“Here at UR, “economics” is not the study of how real economies work. It is the study of how economies should work ”
should not bring to mind this:
“Here at Fantasy University, “physics” is not the study of how real physical principles work. It is the study of how physics should work.”
or should not raise giant red flags that you are about to be fed a steaming pile of horse shit. I don’t know about everyone else but for me the moment anyone purports to dictate how the world ought to be over and above how it actually is they are engaged in creative fiction not science.
When someone begins from such massive thought errors what follows, if they are at all rigorous, cannot but help be equally flawed and is therefore not worth my time.
“Here at Fantasy University, “physics” is not the study of how real physical principles work. It is the study of how physics should work.” or should not raise giant red flags that you are about to be fed a steaming pile of horse shit.
Alright, let’s start with the basics like Galileo and Newton’s laws of motions. Assume a frictionless plane in a vacuum on which we place a perfectly rigid body—hey wait where are you going?
Vacuums exist. Nearly frictionless planes and more or less perfectly rigid bodies actually exist. There is nothing wrong with abstraction based on objective reality. Claiming that one is about to declare how economies ought to work is not a abstraction based on a preexisting reality. It is attempting to impose one’s own subjective needs wants and desires on reality.
That is not science, that is pseudoscience.
Spherical cow is not “how science is done”. It is a joke. Jokes rely on reversing expectations, going counter to reality, for the surprise element. How science is actually done is you begin with the intent to describe the real world and from there you use whatever tools, intellectual or actual, at your disposal in order to accomplish your goal.
If one’s goal is not to describe how economies actually work you are not doing science. Declaring what one’s ideal economy ought to be is not the same as describing how a real economy would behave under ideal conditions. If I declare how photosynthesis ought to work I am not doing the same thing as describing how photosynthesis actually works under ideal conditions. It seems like a subtle distinction but it is not and failing to understand this difference has lead to a lot of bad science by lesser minds.
Suppose a man goes to the supermarket with a shopping list given him by his wife on which are written the words “beans, butter, bacon and bread”. Suppose as he goes around with his shopping cart selecting these items, he is followed by a detective who writes down everything he takes. As they emerge from the store both the shopper and the detective will have identical lists. But the function of the lists is quite different. In the case of the shopper’s list the purpose of the list is, so to speak, to get the world to match the words; the man is supposed to make his actions fit the list. In the case of the detective, the purpose of the list is to make the words match the world; the man is supposed to make the list fit the actions of the shopper. This can be further demonstrated by observing the role of “mistake” in the two cases. If the detective gets home and suddenly realizes that the man bought pork chops instead of bacon, he can simply erase the word “bacon” and write “pork chops”. But if the shopper gets home and his wife points out that he has bought pork chops when he should have bought bacon he cannot correct the mistake by erasing “bacon” from the list and writing “pork chops”.
Scientists are detectives attempting to describe how the world behaves. If the world behaves differently than we expect we erase bacon and write down pork chops even if we really would prefer bacon. Idealists, fantasists and Austrian school economists want bacon on the detective’s list so they write down bacon and blame reality for not living up to their desires.
Vacuums exist. Nearly frictionless planes and more or less perfectly rigid bodies actually exist. There is nothing wrong with abstraction based on objective reality. Claiming that one is about to declare how economies ought to work is not a abstraction based on a preexisting reality. It is attempting to impose one’s own subjective needs wants and desires on reality.
I don’t see any difference between the idealizing in either case.
Spherical cow is not “how science is done”. It is a joke. Jokes rely on reversing expectations, going counter to reality, for the surprise element. How science is actually done is you begin with the intent to describe the real world and from there you use whatever tools, intellectual or actual, at your disposal in order to accomplish your goal.
Really? I always thought it was a veiled criticism of abstraction gone wrong—sterile abstractions, abstractions which can’t then be linked back to the real world.
Actually, the is/ought distinction is omnipresent in the complete Moldbug thesis, as espoused in his, uh, sequences. Hence the reformulation of politics as an amoral engineering challenge.
