comment by cliffelam

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cliffelam · 4862 days ago · link · · parent · post: 12 year old girl explains what economists cannot

Except that she's completely wrong and a cursory reading of history, though possibly not that of modern 20th century Canada, would have helped her understand the topic a bit.

-XC

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JakobVirgil · 4862 days ago · link ·

How exactly can anyone be right or wrong in a pseudo-science?

+discuss+discuss

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cliffelam · 4861 days ago · link ·

Ha. Dismal, not psuedo.

-XC

+discuss+discuss

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JakobVirgil · 4861 days ago · link ·

not exactly engineering though. :)

I admit I am a practionineer of this clap trap. (at least thats is what my cv tells me.)

eventually evo-eco , Behavioral economics and whatever socio-biology is going to be called mature we can start talking about truth values of economic statements.

Until then economic utterances are closer to religious creeds than scientific statements.

Being a keynsian a chicago school guy or a austrian school devotee is analogous to being a Methodist an Anglican or a Jehovah's Witness. I belive that they belive I just don't belive that they could possibly know what that claim to know.

+discuss+discuss

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cliffelam · 4861 days ago · link ·

It's like law - more of a worldview and an analytical framework. At least in my case - I subscribe to a rational macro view, but that probably resulted more from my experience with people than from my training.

My wife has a Ph.D. in Sociology from a top school - talk about frameworks!

-XC

+discuss+discuss

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JakobVirgil · 4861 days ago · link ·

exactly like the law it is constructed not discovered and like the law it is very bad at predicting and modifying actual human behavior.

rational from experiences with people? actually there is a good paper that implies that a small set of "rational actors" can make a system act "rationally". In my experience "rationality" is a social construct that does not hold cross-culturally. for example western folks experimental results in the ultimatum skew farther from the predicted Nash equilibrium then those of some hunter-gatherers.