Daniel_Burfoot comments on Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: elharo 02 September 2015 09:25AM

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Comment author: elharo 02 September 2015 10:00:52AM *  18 points [-]

if we want economics to be a science, we have to recognize that it is not ok for macroeconomists to hole up in separate camps, one that supports its version of the geocentric model of the solar system and another that supports the heliocentric model. As scientists, we have to hold ourselves to a standard that requires us to reach a consensus about which model is right, and then to move on to other questions.

The alternative to science is academic politics, where persistent disagreement is encouraged as a way to create distinctive sub-group identities.

--Paul Romer, NYU, "My Paper “Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 26 September 2015 10:14:55PM *  2 points [-]

Romer goes on to write:

Persistent disagreement is a sign that some of the participants in a discussion are not committed to the norms of science.

He should reread Kuhn. Kuhn says that the cause of persistent disagreement is usually the lack of a relevant and workable scientific paradigm which can identify important problems, resolve disputes, and thereby mandate researchers to come to consensus. Romer's use of the phrase "the norms of science" indicates that he believes in a singular, universal, monolithic set of principles which is valid for all types of scientific inquiry. But economists obviously cannot use the same principles as physicists, simply because they cannot run experiments. What Romer is really complaining about is that there is no good paradigm for economics, but that's not anyone's fault - the discovery and articulation of a paradigm is as difficult as doing the science that the paradigm supports. A more valid criticism of the field would be "We are trying to do science without a strong enough paradigm, and the weakness of the paradigm is preventing us from resolving our disagreements definitively. Instead of trying to do more research along the same old lines, we should go back to the philosophical foundations and re-examine what it means to do economics."

Comment author: Cyan 27 September 2015 07:36:56PM *  0 points [-]

This is a field in which the discoverer of the theorem that rational agents cannot disagree was given the highest possible honours...