Economics seems to have the same problem as weather simulation - the data sets are massive, they're global, they're subject to incredibly complex vortices ... and every year a new "major influence" is discovered. Weather guys have had to contend with El Nino, ozone holes, Sun Spots ( and maybe the new Grand Solar Minimum) Van Allen, melting Arctic ice.... volcanoes...fires
I took a read of the "error" and juvenile arguments over R&R's work. But, I have to say - elements of a spreadsheet missing ... rows over Mean and Median !!! I thought my just marginally graduate-level maths would be useless in even a basic Economics office.....but...maybe.... If only economics had the same problem as weather simulation. The reason we have such a huge problem is that mainstream economists choose not to analyze the economy as a chaotic system at all. The fact is there's just no way to reconcile viewing the economy as a self-correcting equilibrium with viewing the economy as a non-linear chaotic system. You pick which one you believe the economy to be, and all subsequent analysis and modeling must fit within that paradigm. While you and I, and everyone else in the world who's not a mainstream economist, will look at the economy and see how it fits all the criteria of a chaotic system (sensitive to initial conditions, topological mixing, density of periodic orbits - or more basically, unpredictability), mainstream economists start with the assumption that the economy tends to equilibrium. In system terms this is the opposite of a chaotic system (one that will become increasingly unpredictable over time) as it represents a belief that the system will trend towards a predictable state over time. So I have a problem with mainstream economists because I subscribe to the 'chaotic' paradigm and not the 'equilibrium' paradigm, so everything that they hold to - the theory, the tools and models, the mathematics - is an absurdity to me. There's better and more sophisticated mathematics put to use by an engineer building a dishwasher and modeling the water flow than there is in the whole of the economic mainstream.
The day we get to the point where we can genuinely say economists face the same kind of problems as weather simulation we'll be starting to get somewhere at last. Unfortunately we're probably in for a long wait. As Max Planck said of scientific theory...
"Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out. Science advances one funeral at a time"
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COPENHAGEN - When voters head to the polls to elect Denmark's 13 MEPs in May next year they may also be asked to delete two Danish EU treaty opt-outs and to approve the kingdom's participation in the European patent court in a referendum.
The leader of the Liberal party and former Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, will propose in a speech on Monday (12 August) in Norway that the Danes should remove opt-outs on EU defence and justice co-operation that were introduced almost 20 years ago.
A third reservation on joining the euro is not to be touched, however.
"Time has come when we must do away with these reservations. The negative effects of, in particular, the justice op-out is so urgent that it would be irresponsible to continue to push it ahead. The prerequisite is that you have broad support at Christiansborg [the Danish parliament], and this is exactly what I am now offering," Rasmussen said in an interview with Danish daily Politiken over the weekend.
The plans to set up a European Public Prosecutor (EPPO) as part of efforts to clamp down on fraud committed against the EU budget shows how the Danish justice could pose problems.
The present government had earlier planned to hold a referendum on abolishing the defence and justice opt-outs.
But Prime Minister Thorning-Schmidt backed off on the commitment in June 2012 citing the general "anxiety and uncertainty" surrounding the European project at the time.
Denmark obtained four opt-outs from the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.
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