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shminux comments on Litany of a Bright Dilettante - Less Wrong Discussion
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First, no area is as bad as sports :) Now, I don't know much about economics, but let us assume for the moment that it is a real natural science and it is impossible to get to the leading edge without investing thousands of hours of hard work, then repeating and alieving the mantra I have suggested in the OP would be my recommendation. One way to convert this belief into alief could be looking through the relevant textbooks and realizing that you cannot possibly understand the advanced stuff without learning the basics first. And real-life economic policy is probably as advanced as it gets. Sort of an economic version of this.
Now, it is not necessarily true that economics is like other natural sciences, or like law or medicine. Maybe it is more like alchemy and what the subject matter experts learn over a decade or two does not help at all with giving sound economic advice. Maybe one or two terms is enough, and the rest is just fluff. I don't know. But this point ought to be addressed first, somehow...
I'm confused by this categorization of law.
I would suggest that economics is not best categorized as a science, since models are rarely tested and then discarded on falsification (real life conditions are rarely good enough at isolating variables to convince proponents that a hypothesis has seriously been falsified,) but that good economists probably do have expertise that an interested amateur couldn't duplicate with a few key insights. On the other hand, there's plenty of room in the field for economists whose learning amounts to indoctrination in models which offer no meaningful predictive advantage over ignorance.
I do not claim sufficient expertise to say who falls into what category.
I don't know much about law, except that one needs to know a lot about it to pass the bar exam and to successfully navigate through many legal issues.
I share your suspicions about economics, but I have not read any definitive analysis on the matter.
Now that I look back at your comment, I see that I misread it in the first place; I missed the "or" before "like law or medicine."