We observe that prices tend to go up, and wish to quantify that observation, maybe to test ideas about its relationship to money supply. So we have to operationalize “prices go up.” We do it by sampling commonly purchased things and keeping track of their prices over time. That seems to me to be as innocuous as operationalizations come in social science. If you don’t think we learn anything by doing it, I don’t see how you think we can learn anything about human affairs at all.
Well, yes, if you just want to operationalize the vague statement that “prices went up,” it makes sense to do it as you describe. What doesn’t make sense is postulating the existence of some reified “real” value of money, and then claiming that it has changed by 2.61% or whatever since last year. (Not to even mention the even more outlandish attempts to evaluate this change in “real” value across decades and centuries, or to compare them across vastly different places, where even the set of things available on the market is largely different, as well as all sorts of further reifications such as the “real” GDP.) However, vast edifices of both theory and practical policy have been built under the assumption that you can do such things, and if one attempts to discuss them by dissolving these nebulous concepts, one encounters confusion and stonewalling.
That’s a problem for all domains of knowledge including the hard sciences.
The problem is far more severe where the questions studied have some bearing on ideology, politics, and power. It’s a matter of incentives, after all.
What doesn’t make sense is postulating the existence of some reified “real” value of money, and then claiming that it has changed by 2.61% or whatever since last year. (Not to even mention the even more outlandish attempts to evaluate this change in “real” value across decades and centuries, or to compare them across vastly different places, where even the set of things available on the market is largely different, as well as all sorts of further reifications such as the “real” GDP.)
I would like to hear a more detailed criticism of the “real value of money” concept specifically. Human height varies over the course of a lifetime, over the course of a day, and geographically, and yet it is fairly clear that people are taller on average now than during the middle ages. And by different operationalizations we can measure how much taller. Isn’t it also clear that people are richer on average now that during the middle ages? Are you arguing that any attempt to measure how much richer is doomed to be misleading?
Statistics about human height are not a good analogy, since the concepts are simple and straightforward enough that they can be readily dissolved and their connection to reality re-evaluated if necessary. But many other “social science” numbers are indeed as bad as those found in economics, in the sense that even a casual rational evaluation of these numbers will reveal critical problems that are nonchalantly ignored in the regular “scientific” practice in these areas. (Though it would probably be hard to find anything as perverse as the epistemic rat’s nest that economists have built around various numbers they operate with.)
As for measuring how much richer people are than in the past, you can provide information that will leave readers with more or less correct intuitions about such things, by describing at length how much people in various occupation had to work and in what conditions, what they could afford with typical wages, etc., etc. But the idea that you can describe this with a single scalar number and then treat this number as a real physical quantity that features in models and theories is obviously complete nonsense.
But the idea that you can describe this with a single scalar number and then treat this number as a real physical quantity that features in models and theories is obviously complete nonsense.
It’s not obviously complete nonsense. It’s obviously part nonsense and part sense, and without further argumentation it’s not obvious how large a part nonsense and how large a part sense.
Just because a quantity is defined in a rather arbitrary way, that doesn’t mean it carries no information. You can take the position that an informal analysis would incorporate the same information and do it better, but you’d have to actually compare the biases inherent in these two approaches. (I haven’t read the Morgenstern book that you’ve linked; maybe it does so.)
Well, yes, if you just want to operationalize the vague statement that “prices went up,” it makes sense to do it as you describe. What doesn’t make sense is postulating the existence of some reified “real” value of money, and then claiming that it has changed by 2.61% or whatever since last year. (Not to even mention the even more outlandish attempts to evaluate this change in “real” value across decades and centuries, or to compare them across vastly different places, where even the set of things available on the market is largely different, as well as all sorts of further reifications such as the “real” GDP.) However, vast edifices of both theory and practical policy have been built under the assumption that you can do such things, and if one attempts to discuss them by dissolving these nebulous concepts, one encounters confusion and stonewalling.
The problem is far more severe where the questions studied have some bearing on ideology, politics, and power. It’s a matter of incentives, after all.
I would like to hear a more detailed criticism of the “real value of money” concept specifically. Human height varies over the course of a lifetime, over the course of a day, and geographically, and yet it is fairly clear that people are taller on average now than during the middle ages. And by different operationalizations we can measure how much taller. Isn’t it also clear that people are richer on average now that during the middle ages? Are you arguing that any attempt to measure how much richer is doomed to be misleading?
Statistics about human height are not a good analogy, since the concepts are simple and straightforward enough that they can be readily dissolved and their connection to reality re-evaluated if necessary. But many other “social science” numbers are indeed as bad as those found in economics, in the sense that even a casual rational evaluation of these numbers will reveal critical problems that are nonchalantly ignored in the regular “scientific” practice in these areas. (Though it would probably be hard to find anything as perverse as the epistemic rat’s nest that economists have built around various numbers they operate with.)
As for measuring how much richer people are than in the past, you can provide information that will leave readers with more or less correct intuitions about such things, by describing at length how much people in various occupation had to work and in what conditions, what they could afford with typical wages, etc., etc. But the idea that you can describe this with a single scalar number and then treat this number as a real physical quantity that features in models and theories is obviously complete nonsense.
It’s not obviously complete nonsense. It’s obviously part nonsense and part sense, and without further argumentation it’s not obvious how large a part nonsense and how large a part sense.
Just because a quantity is defined in a rather arbitrary way, that doesn’t mean it carries no information. You can take the position that an informal analysis would incorporate the same information and do it better, but you’d have to actually compare the biases inherent in these two approaches. (I haven’t read the Morgenstern book that you’ve linked; maybe it does so.)