this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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The new astrology: by fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience (mastodon.social)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jlou@mastodon.social to c/general@lemmy.world
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The new astrology: by fetishising mathematical models, economists turned economics into a highly paid pseudoscience

https://aeon.co/essays/how-economists-rode-maths-to-become-our-era-s-astrologers

"‘If you get people to lower their shield, they’ll tell you it’s a big game they’re playing,’ he told me." "‘In economics..., if I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to write something favourable or unfavourable to bankers, well, if it’s favourable that might get me a dinner in Manhattan with movers and shakers,’ Pfleiderer said to me."

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[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Nothing new here. Since the 50s and due to paranoid schizophrenic John Nash (A Beautiful Mind), economic models revolved around the premise of the game "Fuck You, Jack", in which every individual supposedly acts in all-consuming, myopic self-interest in exclusion to the needs of other individuals or the community in general. Basically that all humans are utterly selfish bastards deep in their dark, sinful hearts.

And yet... Every experiment conducted on the subject pointed to how the premise of "Fuck You, Jack" was deeply flawed, to the point of being outright wrong.
But the math! It was so elegant! John Nash! So most economists still deliberately chose to adopt this bullshit model for their essays. They even gave the paranoid schizophrenic a goddamned Nobel Prize.

EDIT: a word

[–] rbhfd@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Bash the economic models, not the person who came up with them.

I don't know enough of the theory to dispute anything you said about the flawed assumptions. But I'm sure Nash's theories are solid under the presumed assumptions, which are for sure overly simplified and possibly deeply flawed. But then blame the people adopting these models without checking if the assumptions are valid.

It's like models that holds only for spherical cows in a vacuum and people want to apply it to giraffes on earth.

I would have been completely with you if you bashed the economic models, you gave a reasonable explanation on why they're flawed, if you wouldn't have multiple times mentioned the psychological issues of the mathematician who came up with it.

[–] DoctorTYVM@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Part of the problem came from the fight for economic dominance during the Cold War. The fight to prove which was better, Capitalism or Communism, made a lot of people go nuts with economic theories