Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Lars P. Syll — On war and economics


Claus von Clausewitz quote from On War that is relevant to modeling in general.

This is true of the entire scientific (positivist) enterprise that assumes naturalism as the basis of truth. This is exacerbated by a further assumption that naturalism is not only a methodological assumption but the ontological and epistemological statement about reality. These assumptions oversimplify many design problems and as a result bias design solutions. 

Science works quite well and consistently in dealing with physical matters, and fairly well in dealing with biological matters — other than psychology. But the record is not so good with social matters. Moreover, philosophical inquiry reveals foundational problems with the scientific view as a world view taken to reflect reality accurately.

Lars P. Syll’s Blog
On war and economics
Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

See also

Real-World Economics Review Blog
Pandemic Musings
Peter Radford

8 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Science doesn't do values, morals, and all that emotional stuff.

Matt Franko said...

Correct... we avoid that stuff like the plague.... It’s womanish...

Matt Franko said...

“ naturalism as the basis of truth. ”

It’s a demonstration of truth... figurative activity...

It’s a reification error to consider it the BASIS of truth...

AXEC / E.K-H said...

The tragedy of economics: stupid/corrupt economists
Comment on Lars P. Syll/Tom Hickey on ‘On war and economics’

Lars Syll argues: “Models may help us think through problems. But we should never forget that the formalism we use in our models is not self-evidently transportable to a largely unknown and uncertain reality. The tragedy with mainstream economic theory — and the ‘theorists’ that Clausewitz criticised — is that it thinks that the logic and mathematics used are sufficient for dealing with our real-world problems.”

The tragedy with Lars Syll is that he still thinks that mainstream economics is science. Time to take notice that economics is NOT science and never has been. Economics is proto-scientific garbage for 200+ years. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT, Pluralism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/ formally inconsistent. Economics is cargo cult science.

What Lars Syll sells as a his grand methodological insight is a truism among genuine scientists and well-known among methodologists: “We are very far from being able to predict, even in physics, the precise results of a concrete situation, such as a thunderstorm, or a fire.” (Popper) Or a war, for that matter.

And, guess what, already J. S. Mill was well aware of the methodological situation: “Since, therefore, it is vain to hope that truth can be arrived at, either in Political Economy or in any other department of the social science, while we look at the facts in the concrete, clothed in all the complexity with which nature has surrounded them, and endeavour to elicit a general law by a process of induction from a comparison of details; there remains no other method than the à priori one, or that of ‘abstract speculation’.”

This means nothing more than that figuring out how the economy works requires a certain amount of abstraction. And here is exactly the point were economists in their bottomless methodological incompetence failed. Their blunder is known as Fallacy of Insufficient Abstraction.

The philosopher Tom Hickey hallucinates about science: “Science works quite well and consistently in dealing with physical matters, and fairly well in dealing with biological matters — other than psychology. But the record is not so good with social matters.”

The record is not so good with social matters because so-called social scientists are NOT scientists but stupid/corrupt political agenda pushers. Economists are even too stupid for the elementary algebra that underlies macroeconomics. The fact of the matter is, that economists do not know to this day what profit — the foundational concept of their subject matter — is.#3

To cover the scientific failure of economics with ontological and epistemological wish wash is the personal disgrace of Lars Syll and Tom Hickey within the general scientific disgrace of economics.#4

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Scientists do NOT predict the future
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/09/scientists-do-not-predict-future.html

#2 Shocking: methodology is a tricky business
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2014/12/shocking-methodology-is-tricky-business.html

#3 Wikipedia, economics, scientific knowledge, or political agenda pushing?
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2020/06/wikipedia-economics-scientific.html

#4 Economics is a disgrace ― now more than ever
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2020/08/economics-is-disgrace-now-more-than-ever.html

Matt Franko said...

“ Their blunder is known as Fallacy of Insufficient Abstraction.”

Yo they are not trained in the methodology of the abstract (Science) they are trained in the methodology of the figurative (Art)...

The Academe is bifurcated... don’t blame the Economists they don’t run the Academy.... they are just a product of it like the rest of us....

Matt Franko said...

“Economists are even too stupid for the elementary algebra “

Yup... we’re coming up on one year anniversary where these dopes have a Reserve Asset requirement of 10% of Deposit liabilities and deposits are $13T so what do these morons do? They bring the reserves down below 1.3T and the Fed Funds market ceases to operate...

THEN... THEN ... as if that wasn’t bad enough... they look all around at each other and wonder “what happened?,.,”

They STILL don’t know what happened... It’s been A YEAR....

Matt Franko said...

Or go back even further... go back to 2008...

They have a supplemental regulatory leverage ratio on depositories where (A-L)/A has to be greater or equal to 0.03 or thereabouts.....

So what do these dopes do? They suddenly increase Reserve assets by $100Bs and the credit system ceases to operate... cascading bankruptcies and years of chaos...

THEN... THEN ... as if that wasn’t bad enough... they look all around at each other and wonder “what happened?,.,”

They STILL don’t know what happened... It’s been OVER 10 YEARS....

Matt Franko said...

THEN all the commies say “well .... that’s Capitalism for you!”...

LOL!!!!!