Philosophy Shit
mikethemadbiologist | June 23, 2011I've long held that tenured professors who espouse 'free trade' or 'free markets' should have their tenure revoked--let's see how their tune changes (and I do include Krugman in this*). Ditto pundits with cushy sinecures. Let's put them in a world where they could show up at 9am and be told to pack their things and leave the building by 11am and see whether they extol its virtues (FREEDOM!!!)**.
Anyway, by way of Digby, we stumble across this brilliant essay about Robert Nozick, the Harvard philosopher who made libertarianism respectable. While the whole thing is worth a read, this section…
mikethemadbiologist | March 21, 2011It really does matter: if economists are going to use biology as a model for their discipline, we need them to understand ours, to help improve theirs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
By way of Brad DeLong, we stumble across this Russ Roberts piece discussing the question of what kind of science (if any) is economics. What bothered me in reading the original piece was how badly the biology was mangled (which doesn't give me much hope for economics). Let's go to Roberts (italics mine):
I have often said that economics, to the extent it is a science, is like biology rather than physics.…
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2011A while ago, I discussed the limits of the deductive approach in economics (and, for that matter, in anything). Basically, one can be really clever and derive how the world could or should work. This might or might not have anything to do with how the world actually works.
Robert Waldmann takes Matthew Yglesias to task for deducing, when he should be inducing about the effects of state income taxes on the decision by rich people to leave that state:
You specifically write "The tax competition issue is real, but limited, and the further you get from New Jersey the less real it becomes." "…
mikethemadbiologist | August 2, 2010I've decided to take a break from hate-mongering. Instead, I want to discuss two interesting posts about the state of economics by Brad DeLong and Tim Duy. Before I get to them, for those who wonder why I discuss this stuff, I find it fascinating that such an important discipline has had such little attention paid to some fundamental philosophical issues, such as whether economics is a 'hard' or social science, whereas there are philosophers who focus entirely on the physical sciences (I don't claim to be one at all, for the record). Philip Mirowski, whom I mentioned in a different context…
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2009I've been meaning to follow up on some more thoughts about Unscientific America. I suppose what bothers me about the book is that there is no distinction between positive statements--the way things are or will be--and normative statements--the way things ought to be. As an example, consider yesterday's post about type I diabetes. When someone (often a child) is diagnosed with type I diabetes, we have several options:
Provide the resources to treat the disease and enable the diabetic to live as best as one can with the disease.
Let him sink or swim on his own--if he (or his parents) have…