The "No Problem" Attitude

[Niels Bohr 72]

The author never taken a science class, I know that.

[mRx 16]

The author never taken a science class, I know that.

What!?

Quantum mechanics is no more a hard science than economics, my friend.

Economics directly effects people--the energy content of a subatomic particle doesn't help Joe the Plumber pay his subprime mortgage.

Pssht!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Classical physics is.

Of course, that has nothing to do with this thread

[mRx 16]

AJ,

GM is filing for bankruptcy-- unemployment is nearing double digits-- and Consolemaster is worried about particles!

#######!

[scandal 951]

The author never taken a science class, I know that.

What!?

Quantum mechanics is no more a hard science than economics, my friend.

Economics directly effects people--the energy content of a subatomic particle doesn't help Joe the Plumber pay his subprime mortgage.

Pssht!

So this computer-thingie you're using, and the ~500,000,000 transistors its CPU is composed of, is just a fiction huh?

You are using the "hard science" of doped semiconductors, which in turn depends on quantum tunneling, with every VJ post you send.

Quantum effects and their applications are in our daily life all the time.

I'm not knocking economic theory, I find the subject fascinating. But there is no social science in existence which has models which can predict phenomena with the precision and accuracy of the "hard sciences". Yes, economics affects people, and yes it's very important that it be studied, and that new and better predictive models be found. It's just that trying to compare physics to economics just makes no sense whatsoever. Why would you even attempt to do such a thing?

[mRx 16]

The author never taken a science class, I know that.

What!?

Quantum mechanics is no more a hard science than economics, my friend.

Economics directly effects people--the energy content of a subatomic particle doesn't help Joe the Plumber pay his subprime mortgage.

Pssht!

So this computer-thingie you're using, and the ~500,000,000 transistors its CPU is composed of, is just a fiction huh?

You are using the "hard science" of doped semiconductors, which in turn depends on quantum tunneling, with every VJ post you send.

Quantum effects and their applications are in our daily life all the time.

I'm not knocking economic theory, I find the subject fascinating. But there is no social science in existence which has models which can predict phenomena with the precision and accuracy of the "hard sciences". Yes, economics affects people, and yes it's very important that it be studied, and that new and better predictive models be found. It's just that trying to compare physics to economics just makes no sense whatsoever. Why would you even attempt to do such a thing?

I don't consider economics to be a social science; I'm fully aware that (in error) most people do . However, the normative realm of economics is subjective-- dealing with what "ought" to be, and what "should" be. That's not the hard science I am talking about. Nor do I consider it to be economics at all. It's insane that it is categorized as such.

Economics, like physics, is arrived at by logical deductions from a priori knowledge.

The axiom that individuals make economic decisions in the belief that they will be better off than they were before is universal, logical, and a priori. This is indisputable, and to argue for the contrary would be absurd.

The same applies to logical deductions arrived at in the science of physics. On a theoretical plane, physics, like economics is not without conflict or debate.

So yes, I fail to see why physics and economics wouldn't fall into the same category.

[Niels Bohr 72]

We can control the experiments in physics whereas economics cannot.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

The social sciences are sometimes criticized as being less scientific than the natural sciences, in that they are seen as being less rigorous or empirical in their methods. This claim has been made in the so-called Science Wars and is most commonly made when comparing social sciences to fields such as physics, chemistry or biology in which corroboration of the hypothesis is far more incisive with regard to data observed from specifically designed experiments. Social sciences can thus be deemed to be largely observational, in that explanations for cause-effect relationships are largely subjective. A limited degree of freedom is available in designing the factor setting for a particular observational study. Social scientists however, argue against such claims by pointing to the use of a rich variety of scientific processes, mathematical proofs, and other methods in their professional literature. Flyvbjerg (2001) has argued that the discussion of whether natural science is more scientific than social science is futile; social science is best practiced as phronesis, whereas natural science is best practiced as episteme, in the classical Greek meaning of the terms, and both have important if different roles to play in the production of knowledge in society.

It has been argued that the social world is much too complex to be studied as one would study static molecules. The actions or reactions of a molecule or chemical substance are always the same when placed in certain situations. Humans, on the other hand, are much too complex for these traditional scientific methodologies. Humans and society do not have certain rules that always have the same outcome and they cannot guarantee to react the same way to certain situations.

