Comments on: George Dyson on ‘Economics is Not a Science’

By: mason

mason — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:45:41 +0000

Thanks ClassAct!
There are grounds for your observation re Thermodynamics, itself an honest science! Production and Leverage are both tangible (in that boundary sense) by that honest science. Look forward to reading!

-mason

By: ClassAct

ClassAct — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:05:28 +0000

While I agree that economics is not a science, it is bounded by the very real science of thermodynamics. For a primer on the subject of production and its relation to thermodynamics, see the following:
http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/Faber%20et%20al%20AEE%201998.pdf
http://www.eco.uni-heidelberg.de/ng-oeoe/research/papers/JPEE_Introduction.pdf
http://www.ecoeco.org/pdf/jointprod.pdf
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/themes/3Second%20sessions%20panel/1Indicators/Friend%20A%20Degrowth%20Paris%20april%202008%20presentation.pdf

By: mason

mason — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:47:56 +0000

I’ve been on a breezy tour of Libertarian market and geopolitical reactions to the current state of affairs. This seems to be the point where they get hung up and proceed no further or deeper: Complexity ?{vs}? Risk. Their most provocative offering? Standardised derivatives traded on an Exchange!

Not sure, but i think this concerns leveraged instruments predominantly?

Personally, i think far too many people are running about pretending to be concerned about complexity and fairly confident they believe in endless risk, whether they be too big or too smart to fail or, heaven forbid, both.

I’d like to see Wall Street shut down a couple of weeks a year and sent out to water, weed and harvest actual produce or manufacture actual goods.

Just a Labour Day sigh.

-mason

stylized, look forward to reading.
Thanks.

By: stylized.fact

stylized.fact — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:15:45 +0000

Essay meanders close to Mancur Olson’s line of reasoning. Centralized currency is part of a mechanism for helping to ward off roving bandits (see Power and Prosperity), a much less desirable environment for citizens/farmers. The need for security from ethnic conflict survives to this day, probably still more salient than the problem of greenhouse warming. Special interests are very hard to dismantle. Is anyone really confronting the issue of financialization and risk head on?

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/fac/hrob/jacoby_labor_finance.pdf

By: mason

mason — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:19:27 +0000

Forgot to link the Text.

http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/rt/HF.pdf

-mason

By: mason

mason — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:16:05 +0000

Hey khalil!

If we (rightly IMHO) assume that economics needs to face some fact about it’s origins *and* could benefit from some new paradigms/ways of thinking, (shared by other bonified sciences), we realise that economics, like many other arts and sciences can benefit from an inter-disciplinary revaluation.

Let’s hope the powers and ideologues that be realise, welcome and participate with other sciences, thinkers and visionaries.

“There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’2 Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which
divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.”

-I. Berlin

I believe this essay presages stuff with which Veblen wrestled and with which we have postponed wrestling.

-mason

By: khalil

khalil — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:27:38 +0000

Interesting. But why do we need to lock avey limited number of suposed knowlegeable people from a suposed working domain to find us a solution.
If I remember well the micro credit, as we know it today, emerged in a total different country than Us from someone totally different than that list and to day hundreds of millions of people have a better life, perhaps not good enoufg but better.
I, personally do not see the guys of google and amazon as the savers. Not really.
They do a very hood job but not the one I would expect to make a better world.

By: Doug Carmichael

Doug Carmichael — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:43:56 +0000

This really good. I was prepared for this thinking by reading Philip Mirowski’s Machine Dreams: how economics became a cyborg science, also good.

Is’ll be mulling this and exploring the rest here.

By: DefunktOne

DefunktOne — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 16:13:28 +0000

Brilliant stuff…

By: Veruschka

Veruschka — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:54:08 +0000

Dyson’s writing is tedious. I’ll stick with your writing any day Doug, and I agree, this is one of your best essays!

On top of all of Dyson’s tortured writing, I am not any great fan of Jeff Bezos, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk, Tim O’Reilly, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Nathan Myhrvold, and Danny Hillis.

OMG do you really think this gang of galoots would come up with something we could be grateful for? They are going to help us take our life back from the corporate world, Doug?

I think Dyson should stick with his kayaks which I think are closer to being sentient beings than the wet dreams he has over the internet.

On second reading of Dyson’s comment, I want to propose his name for the Professor Erwin Corey Award for 2009.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxtN0xxzfsw&feature=related