Krugman's characterization of the split between the beautiful theory and real world messy complexity seems right on the money to me. Everyone seems want to reduce problems in complex biological/social systems to punchy emotionally-resonant slogans. It's not the way biological, and therefore social systems work - the deeper you go, the more complexity you find. This seems to me to be a massive problem for economics in particular: an attempt at science which is continuous collision with the arational conglomeration of just-so beliefs that is politics. Most political beliefs cannot resist trivial attempts at falsification yet they're allowed to more-or-less drive economic theory. It's not going to work, reliably.
is typo intentional?
ReplyDeleteThanks, I fixed it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, some further comments in Krugman's blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/a-few-notes-on-my-magazine-article/
Krugman's characterization of the split between the beautiful theory and real world messy complexity seems right on the money to me. Everyone seems want to reduce problems in complex biological/social systems to punchy emotionally-resonant slogans. It's not the way biological, and therefore social systems work - the deeper you go, the more complexity you find. This seems to me to be a massive problem for economics in particular: an attempt at science which is continuous collision with the arational conglomeration of just-so beliefs that is politics. Most political beliefs cannot resist trivial attempts at falsification yet they're allowed to more-or-less drive economic theory. It's not going to work, reliably.