Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)
by yakubin on Sunday March 31, 2019 @01:47PM
(#19536985)
Just because something isn't science, doesn't mean that it is art. Social "sciences", psychology and the like are neither. It is true however that they get more and more ridiculous when they try to dress their ideologies in a scientifically-sounding language to get a piece of the cake which is credibility that the hard sciences cooked for themselves, at the same time having remarkably little to do with any science at all.
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Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)
by taffer on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:23PM
(#19537225)
Who are you to decide what is science and what isn't? What is your model of what a science is anyway? As long as you can't answer that, the only thing unscientific is your comment.
Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)
by yakubin on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:49PM
(#19537445)
I understand science the way Popper wrote about it. Yes, my comment is unscientific. I've never claimed otherwise. Just because something is unscientific, doesn't mean it doesn't have value. E.g. I study mathematics and I do not consider mathematics a science (I know many other mathematicians who share this attitude) and yet I consider the study of mathematics to be one the best ways to spend my time.
Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)
by DataWorker on Sunday March 31, 2019 @02:36PM
(#19537340)
It sounds like you’ve discovered the problems with the softer sciences. You should look into whatever you consider a “real” science and see if it doesn’t have many of the same problems. That would require a bit more effort and intellect, problems in psychology and economics are pretty obvious, but you might be amazed by what you find.
Re:Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder? (2017)
by yakubin on Sunday March 31, 2019 @03:01PM
(#19537542)
I agree that there are fundamental problems in the hard sciences as well. E.g. the hype around string theory in physics. However, in this case I am told by the physicists, whom I know personally, that no physicist considers it "real physics" - they consider it mathematics (and many mathematicians consider it poor mathematics). The issue here seems largely to be the distorted image that the press presents of the views of the scientific community.
There are other examples, but the problems are nowhere near as big as in the fields my comment was suspicious of. And of course there surely are a lot of problems I don't have the slightest idea about. Still, the mindset of the scientists I know is so much different from the mindset of sociologists and others who seem much more driven by fashion. Back to physicists, I don't claim they are exempt from the influence of fashion. I claim that the impact of this influence is on a whole different level; there are lines that are not crossed, everything is up for falsification by experiment, and if it isn't falsifiable, then to hell with it etc. All of this makes me trust them a lot more.