There’s a lot of deliberately inflammatory language present, as well as a relatively high inferential distance, to which the inflammatory language mostly serves to filter the audience for, or at least a positive affect.
Translated into English, all that statement says is “Here is a presentation of classical or Austrian economics. This is not practised at large anywhere on earth today (for reasons which will be divulged elsewhere).”
I cannot imagine why this:
“Here at UR, “economics” is not the study of how real economies work. It is the study of how economies should work ”
should not bring to mind this:
“Here at Fantasy University, “physics” is not the study of how real physical principles work. It is the study of how physics should work.”
or should not raise giant red flags that you are about to be fed a steaming pile of horse shit. I don’t know about everyone else but for me the moment anyone purports to dictate how the world ought to be over and above how it actually is they are engaged in creative fiction not science.
When someone begins from such massive thought errors what follows, if they are at all rigorous, cannot but help be equally flawed and is therefore not worth my time.
Spherical cow is how science is done. What you are complaining about is in the realm of engineering.
Alright, let’s start with the basics like Galileo and Newton’s laws of motions. Assume a frictionless plane in a vacuum on which we place a perfectly rigid body—hey wait where are you going?
Vacuums exist. Nearly frictionless planes and more or less perfectly rigid bodies actually exist. There is nothing wrong with abstraction based on objective reality. Claiming that one is about to declare how economies ought to work is not a abstraction based on a preexisting reality. It is attempting to impose one’s own subjective needs wants and desires on reality.
That is not science, that is pseudoscience.
Spherical cow is not “how science is done”. It is a joke. Jokes rely on reversing expectations, going counter to reality, for the surprise element. How science is actually done is you begin with the intent to describe the real world and from there you use whatever tools, intellectual or actual, at your disposal in order to accomplish your goal.
If one’s goal is not to describe how economies actually work you are not doing science. Declaring what one’s ideal economy ought to be is not the same as describing how a real economy would behave under ideal conditions. If I declare how photosynthesis ought to work I am not doing the same thing as describing how photosynthesis actually works under ideal conditions. It seems like a subtle distinction but it is not and failing to understand this difference has lead to a lot of bad science by lesser minds.
Suppose a man goes to the supermarket with a shopping list given him by his wife on which are written the words “beans, butter, bacon and bread”. Suppose as he goes around with his shopping cart selecting these items, he is followed by a detective who writes down everything he takes. As they emerge from the store both the shopper and the detective will have identical lists. But the function of the lists is quite different. In the case of the shopper’s list the purpose of the list is, so to speak, to get the world to match the words; the man is supposed to make his actions fit the list. In the case of the detective, the purpose of the list is to make the words match the world; the man is supposed to make the list fit the actions of the shopper. This can be further demonstrated by observing the role of “mistake” in the two cases. If the detective gets home and suddenly realizes that the man bought pork chops instead of bacon, he can simply erase the word “bacon” and write “pork chops”. But if the shopper gets home and his wife points out that he has bought pork chops when he should have bought bacon he cannot correct the mistake by erasing “bacon” from the list and writing “pork chops”.
Scientists are detectives attempting to describe how the world behaves. If the world behaves differently than we expect we erase bacon and write down pork chops even if we really would prefer bacon. Idealists, fantasists and Austrian school economists want bacon on the detective’s list so they write down bacon and blame reality for not living up to their desires.
That’s religion, not science.
Partial vacuums exist. Somewhat frictionless planes, somewhat rigid bodies exist.
I don’t see any difference between the idealizing in either case.
Really? I always thought it was a veiled criticism of abstraction gone wrong—sterile abstractions, abstractions which can’t then be linked back to the real world.
If you say so.
Actually, the is/ought distinction is omnipresent in the complete Moldbug thesis, as espoused in his, uh, sequences. Hence the reformulation of politics as an amoral engineering challenge.
There’s a lot of deliberately inflammatory language present, as well as a relatively high inferential distance, to which the inflammatory language mostly serves to filter the audience for, or at least a positive affect.
Translated into English, all that statement says is “Here is a presentation of classical or Austrian economics. This is not practised at large anywhere on earth today (for reasons which will be divulged elsewhere).”