Thursday, July 26, 2018

Tyler Cowen — Which happiness results are robust?


Tyler Cowen comments on a paper, and Barkley Rosser, who is not an author of the paper but is interested in the issues, responds in the comments. (Ignore the trolls in the comments.)

I agree with Barkley Rosser. Social phenomena are difficult to measure and subjectivity greatly complicates this. However, it doesn't invalidate all models any more than similar issues invalidate modeling in economics.

Where problems arise lies not so much in modeling and modeling decisions as in misinterpreting the implications of a model owing to unstated presumptions and hidden assumptions, or exceeding scope and confusing scale. Of course, choice of parameters, operational definition, etc., although there are many issues involved that can invalidate a model. Inadequate measurement protocol also can do so. 

Formal modeling complements conceptual modeling, which tend to be fuzzier. But conceptual modeling is also needed to encompass the full scope and deal with issues of scale, for example, by avoiding fallacies of composition. Moreover, formal modeling focuses on quantity, while conceptual modeling is also able to handle quality. Quality is often difficult to quantity.

Cognitive-affective bias and ideology also have to be considered, as some point out in the comments.

This discussion is particularly important from the economic point of view in that economics has traditionally been about "utility," which is a code word for satisfaction, with satisfaction related to happiness. Bentham's Utilitarianism is about not only individual good (micro scale), but also "the greater good of the greatest number" (macro scale).

Marginal Revolution
Which happiness results are robust?
Tyler Cowen | Holbert C. Harris Chair of Economics at George Mason University and serves as chairman and general director of the Mercatus Center

5 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Hate to interrupt this Art festival with some science but:

“It’s estimated that 16.2 million adults in the United States, or 6.7 percent of American adults, have had at least one major depressive episode in a given year.”

https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistics-infographic

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Economics is NOT about Happiness but about Profit
Comment on Barkley Rosser/Tyler Cowen on ‘Unresolved Issues In Happiness Economics From The Conference Honoring The Retirement Of The Field’s Founder’

The common methodological blunder of orthodox and heterodox economists and the ultimate reason why economics is one of the worst scientific failures of all times consists of defining economics as a social science.

While it is trivially true that human behavior plays an important role in how an economy develops, this is NOT the subject matter of economics but of Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, History, Political Science, Social Philosophy, Biology/Evolution Theory etcetera.

Imagine a passenger plane flying at high speed at high altitude. Now, one can ask two entirely different questions about this phenomenon, i.e. (i) behavioral, or (ii), physical.

• Behavioral questions relate to the motives of travel, social status e.g. 1st/2nd class, feelings/fear of flying/claustrophobia/euphoria, satisfaction with comfort/service/entertainment, trust on pilots/crew/airline, uncertainty about value for money, etcetera.
• Physical questions relate to the laws of aerodynamics, thermodynamics, material stability of the craft, weather conditions, navigation, remaining fuel supply, etcetera.

The theory of flight abstracts from the concrete human beings and leaves all Human Nature issues to social scientists, that is, to people who can endlessly waffle about utility/happiness but will NEVER get a plane or anything else off the ground.

Analogous for the subject matter of economics. Economics has to focus on the systemic aspects of the economy, in other words, economics is NOT a social science but a system science.

Unfortunately, economics took the wrong turn at the very beginning because it defined itself as Political Economy. Politics, though, is the very antithesis of science.#1

The most important scientific contribution an economist can make is to reveal how the actual economy works. This contribution takes the form of the true theory with truth well-defined as material and formal consistency.

