Agreed. So in saying... ...we are saying that Economics, although having basic laws and properties, similar to physics, math, or medicine, exists in different dynamic than those other fields of study? In economics, unlike, physics, math, and medicine, when we attempt to modify our responses to the basic laws and properties, we can clearly see the results, whereas in economics we can argue 'til the cows come home over free trade vs. protectionist trade policies. In physics, two guys in an airplane argue over air resistance and Newton's description of gravity. One argues that his parachute will counter the force of gravity enough for a safe descent, the second one argues that he can flap his arms fast enough like the birds he's seen. They both jump. Argument solved. Physics will not bend to self-interest. Does this sound correct, or am I just being hopeful out of self-interest? :)Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics, or medicine—the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups.
Thomas Piketty remarked that he left the United States because Americans practice economics like it's hard science, while Europeans practice economics like it's soft science. Capital is chockablock with math but none of it goes beyond algebra; it's all fuzzy correlations and stuff. Most of the arguments against Capital that I've read tend to be of the "he approximated this one thing at 10% whereas EVERYONE KNOWS Milton Friedman approximated it at 8% THEREFORE HIS ENTIRE ARGUMENT IS FALSE." These generally are the same people that still throw Rogoff and Reinhart at you. I was reading some note or other and Knut Wicksell came up, along with his "natural rate of interest." That somehow led down the rabbit hole of Austrian school (Ludwig von Mises) vs. Chicago school (Milton Friedman) and I decided to learn what the difference was. Austrian school thinks economics is sociology. Chicago school thinks economics is math. Austrian school has been out of favor for 50 years. Welcome to our neoliberal paradise.
Governments and businesses make decisions based on economic theories, and the decisions of governments and businesses shape economies, so economic theories predict the behavior of economies and economies behave according to economic theories, at least until institutions stop buying into the theory. Some day we are going to make fun of the economists of the past the same way we make fun of alchemists.
That's a good point. But what will replace economists of the past? Better economists?
The true utility of economics is that it's a systems approach to value. The true failing of economics is you have to select boundary conditions for any system you care to model, and those boundaries are political as fuck. Arguing that mass unemployment is a logical and pure outcome of economic dislocations and efficiencies selects the masses as outside the boundary of the system; arguing that failing industries must be subsidized in order to promote full employment does not precisely model the efficiency of the industry. If you read Freakinomics and ignore/forgive their ridiculous "everyone is stupid but us" slant, you begin to appreciate that the whole of the book is an exercise in listing externalities. My guess is you're going to have giant data-inclusive models that some people will worship like gods and others will tear down like false idols. I mean, look at this shit. I only know about it because an investment pundit I follow is already front-loading it full of crap: Negative market informational surface, bitch. Are we gonna know more? Are we gonna know less? I'd argue that the numbers are going to dance to the tune of whomever policy's in vogue at the moment and, same as it ever was, they're going to have motives.
I thought that graph style looks familiar so I did some digging. Turns out Quid is essentially a layer over the Gephi open-source package. Which is free unlike the $25,000 a year Quid asks for their, uhm, added value. I mean, I made this degree centrality graph in an afternoon, what exactly does the program do that the open package can't? (Extra bonus: note all the floating dots? Those are data points that have no relation to the rest of the network. Either he didn't bother or Quid doesn't even let him remove those. )
I leave predicting the future to people who do TED talks. I'd like to think something more like designing a distributed system in computing than a science, where you start with the properties you want it to have and then figure out a protocol that has them. Then everyone knows it's all a game and they can make up a new game if the one they're playing turns out not to be very good. Something something flying cars and robot butlers.
I would definitely agree with you. There's a foundational difference between any social science and hard science because economics, for example, has no "basic laws and properties" that are truly predictive in the sense that a physical law is. That's not to say that the observations borne out again and again through observation in the realm of economics aren't useful. But there's an inherent difference of opinion that can influence an economist into one set of seemingly-valid conclusions over another that can't occur the same way in, say, physics. People can legitimately disagree over whether or not and to what extent we should subsidize economic behavior we want to see more of. You can't disagree that my airfoil design is shit if my plane doesn't lift off the ground. Your belief as to what maximizes human flourishing influences how you even frame the social universe, what sorts of assumptions you make, etc. It is self-evidently clear to some people that drugs are bad, that homosexuality is unnatural and thus intolerable, or that micropayments are the superior system for incentivizing the creation of content on the internet. It's harder to prove anyone's view of what's good for humans wrong because it's easy to find proof of that view in action, because human beings are so adaptable.