I’m not talking about the inherent limitations of social science, I’m responding to your absurd attitude that somehow formal education makes your ideas inherently superior/above critique, and I named a specific example of theoretical failure of orthodox economics as an example of the entire project being basically woo. Lots of aristotelean scholastics wrote the dumbest shit imaginable about physics for a thousand years, and their thought was funded, reproduced, and taught as authoritative by formal education the entire time; progress was only made when criticism came from outside the academy and overcame it. Much like then, our contemporary “Political Science” and “Economics” departments are nearly completely captured by a dead-end ideology/research project, but still have the support of the ruling class so they keep cranking along misinforming more and more students every year. You claiming advanced understanding of the matter is the equivalent of an Aristotelean physicist or Lamarkian biologist sticking their nose up and saying learning outside of the academy is somehow less than their own. That’s worse than just being wrong, it’s wrong and using elitism to refuse to recognize it. The Black Panthers went into the poorest and least educated communities in America, and they taught people Marxist theory while they taught them to read. What do you think well to do Nixon Republicans had to say about their education? That’s where you stand right now looking down on folks engaging in education outside of the academy itself.
Also, lots of Marxists are tired of dumb liberals reciting the same garbage authoritatively while never questioning basic undercurrents of their own ideological world view. So sorry they have reached a conclusion and don’t want to rehash baby’s first socialism with every shmuck who thinks their poli-sci degree makes them an expert.
I’m a biologist, but my college offered a few humanities courses, so I took an introductory course in economics.
The maths was fine; it was mostly linear equations and differentiation. But the priors seemed to defy all logic and common sense. It was like a physicist assuming that there was no friction. The impression I got was that economists put too much effort into mathematical rigour and too little into empirical verification.
Now there are biologists who study animal societies and their ‘economic systems’. But they care more for experiments than for theory, and this seems to me to be the more reasonable approach.
Why are you presuming liberals are dumb?
There are several incredible replies to you in this thread that have completely gone unappreciated or over your head or both.
You’re still not getting it lol. Neoclassical economics is theoretically standing out way over a cliff and simply refusing to look down like Wiley coyote. Your appeal to mathematics is unintentionally hilarious, because it was physics envy and the chasing of mathematical models over real life evidence/coherent theory that led the field astray to begin with lmao. You can come up with all kinds of fancy models and as much mathematics as you like, but none of it matters if you’re basing it on incorrect axioms.
“Functioning in the real world” - oh yeah for sure. Burning the environment down and cooking the biosphere while forever chemicals and microplastics permanently saturate the ecosystem. Liberal societies are “Functioning” in so far as they’re not actively failed states this very moment, but that is accomplished on the back of neo-imperialism, unequal exchange with the global south, and unresolvable contradictions inherent to neo-liberalism/capitalism. A car driving 80 mph towards a cliff is working, sure, but is that a desirable state of affairs?
Also take a quick look around my guy. We’re not in a laboratory. I’m calling you an idiot on the internet. Not every conversation is the platonic ideal of scientific pursuit you nerd.
