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Tuesday, September 08, 2009
How did economists get it so wrong?
Krugman's article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine is really worth reading.
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.