Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[a500lbgorilla]

Also re: not a science. Economics is not the only discipline that must rely on models and make judgments about probabilities that are less than 1. Try theoretical physics. Newton's laws aren't even provable. There's no such thing as an inertial reference frame. Cosmology isn't a science by your definition either. What about the life sciences that attempt to make sense out of unimaginable complexity? You've repeatedly cited psychology, which might as well be astrology compared to economics in the "is it a science?" department.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/com...is-a-scientist

Not really a rebuttal article, just an economist's pretty balanced take on the question.

PS I've seen this article before. Welcome to the world of argument. Every side can be fought for. It usually takes Nature to step in to settle the debate.

Look here, someone like me: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/20...-science-wang/

A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. - Max Plank, a dude that was right in the face of a bunch of dudes that were wrong.

[wufwugy]

Look here, someone like me: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/20...-science-wang/

Sadly the first paragraph shows the author making at least two mistakes about macroeconomics. Then he goes to say macro isn't a science. He could be right, but we're not going to know that from people who get macro wrong.

Since he mentioned it a few times in the article, "forecasting" is not what macro does. To loosely quote from memory a macroeconomist, Scott Sumner, "If a model could predict a recession it would be changed so that the recession was no longer predicted". This means that recessions happening has no bearing on the veracity of macroeconomic claims. That's also assuming political policy is that which textbook economics might advocate in the first place, which is far from the case.

Macro uses the scientific method constantly. Every form of claim-making and discovery does. Some have just real shitty tools.

[a500lbgorilla]

Macro uses the scientific method constantly.

What is the scientific method?