.

[Anonymous No.10416346]

>>10416318
psychology is going through a replication crisis

[Anonymous No.10416350]

>>10416341
ahahahahah holy shit, is this what you call psychology

that's rich

[Anonymous No.10416351]

>>10416252
Because the "laws of economics" contain an element of human behavior in them. And we don't even understand the human brain or its decision making process so we can't be certain about the human element within economics.

Since you can't isolate economics completely from human elements we will always have an incomplete idea about the workings of economics until we actually understand humans precisely enough to predict and model individual behavior.

Basically economics has an unknown variable within their formulas making it impossible to make completely accurate predictions.

Doesn't mean economics is useless. Hell I'd say it's even more important because economics can account for and even define decision making processes that are independent of the human mind as is done within Game Theory which could even be applied to AI or Alien behavior.

[Anonymous No.10416369]

>>10416252
Economics is hilarious.

[Anonymous No.10416401]

The Economics of today is not a science. In principle, we can talk about "economic sciences" being falsifiable models applied to certain economic contexts. Game theory would fit this.

[Anonymous No.10416415]

>>10416401
>The Economics of today is not a science. In principle, we can talk about "economic sciences" being falsifiable models applied to certain economic contexts. Game theory would fit this.
This, except i'd raise Michael Hudson above "The Economics of today", that man is a living legend although as an author he is more of a historian.

[Anonymous No.10416423]

>>10416415
>Michael Hudson
Never heard of him, but seems he's on to something I have long suspected.

[Anonymous No.10416441]

>>10416415
>>10416423
I'm the opposite of Michael Hudson.

I think Debt is the most important part of the economy and I'd go as far as to say that debt is BENEFICIAL for a country to have.

Let me explain my rationale. Government issued debt is bought by institutions as investment. A high demand for government debt can be seen as a high demand from financial institutions in the currency of the debt issuer. The interest on the debt will be paid in the currency of the issuer. Meaning the financial institutions will be using that currency.

This has a couple of benefits. The institutions and countries will have it in their best interest that the currency and economy of the country linked to the currency is healthy because it directly affects their returns basically giving positive external effects to having debt.

Now the second biggest thing is that having a high demand on your debt means that your interest rates will be low.

Now think about how a government can also accrue their budget, through taxes. However there is a certain cost to taxes. You directly remove wealth from society which causes consumers to consume less and businesses to invest less causing a drop in GDP growth.

Now here comes the kicker I've been building up to. If your interest rates from debt are LOWER than the negative effect of issuing taxes then it becomes CHEAPER to issue more debt to fund your government than to tax people.

Basically meaning that it's healthier for your society to raise your debt levels than it is to tax your people.

Due to these notions people like Michael Hudson can be very wrong. People don't take into account the positive effects of having debt while also not taking the negative effects of taxing your people into account.

This is the TL;DR of it but it's very interesting and if you are interested in economics at all I highly recommend you to look up the benefits of debt.

[Anonymous No.10416497]

>be economics
>full of highly complex, feedback intensive, nonlinear, multi agent systems
>economists: yea lets use linear regressions for everything

[Anonymous No.10416534]

>>10416252
people are highly non-linear

[Anonymous No.10416596]

>>10416497
>>10416534
Gardner and Ashby showed that linear systems with many randomly interconnected parts rapidly become unstable as the number of connections increase. Add some nonlinearities to that, and we get the economy as a chaotic system

[Anonymous No.10416687]

>>10416497
>>10416534
some of the data trends they study dont have a single type or family of underlying functions that the relationship follows
something like consumption in relation to disposable income might be logarithmic to some people and exponential to others. showing a relationship exists might be the best we can do
thats just for analysis and statistics side of it though. differential equations and probability is for the theory side

[Anonymous No.10416857]

>>10416341

That's more sociology than psychology.

[Anonymous No.10417373]

>>10416857
Sociology is applied psychology you feckless cunt.

[Anonymous No.10417395]

>>10416333
The university of british columbia gives out bachelor of science degrees in economics to its rich foreign students.

[Anonymous No.10417405]

>>10416441
behold. here we have a true believer in the current model of infinite growth consumerism. absolutely malignant.

[Anonymous No.10418580]

>>10416252
>quoting paul
anon, there is an entire section of econ that discusses how fucking retarded Paul is.

[Anonymous No.10418593]

>>10416401
you are actually retarded.
this is the biggest load of bullshit-nothingness i've ever read today.

[Anonymous No.10419029]

>>10417373
Nope, sociology is just the psychology if large groups.

[Anonymous No.10419619]

Lol what is this coping thread of failed marxists?
OP, go right ahead and tell the class what the "laws of economics" are, exactly.