What is Economics?

[The Blaatschapen]

If you think that about economics, you should take a geography course. Never have I encountered a discipline more convinced of its own validity than geography... and I went to what's technically a business school.

Yeah those fucking map makers, knowing where stuff is who gave them the right

Stop projecting

[Forsher]

goddamnit i giggled

but geography is a lot more than just maps

Oh I know I just found the insistence on human geography, which is probably the discipline that is correct the most and listened/funded the least, having some sort of superiority complex very funny

It doesn't have a superiority complex: it is completely and utterly lacking in self-awareness and devoid of self-reflection.

[Nilokeras]

Oh I know I just found the insistence on human geography, which is probably the discipline that is correct the most and listened/funded the least, having some sort of superiority complex very funny

It doesn't have a superiority complex: it is completely and utterly lacking in self-awareness and devoid of self-reflection.

I mean coming from a political science/economics person that's a little rich, but why so?

[Nilokeras]

They're eating from some sort of receptacle of ideology, though most likely it's the post-seminar wine and cheese ideology bar following the Rodrigo Eichmann Foundation Endowed Seminar on Latin American Affairs, titled 'Why Land Reform and Regime Change in Bolivia is Vital to the Security of South America'

Hey don't knock the free cheese, they neglected to clear out the catering of some guest lecture or other from one of my university classroom's and it was an excellent accompaniment to the lesson.

Also great is when you transcend even the guest speaker tier and go to the upper echelons of university catering - then there's free sushi left behind, which usually attracts grad students like a spilled picnic attracts ants

[Kubra]

Hey don't knock the free cheese, they neglected to clear out the catering of some guest lecture or other from one of my university classroom's and it was an excellent accompaniment to the lesson.

Also great is when you transcend even the guest speaker tier and go to the upper echelons of university catering - then there's free sushi left behind, which usually attracts grad students like a spilled picnic attracts ants

Man I was just going to class and got a bonus, I ain't playing the rat race just for a bite of fish.
The only place I get free sushi is NDP's election parties, since they don't check who comes in, and it turns out I'm not the only vulture in it for the free food.

[Forsher]

It doesn't have a superiority complex: it is completely and utterly lacking in self-awareness and devoid of self-reflection.

I mean coming from a political science/economics person that's a little rich, but why so?

You basically can't go to a lecture in history or economics without the idea of "there's something whack with this whole discipline" coming up. Whether or not you personally want to acknowledge it, economics as a subject is very, very aware of and responsive to the common critiques, just as historians spend (frankly too much) time hand wringing about narrative.

Meanwhile, urban geographers (I should note, I've never done any physical geography and, when it comes to it, human geography outside of urban geography so maybe it's just a problem with urban geography) are busy throwing around the term neoliberal like there's no tomorrow and basically never stopping to consider the validity of their methods. That is, insofar as there are methods beyond applying their ideological frameworks to some vaguely space related topic.

The thing about being ignored is that no-one cares about what you're doing, so you can just knuckle down and do it, basically uninterrupted. Urban geographers are dentists!

That being said, I would tend to agree that economics as a discipline has a superiority complex in the sense that it sees itself as being better than (say) geography, but that doesn't mean that just as economists are saying "use a CBA, fuck this economic impact analysis" they're not also saying "well, a CBA would do anything for love but it won't do that" (where that is, for example, something that's too hard to price).

Also, in statistics the whole point is about being uncertain and including the uncertainty in the generalisation. So, even though it mostly all goes back to proofs, in practice the subject of applied statistics is just as introspective, even if it's not because of internal and external critiques of the basic logic of the subject. (Which, for economists, is usually conceptualised in terms of model assumptions or the capacity/relevance of pricing, e.g. the CBA case.)

The ideology of the economist in question. You can tell which by what questions they consider worthwhile and what they consider the purpose of the discipline of economics is - the technocratic neoliberalism dominant in those Applied Ideology departments usually expresses itself in a sort of cold blooded focus on human behaviour in a market environment to the exclusion of all else. Poverty simulators and models of tax credits on spending decisions without considering the how or why.

Take this... there's a reverse causality problem: is the economist applying their ideology or is their ideology just what they think they've learnt? How can you tell the difference when the subject is inherently about questions people have an ideological interest in? (And I'd argue human/urban geographers have the same problem but for some reason they aren't copping any flack from you.)

[Forsher]

Hey don't knock the free cheese, they neglected to clear out the catering of some guest lecture or other from one of my university classroom's and it was an excellent accompaniment to the lesson.

Also great is when you transcend even the guest speaker tier and go to the upper echelons of university catering - then there's free sushi left behind, which usually attracts grad students like a spilled picnic attracts ants

Ah, you too have been to a University of Auckland statistics department class representatives meeting. Like, you can go to boring talks the law school does for law school people* and the nibbles are inferior (though, there's significantly more options in terms of booze, i.e. there are some, if that's you're thing).

