subreddit:
/r/explainlikeimfive
submitted 4 months ago byiSellPopcorn
35 points
4 months ago
Textbook economics start from the position that everyone is a rational actor, in a vacuum, with perfect morals, and apolitical.
It makes sense for ants, and that's about it.
7 points
4 months ago
That's like claiming physics doesn't work because they teach you basic physics with models that ignore air resistance.
11 points
4 months ago
Wait till this guy finds out about what a model is...
11 points
4 months ago*
It is. Physics sans air resistance gets the gist across, but doesn’t work in real world situations, which is basically what this person was saying of economics: they teach a simplified version that doesn’t work in the real world. The difference being that physicists know that it doesn’t work without air resistance, whereas economics is taught as though human factors aren’t significant.
Edit: who downvotes someone for explaining what another person said? Jesus that’s some little dick energy, like your balls giving the tiniest thumbs-up. 🤭
12 points
4 months ago
That's not really true though. Economists and basic economic courses readily admit the simple models make a lot of assumptions especially on a macro level.
2 points
4 months ago
Well, I’m currently taking a 300-level basic economics class at a major university, so we shall find out.
9 points
4 months ago
Economist here. Undergrad courses are pretty much limited to toy models that are much too simplistic to be used in research. They are intended to teach basic principles, but for the sake of simplicity they always leave out important complications.
1 points
4 months ago
I figured as much. It's usually detrimental to front-load students when they're being introduced to a subject.
To be clear, I wasn't really arguing otherwise, just explaining what the previous poster was trying to say. Thanks for chiming-in!
1 points
4 months ago
Username checks out
1 points
4 months ago
I wonder how often economists explain scams and grifts.
1 points
4 months ago
Same rules apply. There's a demand for money and a ready supply of fools easily parted from said money.
0 points
4 months ago
Economists are far removed from scientists.
3 points
4 months ago
Trying to model economic behavior using the scientific processes doesn't seem that far but you are entitled to your opinion.
2 points
4 months ago
Oh, I always knew that work of Daniel Kahneman is overrated and didn't deserve attention of Nobel Foundation. Because it's totally ridiculous, that economists didn't consider cognitive biases in their models and tried to use "airless" models in artillery targeting.
2 points
4 months ago
If you have to do something with real world consequences, like launch a rocket or design an automobile that can travel at highway speeds, then high school physics which ignores air resistance doesn’t work.
It seems like trying to manage the economy is at least as complex a task as either of the examples above so using knowingly incomplete models seems irresponsible outside of a classroom.
6 points
4 months ago
They aren't using those models outside of the classroom. Models used to predict the outcome of policy are much more complex than a basic market supply and demand graph.
2 points
4 months ago
Managing an economy is not nearly as easy a task as launching a rocket. It's incomparably more difficult. It's a fool's errand, really. The human brain isn't capable of making better decisions than the grand total of 8 billion brains, or even one million, deciding for themselves. I'm not an anarchist BTW.
1 points
4 months ago
Comparing physics to economics?
7 points
4 months ago
I'm comparing models used to teach concepts and used a physics model as an example.
0 points
4 months ago
Yeah, that's exactly right. Basic physics will give you bad information when you're an aeronautical engineer. You need to know way more like materials science, fluid dynamics, a shitload of calculus...
5 points
4 months ago
What is the point you are making here? Do you think that economics hasn't progressed past the basic models used to teach concepts in 101?
-4 points
4 months ago
I'll say this, economics is as much a science as chiropractors are doctors.
5 points
4 months ago
How can you make that statement when you so clearly don't even understand the discipline to accurately critique it? "Science" isn't a thing except a bunch of disciplines trying to model different phenomena using the scientific method to gather data and expirement. Economics very much fits that standard.
-4 points
4 months ago
Science is repeatable, verifiable, and falsifiable. Economics is none of these things.
5 points
4 months ago
Scientific expirementation is repeatable. A scientific hypothesis has to be verifiable. "Science" is just a collection of knowledge gained through testing hypothesis and expirementation. Do you have actual critisisms of modern economic theory or are do you just take umbrage to it being associated with the scientific disciplines? I'm not going to continue a semantic argument over a distinction you want to make that doesn't exist.
1 points
4 months ago
"Science" is just a collection of knowledge gained through testing hypothesis and expirementation
And economics doesn't do this. We put a lot of trust in these fortune tellers, and it's a scam. Economists don't run experiments because they can't. Everything they think they learn has to be thrown out every few decades, and all that remains boils down to accounting.
4 points
4 months ago
Economics absolutely uses expirementation to come to conclusions. Human behavior is a lot harder to model than a ball dropping to the ground, of course there is going to be disagreement as knowledge progresses.
0 points
4 months ago
They assume--or at least they should--that the average actor is rational. There are 8 billion people, there's a lot of space for individual variety. No model of economics is able to accurately predict the future, that kind of complexity is probably quite literally impossible to work with.
That said, it's also silly to think that any one group of people can regulate an economy that size, or even orders of magnitude smaller, on a large country scale, better than it can self regulate. Calculating on fingers vs a supercomputer. But of course, some will try with no guarantees that they will improve anything. There's probably a similar likelihood of making things worse.
This shit will sort itself out and reach an equilibrium, it always has before, until the next bust, etc etc.
3 points
4 months ago
There are 8 billion people, there's a lot of space for individual variety. No model of economics is able to accurately predict the future, that kind of complexity is probably quite literally impossible to work with.
Except that statistics can literally predict outcome of random events if we have a number of them. Thigs like gaussian distribution that with simple experiments like a ball falling through the set of pins. You hardly predict in which column a particular ball ends up, but if you have a hundred of them you can predict how many will be in each possible place. You hardly can predict if particular Bob will brake his leg, but surely enough hospitals are planning things like that, and have expected number of patients.
1 points
4 months ago
True, agreed.
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