A third criticism is that social sciences tend to be compromised more frequently by politics, since results from social science may threaten certain centers of power in a society, particularly ones which fund the research institutions. Further, complexity exacerbates the problems, since observed social data may be the result of factors which are hard to evaluate in isolation.

Not all institutions recognize some fields listed above as social sciences or as being only social scientific. Some disciplines have characteristics of both the humanities, social and natural sciences: for example some subfields of anthropology, such as biological anthropology, are closely related to the natural sciences whereas archaeology and linguistics are social sciences, while cultural anthropology is very much linked with the humanities. Note that social science methodologies are being incorporated into so-called hard science fields like medicine, where a three-legged stool to the understanding of physical well-being is now emphasized in the medical curriculum: biological, socio-psychological, and environmental.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_sciences#Criticism

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

We can control the experiments in physics whereas economics cannot.

The scientist would not want to control the experiment, only account for the variables he is trying to observe, in both cases. However, there is an interesting corollary to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that would actually state no experiment could be independently observed, that the merest observation affects the outcome of an event.

Edited June 1, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Does that mean that if a tree falls over in the woods and noone is around to hear it that it doesn't make a noise?

Edited June 1, 2009 by Private Pike

[mRx 16]

Praxeology

Mises attempted to find the conceptual root of economics. Like other Austrian economists, he rejected the use of observation, saying that human actors are too complex to be reduced to their component parts and too self-conscious not to have their behaviour affected by the very act of observation. Observation of human action, or extrapolation from historical data, would thus always be contaminated by overlooked factors in a way that the natural sciences would not be.

To counter the subjective nature of the results of historical and statistical analysis (see Methodenstreit), Mises looked at the logical structure of human action (he entitled his magnum opus Human Action). In other words, he built on the methodological aspect of Economics, the synthetic a priori.

From praxeology, Mises derived the idea that every conscious action is intended to improve a person's satisfaction. He noted that praxeology is not concerned with the individual's definition of end satisfaction, just the way he sought that satisfaction and that individual's increase of their satisfaction by removing sources of dissatisfaction or "uneasiness".

An acting man is defined as one capable of logical thought — to be otherwise would be to make one a mere creature who simply reacts to stimuli by instinct. Similarly, an acting man must have a source of dissatisfaction which he believes can be changed, otherwise he cannot act.

Another conclusion that Mises reached was that decisions are made on an ordinal basis. That is, it is impossible to carry out more than one action at once, the conscious mind being capable of only one decision at a time — even if those decisions can be made in rapid order. Thus man will act to remove the most pressing source of dissatisfaction first and then move to the next most pressing source of dissatisfaction. Additionally, Mises dismissed the notion that subjective values could be calculated mathematically; man can not treat his values with cardinal numbers, e.g., "I prefer owning a television 2.5 times as much as owning a DVD player." This is related to how the rank transform in statistics discards absolute values and retains only an ordering.

As a person satisfies his first most important goal and after that his second most important goal, then his second most important goal is always less important than his first most important goal. Thus, the satisfaction, or utility, that he derives from every further goal attained is less than that from the preceding goal. This assumes, of course, that the goals are independent, which is not always the case--for example, acquiring the television may enable one to pursue the goal of watching a documentary on biology, which may make one decide to study biology, which opens the goal of writing a research paper, and so on.

In human society, many actions will be trading activities where one person regards a possession of another person as more desirable than one of his own possessions, and the other person has a similar higher regard for his colleague's possession than he does for his own. This assertion modifies the classical economic view about exchange, which posits that individuals exchange goods and services that they both appraise as being equal in value. This subject of praxeology is known as catallactics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

We can control the experiments in physics whereas economics cannot.

The scientist would not want to control the experiment, only account for the variables he is trying to observe, in both cases. However, there is an interesting corollary to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that would actually state no experiment could be independently observed, that the merest observation affects the outcome of an event.

Heisenberg only applies to tiny objects.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Does that mean that if a tree falls over in the woods and noone is around to hear it that it doesn't make a noise?

Did the tree fall in a determinate, or non-determinate manner?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Does that mean that if a tree falls over in the woods and noone is around to hear it that it doesn't make a noise?

Did the tree fall in a determinate, or non-determinate manner?

If the person watching the tree fall farted in the woods - would that affect it?

[Niels Bohr 72]