I mean, Christ, there is no better illustration of the difference in funding between STEM subjects and everything else than the catering.

*He says based on one example.

[The Blaatschapen]

What is economics?

Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

It just doesn't work, the whole rhythm of the song is broken

[Nilokeras]

You basically can't go to a lecture in history or economics without the idea of "there's something whack with this whole discipline" coming up. Whether or not you personally want to acknowledge it, economics as a subject is very, very aware of and responsive to the common critiques, just as historians spend (frankly too much) time hand wringing about narrative.

Meanwhile, urban geographers (I should note, I've never done any physical geography and, when it comes to it, human geography outside of urban geography so maybe it's just a problem with urban geography) are busy throwing around the term neoliberal like there's no tomorrow and basically never stopping to consider the validity of their methods. That is, insofar as there are methods beyond applying their ideological frameworks to some vaguely space related topic.

They absolutely do think about their methods. I think the problem you're experiencing is not that they're uncritical, but that they're critical in a different way than you expect them to be because unlike economics and political science they do not consider themselves to be a 'science'.

Also, in statistics the whole point is about being uncertain and including the uncertainty in the generalisation. So, even though it mostly all goes back to proofs, in practice the subject of applied statistics is just as introspective, even if it's not because of internal and external critiques of the basic logic of the subject. (Which, for economists, is usually conceptualised in terms of model assumptions or the capacity/relevance of pricing, e.g. the CBA case.)

I would encourage you to consider that this is exactly the problem - I'm not questioning the validity of the models, I'm saying that the choice of what to model and why and why we even model goes unexamined.

Take this... there's a reverse causality problem: is the economist applying their ideology or is their ideology just what they think they've learnt? How can you tell the difference when the subject is inherently about questions people have an ideological interest in? (And I'd argue human/urban geographers have the same problem but for some reason they aren't copping any flack from you.)

It's not a reverse causality problem, this is history in action. Profs teach what they consider important, which is what they learned from their profs and research. The issue is that there's been a winnowing of what profs study and what gets funded that has turned economists from the sort of people who imagine new economic systems and grapple with the arcs of history to court astrologers that spend their time nose down arguing about which model family to use in studying real estate markets.

[The Blaatschapen]

You basically can't go to a lecture in history or economics without the idea of "there's something whack with this whole discipline" coming up. Whether or not you personally want to acknowledge it, economics as a subject is very, very aware of and responsive to the common critiques, just as historians spend (frankly too much) time hand wringing about narrative.

Meanwhile, urban geographers (I should note, I've never done any physical geography and, when it comes to it, human geography outside of urban geography so maybe it's just a problem with urban geography) are busy throwing around the term neoliberal like there's no tomorrow and basically never stopping to consider the validity of their methods. That is, insofar as there are methods beyond applying their ideological frameworks to some vaguely space related topic.

They absolutely do think about their methods. I think the problem you're experiencing is not that they're uncritical, but that they're critical in a different way than you expect them to be because unlike economics and political science they do not consider themselves to be a 'science'.

Also, in statistics the whole point is about being uncertain and including the uncertainty in the generalisation. So, even though it mostly all goes back to proofs, in practice the subject of applied statistics is just as introspective, even if it's not because of internal and external critiques of the basic logic of the subject. (Which, for economists, is usually conceptualised in terms of model assumptions or the capacity/relevance of pricing, e.g. the CBA case.)

I would encourage you to consider that this is exactly the problem - I'm not questioning the validity of the models, I'm saying that the choice of what to model and why and why we even model goes unexamined.

Take this... there's a reverse causality problem: is the economist applying their ideology or is their ideology just what they think they've learnt? How can you tell the difference when the subject is inherently about questions people have an ideological interest in? (And I'd argue human/urban geographers have the same problem but for some reason they aren't copping any flack from you.)

It's not a reverse causality problem, this is history in action. Profs teach what they consider important, which is what they learned from their profs and research. The issue is that there's been a winnowing of what profs study and what gets funded that has turned economists from the sort of people who imagine new economic systems and grapple with the arcs of history to court astrologers that spend their time nose down arguing about which model family to use in studying real estate markets.

They've got that market capricornered.

[The Nihilistic view]

Er I don't know and my degree is titled Financial Economics. I think I should have turned right and not left at econometrics.

[Ceranapis]

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources.

It is a social science, though it tends to use more math than say, sociology or anthropology.

[Deacarsia]

E`co*nom"ics (ē`kŏnŏm"ĭks), n. [Gr. ta` o'ikonomika`, equiv. to "h o'ikonomi`a. See Economic.]

1. The science of household affairs, or of domestic management.
   
2. Political economy; the science of the utilities or the useful application of wealth or material resources. See Political economy, under Political. "In politics and economics." V. Knox.

(Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913)