The crucial step on the way to the true theory is to move from the naive description of reality to abstraction: “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’.” (J. S. Mill)

Needless to emphasize that abstraction can go badly wrong. By getting stuck with Human Nature/motives/behavior/action economists committed the Fallacy of Insufficient Abstraction. And this is why economics is a failed science.#2

Economists got lost in the woods with folk psychological and folk sociological blather about utility/happiness and can to this very day not tell what profit is and how the price- and profit mechanism works. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism is proto-scientific garbage but the former editor of the Review of Behavioral Economics, the Cargo Cult Scientist Barkley Rosser, has not got it and will never get it. The same holds, of course, for the fake scientist Tyler Cowen.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Yes, orthodox economics is poor science, but can Heterodoxy raise hope?
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2014/12/yes-orthodox-economics-is-bad-science.html

#2 Economics: 200+ years of scientific incompetence and fraud
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/06/economics-200-years-of-scientific.html

Tom Hickey said...

“It’s estimated that 16.2 million adults in the United States, or 6.7 percent of American adults, have had at least one major depressive episode in a given year.”

I would have ballparked it a lot higher. Maybe they need to run several independent studies on it and compare the outcomes.

Tom Hickey said...

Economics is NOT about Happiness but about Profit

Right. That is what Marx argued against the view of classical economics based on utilitarianism, which was bastardized version of Aristotelian philosophy, in particular, Nichomachean Ethics. Aristotle asserted that all people act for a purpose, which is happiness, but there is disagreement over what produces happiness. Bentham held it was material satisfaction, and this one of the alternatives that Aristotle found wanting. In Greek this hedone meaning sensual pleasure. This philosophy is called hedonism. Conversely, Aristotle maintained that happiness is a by-product of Gk arete , which is often translated as "virtue," but many Aristotelian scholars prefer "human excellence."

In contemporary terms, "living the good life" means living a life of plenty. For Socrates, Plato and Aristotle "living the good life" meant living a life characterized by human excellence. Thus, the fundamental question was, What does it mean to live a good life in a good society."

Marx observed that a society in which capitalism is the mode of production profit is the driver rather than the pursuit of human excellence.

This distinction is key in that for the ancient Greeks and Marx as well, a necessary condition for the pursuit of excellence is human freedom for self-actualization.

According to Marx, capitalism treats workers as homogenous, distinguished only by their individual labor time times their labor power, all of which are quantifiable in calculating the profit rate, which determines investment. Marx called this "variable capital" to distinguish workers from material resources used in production and other capital goods, which he called "fixed capital."

So now economists actually calculate the worth of a human being in terms a unit of account.

But this is "scientific," after all.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Tom Hickey

Happiness is the subject matter of psychology/sociology/philosophy. How the monetary economy works is the subject matter of economics. Economists, though, do not even know what profit is. People who are so incompetent that they have thoroughly messed up their own discipline are ill-qualified to say something about psychological/sociological/philosophical matters.

You say: “In contemporary terms, ‘living the good life’ means living a life of plenty. For Socrates, Plato and Aristotle ‘living the good life’ meant living a life characterized by human excellence. Thus, the fundamental question was, What does it mean to live a good life in a good society. Marx observed that a society in which capitalism is the mode of production profit is the driver rather than the pursuit of human excellence.”

Take notice that Marx, too, never figured out what profit is.#1 As a collateral damage, he messed up the concepts of exploitation and class.#2, #3 As a result, the fake philosopher#4 Marx never had anything worthwhile to say about how the economy works.

That the fake economist Karl Marx is repeatedly advertised by the fake philosopher Tom Hickey is an act of deliberate disinformation and NOT a contribution to the advancement of economics as a science. It is simply the perpetuation of economics as propaganda.

A good life in a good society presupposes, first of all, that philosophers, economists, and all other cargo cult scientists and agenda pushers are thrown out of science.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Profit for Marxists
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2414301

#2 Capitalism, poverty, exploitation, and cross-over exploitation
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2018/04/capitalism-poverty-exploitation-and.html

#3 Karl Marx, fake scientist
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/08/karl-marx-fake-scientist.html

#4 Note on Amy Willis ‘Can majoring in philosophy make you a better person?’
https://axecorg.blogspot.com/2017/07/note-on-amy-willis-can-majoring-in.html