I don’t question that. But I dont see any particular reason to consider their empirical analyses of human behavior flawed.
The physical principles used in weather forecasting are mostly empirically derived as well, like probabilities of various weather outcomes. Just like economists create utility models as to how social security might reduce fertility by changing the incentive to have kids, then ascertain empirical parameters to put into the function. And the models actually turn out pretty accurate.
Same more or less goes for the VAR method the Fed uses to target inflation.
Clayton pretty much summed it up. What is valid in the climate models had already been derived from experiments in the laboratory - everything else is likely post hoc ergo propter hoc.
And to build upon what Clayton said about Darwin, the theory of evolution by natural selection is itself entirely a priori (inspired by Darwin’s readings of the a priori economic theory of e.g. Smith and Malthus). All the physical evidence that Darwin provides is merely an illustration of this theory - that many don’t understand the a priori nature of the theory of evolution is at the bottom of the entire creationist debate, with creationists attacking the illustration of the theory rather than the theory itself (because the theory is ‘unfalsifiable’ and therefore supposedly invalid).
That “everything else” includes quite a big chunk of the field. A laboratory cannot simulate a planet. Glenn Beck should use those arguments, it’ll make him a lot more of a scientist.
Evolutionary psychology gets into behaviorism, and we’ve gone there. But nonetheless, almost all sciences rely on empirical observation to establish constants. If anything, economics is more robust in this regard because it allows constants but does not routinely assume them.
What’s wrong with psychology? The forecasting with which this entire thread deals is based on it, and it has made some people a lot of money. But it deals with ends rather than simply means. Economics, logically and as it has been understood for centuries, deals with the latter.
If you really want you can argue with Rothbard that the axioms of economics are based on empirical observation. The errors that I’m talking about result from an overall empiricist methodology.
Empiricism is one bastard child of positivism. Verificationism is the other. Both follow from the central tenet of positivism: only that is meaningful which is either tautologically true or which can be falsified/verified by observation. Positivism has been debunked on both fronts. Verificationism was stillborn… someone asked the obvious question of whether the verification principle can itself be verified and that was the end of that. But empiricism fails on exactly the same point - can empiricism be empirically tested? How silly.
Which would essentially mean global warming isn’t proveably happening and climate change is another liberal conspiracy.
If you’re really set on rejecting empirical science then that’s about as far as we can get.
I had thought you said that behavior psychology wasn’t kosher. If it is, then that is a major case of applying empirical methods to biological action, which seems to be the hangup.
That’s not true. There’s nothing in mainstream economics or psychology that prevents scientists from studying the best means to reach a given end, and if you’re talking about moral “ends”, then that’s an entirely separate field. For it’s part, AE does not do anything to prove what human “ends” are, beyond (perhaps, but not really) empirically observing that humans appear to act toward certain ends.
Alright, I’ll bite. Do you think it’s possible to prove climate change is occuring at all, or that laboratory experiments and theory are enough to prove that it is?
Do you think there’s a good case to be made that the 1) world is going to keep heating up and 2) carbon emissions are major cause? Just wondering. Not to derail the thread or anything.
Just wanted to chime in on psychology. It’s not that difficult to get a pretty good understanding of a single person, which is what psychology is concerned with, economics on the other hand is far more complex in that thousands to millions to billions of people are involved.
And biological models study molecular-scale interactions among trillions of cells. Climate models are a real pain in the ass to run too. Animal behavior, genetics, and plant evolution are heavily studied in biology using statistics. Medicine is the flakiest empiricism-based field out there, but it’s still worthwhile. There are several sciences with just as much complexity as economics.
Yeah, I looked for it to no avail, but remember he mentioned it on his show (I used to listen a lot). He and some others started it in 2007 to short the banks due to the housing crisis. But, those Austrians don’t know what they are talkng about, right?
Generally, getting hold of 20 thousand banana flies and then doing the biological equivalent of smashing them together again and again in a controlled environment isn’t all that complex.
Molecular scale interactions can be easily observed repeatedly in a laboratory. (Not ‘easy’ easily, but far easier than repeating 250 years of history while changing only a single parameter)
Climate models for the most part are hindcasting, a feat that any pre-schooler with a certain amount of eye-hand coordination could repeat with a piece of paper and a pencil. (I’ve done some climate modelling myself, and randomly assigning variables with no accounting for their physical basis and then cramming a bunch of numbers through a model can get you deceptively close to historical values.) Those that portend to forecast have been spectacularly unsuccessful at long term (20-50 year) predictions.
Medicine is again a science that can easily have experiments repeated in a laboratory.
I think the standard reply to mustang is that all the things he mentions have no free will [or what looks like free will]. They are all the same. But no two people react exactly the same way to a host of things.
Take last night. I wanted LeBron to win, many want him to lose. And we both had the exact same reason, because of his boasting when he came to Miami.
Also, as time goes by, people change their minds. I used to want LeBron to lose, now I want him to win, again for the same reason!
[At first I thought he deserves a comeuppance. Then as time went on, I thought he got his comeuppance and began to feel sorry for him].
I feel the need to repost something I wrote in this thread:
As I said before, correlation does not imply causation. (Please note - if you haven’t already - that I’m using “imply” to mean logical implication.) Statistical regression can determine the probability distributions of dependent variables as functions of independent variables, but that in no way establishes a causal link. All it can do is help one make more accurate forecasts. Otherwise, one must conclude that reducing the number of pirates over time has been a, if not the, cause of (alleged) global warming.
Note that the above doesn’t take into account any flaws with the variables under consideration (such as GDP, in the context of econometrics).