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30 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 15 Aug \ parent \ on: What a New Math Breakthrough Means for Economics econ
Most economists understand that too. It's worth keeping in mind though, that just because a conclusion isn't mathematically certain doesn't mean mean it's wrong either.
The reason mathematicians couldn't think up an example that disproved the conjecture is because the conjecture holds under an enormous range of conditions. Mathematicians are insanely clever and will have thrown a lot at this problem. There's no reason to assume a particular case is in the class that doesn't conform to the conjecture.
Most economists understand that too. It's worth keeping in mind though, that just because a conclusion isn't mathematically certain doesn't mean mean it's wrong either.
Then the question is: Why do they keep on using metrics, measurements and theories that discount this reasoning and, thus, making policy recommendations that are not working? Why would they do that, other than to support their paymasters, the clowns of the state? This is my problem with mathematical, empirical economics.
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It’s a very good question and I don’t know the answer. I always found it hard to square.
My sense is that they just don’t know how else to approach these questions that have so much interest, so they do something they know is wrong and hope they find something that’s at least useful.
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It’s a very good question and I don’t know the answer. I always found it hard to square.
Try this one on for size: they keep using them because those are the answers the paymaster/clowns are looking for! Like everyone else, the people making the economic analyses and prognostications wants to make a healthy, comfortable living! The best way to do that is to please your masters, isn’t it?
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That may be the ultimate cause but I can tell you from the inside that it’s not how they’re thinking about it.
It’s more like wanting to work within the consensus of the field because that’s what gets published and publishing is how we advance.
Oftentimes, what macroeconomists are working on is relaxing the assumptions of those unrealistic models in ways we would approve of. They just aren’t willing to abandon them entirely.
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It’s more like wanting to work within the consensus of the field because that’s what gets published and publishing is how we advance.
Isn’t that just a way of saying that there is more money if you knuckle under to the reigning paradigm? The more that you can publish, the more you can advance on the academic totem pole, the more you advance the more money you can rake in.
Oftentimes, what macroeconomists are working on is relaxing the assumptions of those unrealistic models in ways we would approve of. They just aren’t willing to abandon them entirely.
Working on making the impossible possible seems to be a waste of time to me. However, for them it is not a waste of time but a way to appease their ultimate employers, the state clowns.
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I don’t disagree with any of that. My point is just that they aren’t as cynically calculating about it. There are layers of rationalization.