Curiously, this is approximately opposite to the trend that Robin Hanson claimed to observe in popularizations. You’re not necessarily talking about exactly the same thing (Robin is talking about what the public prefers to read whereas you’re talking about how the professors react to questions) but it’s an interesting juxtaposition nevertheless. I don’t myself see quite the pure trend that Robin sees—I think plenty of economics popularizations lecture the reader from on high and I know several physics books that labor hard to explain and answer questions, but anyway, quoting Robin:
“Popular physics books, like Carroll’s, act easy and friendly, but still lecture from on high, sprinkled with reverent stories on the “human side” of the physics Gods who walk among us. They grasp for analogies to let mortals glimpse a shadow of the glory only physicists can see directly.”
“The recent popular econ book Superfreakanomics is also excellent, but very different in tone. Also easy and friendly, this is full of concrete stories about particular data patterns and what lessons you might draw from them, or you might not; hey it is always up to you the reader to judge. Such books avoid asking readers to believe anything abstract or counter-intuitive based on the author’s authority.”
So, according to Robin, physics books lecture from on high (based on the author’s authority) while economics books do not.
Meanwhile, your experience is that economists present their concepts with an air of high authority (based on the economist’s authority) while physicists do not.
I haven’t read any popular book on economics, but what you (and Hanson) say about physics popular books sounds right. That’s the reason I don’t like popular books on physics (I am a physicist). The presented ideas are counterintuitive, and, at the best, the counterintuitiveness is countered by some arbitrary loose analogy, which may be reinterpreted in a completely different way without much difficulties. What is worse, people seem to like exactly this obscure quality of such books.
(Once I had read a popular book by Landau and Kitajgorodskij and I really liked it, but it was about Newtonian mechanics mainly, and I think it included several equations. A book about cosmology, quantum physics or even string theory without any equation at all—save the ever popular E=mc² - can hardly convey any meaningful information.)
Curiously, this is approximately opposite to the trend that Robin Hanson claimed to observe in popularizations. You’re not necessarily talking about exactly the same thing (Robin is talking about what the public prefers to read whereas you’re talking about how the professors react to questions) but it’s an interesting juxtaposition nevertheless. I don’t myself see quite the pure trend that Robin sees—I think plenty of economics popularizations lecture the reader from on high and I know several physics books that labor hard to explain and answer questions, but anyway, quoting Robin:
“Popular physics books, like Carroll’s, act easy and friendly, but still lecture from on high, sprinkled with reverent stories on the “human side” of the physics Gods who walk among us. They grasp for analogies to let mortals glimpse a shadow of the glory only physicists can see directly.”
“The recent popular econ book Superfreakanomics is also excellent, but very different in tone. Also easy and friendly, this is full of concrete stories about particular data patterns and what lessons you might draw from them, or you might not; hey it is always up to you the reader to judge. Such books avoid asking readers to believe anything abstract or counter-intuitive based on the author’s authority.”
So, according to Robin, physics books lecture from on high (based on the author’s authority) while economics books do not.
Meanwhile, your experience is that economists present their concepts with an air of high authority (based on the economist’s authority) while physicists do not.
I haven’t read any popular book on economics, but what you (and Hanson) say about physics popular books sounds right. That’s the reason I don’t like popular books on physics (I am a physicist). The presented ideas are counterintuitive, and, at the best, the counterintuitiveness is countered by some arbitrary loose analogy, which may be reinterpreted in a completely different way without much difficulties. What is worse, people seem to like exactly this obscure quality of such books.
(Once I had read a popular book by Landau and Kitajgorodskij and I really liked it, but it was about Newtonian mechanics mainly, and I think it included several equations. A book about cosmology, quantum physics or even string theory without any equation at all—save the ever popular E=mc² - can hardly convey any meaningful information.)