VoiceOfRa comments on Rationality Quotes Thread May 2015 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Vaniver 01 May 2015 02:31PM

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Comment author: VoiceOfRa 02 May 2015 06:52:02PM 1 point [-]

Social science epistemology, afaict:

  1. Ignore all the interesting and replicable phenomena

  2. Find data sets that can be interpreted in isolation as Cutting Social Commentary

  3. Wonder why your interventions never work, findings never replicate, and you can't predict anything.

How it should be done:

  1. Separate experimental studies from social commentary. Build a corpus of replicated phenomena that need explanation

  2. Find a-priori plausible explanatory hypotheses or laws that explain the replicated phenomena.

  3. Favor hypotheses that predict better, are simpler, and integrate with other theories

  4. Check your work by building working social technology, making novel predictions, or otherwise demonstrating veracity

Note that my recommended social science epistemology is physics epistemology. Soc sci needs more physics envy and fewer linear regressions.

Oops forgot step 0. ASSUME AN UNUPPORTED IMPLAUSIBLE FALSEHOOD (SSSM) AS AXIOMATIC

Nyan Sandwich

Comment author: ChristianKl 03 May 2015 11:50:40PM 5 points [-]

Economists are something like social scientists with physics envy. They still don't manage to get good at prediction and have a corpus of well replicated phenomena.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 04 May 2015 12:07:45AM 6 points [-]

Something Nyan Sandwich should have been clear on is that he means "physics envy" in the sense of using the same epistemology physicists use. Unfortunately, in reality physics envy is more likely to manifest as the social scientists noticing that physicists use complicated mathematics and trying to use complicated mathematics themselves.

Comment author: Salemicus 07 May 2015 05:01:54PM 7 points [-]

Economists do have a large corpus of well replicated phenomena, and they do have good predictive ability. The problem is that people want economists to make predictions on subjects that are least understood, or even ones that economic theory suggests cannot be generally predicted, such as stock market movements. Sure, economists can't do that, but they (mostly) don't claim to be able to do that.

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 May 2015 05:09:07PM *  0 points [-]

What kind of phenomena do you mean?

I don't think that the call for stock market prediction is central to an argument about economist. If someone can predict stock market movements in some capacity they make money on Wall Street instead about being open about their theories.

Changes in unemployment numbers or GDP on the other hand seem to be more like the job of economists.

Is there anything like a trial registry in economics where economists can publish predictions before they go out and gather data?

Comment author: Lumifer 07 May 2015 05:59:55PM 3 points [-]

There are plenty of before-the-fact published predictions by economists. See e.g. here.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 May 2015 11:04:17AM 3 points [-]

"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship." Heinlein

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