memes

Stop using this abusive, fascist sycophant as a meme template.

First you would have to find someone who thought economics were closer to physics.

No, at least someone who graduated kindergarden.

is this a controversial opinion? i think pretty much every economist would tell you it's a social science

There is a specific area of economics that deals with psychology: behavioral economics.

Also, can we retire using Steven Crowder, who abused his wife for years, as a meme?

That's dubious. Considering that economists deliberately ignore strong established psychological theories to make theirs work. Economical theory also runs contrary to a lot of established notions of sociology. Economics is closer to politics than to any science.

Economics is an extremely broad field, encompassing things that are closely related to psychology (e.g. behavioral economics), and things that are related to physics and natural science (e.g ecological economics), as well as pure mathematics (e.g. game theory) so trying to say it has more in common with one than the other is kind of a vacuous statement or category error.

To those who are angry at normative claims and policy prescriptions from the economic orthodoxy/zeitgeist, I understand your frustration. I would say what you're angry at is not economics itself (which is simply the study of scarcity and related human behavior) but economics done badly. Such as the Chicago school.

Setting aside the emotional baggage related to these issues, there are some really beautiful and fascinating topics in economics that borrow very directly from statistical physics in the analysis of financial time series data (and also apply to a wide variety of fields like network traffic, the distribution of metals in ore, turbulent flows in fluid dynamics, and the distribution of galaxies in space), originally identified by Benoit Mandelbrot.

Hard science — inquiry into the nature of the “hard materials” like rocks.

Social science — inquiry into shared meanings on the material stuff around us, including the “hard materials” like mountains, and “soft intangible stuff” like taboos and beliefs, prices, and demand.

A lot of people assume “hard” means the serious stuff and social science as the easy and abstract stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Economics is a social science. Sadly, the fascination with it being “hard” is largely to be seen as the cool tough stuff. Inferiority complex, if you may.

No one here has acknowledged the difference between classical economics and neoclassical economics (or even the difference with post-keynesian economics). Classical economics makes descriptions and predictions that can be falsified.

It also takes into account social context by understanding the social forces that come into play in a society at a given point. For example, the profit motive is understood as a historical force reinforced by capitalism itself.

All of this is modeled in a stochastic manner, which reflects both the variation in human behavior and the strong tendencies in human behavior. Once again, these models are testable.

All of this contrasts with the idealized and unscientific notion of economics that was cooked up at the end of the 18th century: neoclassical economics. This is what is taught to most people.

Neoclassical economics doesn't seek to describe the forces that motivate human beings as much as assume that people are utility maximizers. Therefore, social context is explained reductively. Predictions are harder, because what leads the way isn't evidence, but assumptions. Of course, there's a political component to not show capitalism as a historical reality as much as both a reflection of universal truths of human nature and a desirable social arrangement.

It's sad to confirm that neoclassical economics has dominated the economics departments and school curricula of the world. However, many scholars fortunate enough to be given a stable job despite not believing in the contemporary doctrine are doing amazing work. For example, Shaikh.

With this in mind, classical economics has to resemble physics to the extent that physics describes stochastic processes. In fact, Shaikh explicitly recognizes that pressure as a measure is a stochastic measure because, even though you can't predict the trajectory of a single atom, you can predict how many atoms will interact on an aggregate level. The same happens with humans.

Hey come on now, don't insult psychology by comparing it to economics.

More like astrology, it’s all just correlation til the models fails and then they invent a new one

Wait, do people actually disagree with this? I thought this was just common knowledge.

The primary function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

Pretty sure this isn't that controversial of an opinion. Pretty sure any economist that disagrees with you is a shit economist. There's a reason there's a related field called "socioeconomics"

Also fuck this meme format. Stop using this facist for memes.

Steven Crowder is an assclown.

Economics started as a branch of philosophy that got a lot of support because it draw a lot of support for its theory from maths.

Then, more recently, a good number of very inteligent people noticed the behaviours of economic models could be better predict and understood by using very simple psychological analysis and models.

I remember reading an article by two physicists where they just picked the oh-so-precious math of a given economic model, analysed it using the methods used to analyse physics and concluded the model was faulty by x+y+z.

Economics is... a very strange thing.

Exam questions are the same every year. But the answers are different.

There's an assumption there that psychology is not a hard science. An assumption that I agree with though.

It's a branch of sociology dominated by people who refuse to accept sociological research practices in the name of deluding themselves that they're uncovering grand truths about the universe. It would be hilarious and sad if politicians and journalists didn't listen to them.

If you look up soft science you will see them lumped together. I dont even know why this is even said, everyone knows this.

Economics isn’t a science because there’s no way to falsify hypotheses or theories.

The invisible hand is just bullshit and prices in our economy are often centrally planned by a monopoly or a cartel that decides how an industry ought to set prices.

Current day Economics is just propoganda.

Does it matter tho? It's all useful in some way or another.

“Water makes most things it touches wet. Change my mind.”