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The Farce That Is Economics: Richard Feynman On The Social Sciences
Submitted by Erico Tavares of Sinclair & Co.
Richard Feynman on the Social Sciences
What do real scientists have to say about sciences that are not so real?
Born in 1918, Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in a variety of fields where he made an immeasurable contribution, including quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics and particle physics. He was also credited with introducing the concept of nanotechnology, a breakthrough that holds so much promise today.
A professor at the California Institute of Technology, Feynman helped popularize physics through lectures and books which he made more accessible to the general public. He received many honors for his work throughout his life. He was elected to the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Science and the Royal Society of London. He was recently ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.
Many insights he left us with go beyond the world of physics. And we would be wise to pay close attention to them.
A Critique of the Social Sciences
Looking back at his own experience, Feynman was keenly aware of how easy our experiments can deceive us and thus of the need to employ a rigorous scientific approach in order to find the truth. Because of this, he was highly critical of other sciences which did not adhere to the same principles.
The social sciences are a broad group of academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals, including anthropology, geography, political science, psychology and several others. Here is what he had to say about them in a BBC interview in 1981:
“Because of the success of science, there is a kind of a pseudo-science. Social science is an example of a science which is not a science. They follow the forms. You gather data, you do so and so and so forth, but they don’t get any laws, they haven’t found out anything. They haven’t got anywhere – yet. Maybe someday they will, but it’s not very well developed.
“But what happens is, at an even more mundane level, we get experts on everything that sound like they are sort of scientific, expert. They are not scientists. They sit at a typewriter and they make up something like ‘a food grown with a fertilizer that’s organic is better for you than food grown with a fertilizer that is inorganic’. Maybe true, may not be true. But it hasn’t been demonstrated one way or the other. But they’ll sit there on the typewriter and make up all this stuff as if it’s science and then become experts on foods, organic foods and so on. There’s all kinds of myths and pseudo-science all over the place.
“Now, I might be quite wrong. Maybe they do know all these things. But I don’t think I’m wrong. See, I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something, how careful you have about checking your experiments, how easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something.
“And therefore, I see how they get their information. And I can’t believe that they know when they haven’t done the work necessary, they haven’t done the checks necessary, they haven’t done the care necessary. I have a great suspicion that they don’t know and that they are intimidating people by it. I think so. I don’t know the world very well but that’s what I think.”
To be fair, such disciplines seek to uncover and understand very complex relationships involving a volatile and even unpredictable human element. But the point that Feynman was making is that, rather than acknowledging this limitation, experts in these fields present their findings as truths, without employing the same rigor as in the physical sciences.
In the interview, Feynman singled out nutrition as an example, which has actually made progress in recent years as far as the scientific method is concerned (although everyone is still getting fat). There is, however, another social science whose “experts” have come to influence, directly or indirectly, generations of millions of people around the world. And this one fits perfectly with what he was describing.
The Dismal Science
"The dismal science" is a derogatory name for economics coined by Thomas Carlyle, the 19th century Scottish writer and philosopher. There is some debate as to why he thought of those words. But with the world coming off a huge recession in 2008 that very few economists foresaw, he could not have come up with a more prescient name.
Consider the following mainstream economic "truisms", presented in broad layman terms, which have largely governed economic policy thinking in recent decades, particularly in the Western hemisphere:
- Saving money is a sin and should be penalized; speculation is a virtue and should be encouraged
- The government does not need to run its finances like every other company and individual in the country; what is good for the latter is bad for the former
- Inflation should be kept at 2% forever; that’s the exactly right number, no more, no less; if you start paying less for your food, rent and healthcare, the central bank must intervene
- Those who take personal risks to create prosperity and jobs have obligations; everyone else has rights
- The state can spend its citizen’s money much more intelligently than they can
- Business cycles are bad so we must always stimulate the economy
- When a boom in demand pursuant to a boom in credit inevitably fades away, we should create another boom in credit to revive demand again, and again, and again
- Creating debt at a rate above an economy’s incremental productive capacity generates wealth
- Anyhow, debt does not matter because that liability is someone else’s asset
- Demographics don’t matter either
- You generate so much prosperity in your job over 40+ years that you can comfortably live in your retirement of 20+ years
- Foreign lenders only need to be concerned with regard to banana republics; the others will always pay them back
- The capital markets follow nicely shaped probability bell curves, and so shocks and crashes are extremely rare events; the markets are “efficient”
- The benefits of free trade outweigh the costs of a country losing its manufacturing sector as a result; the fact that domestic companies have to comply with much stricter and costlier regulations than their foreign competitors is of no consequence
- Human behavior is governed by mathematical equations and models, even when oversimplifying assumptions are used
- The next generation will figure out a way to pay for all the massive debts that we are creating today; otherwise the central banks will solve the problem
- The way to create prosperity in a society is to take away resources from the productive sector and distribute them amongst the unproductive sector
- We all admire the free markets; we just can’t let them work
The list could go on. Needless to say, every “truism” here defies common sense, let alone any rigorous scientific analysis.
For instance, there is no empirical evidence to support the view that a debt crisis can only be solved by piling on more debt, a de facto policy being implemented today in the Eurozone periphery. This is certainly not a scientific argument. And you can’t argue with it either. If the policy fails it’s only because you did not pile on the debts fast enough. The expert is always right!
And so we go on, clinging to every word uttered by prominent mainstream economists and central bankers as if it were the absolute undisputable truth. Just as Feynman had suggested.
And he was certainly not alone in his criticism of the social sciences. Some economists had warned years earlier that their discipline was posing as a true science. Here’s a very insightful excerpt from the 1974 Economic Sciences Nobel prize acceptance speech by Friedrich von Hayek (appropriately called “The Pretence of Knowledge”):
“It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences - an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. It is an approach which has come to be described as the ‘scientistic’ attitude - an attitude which, as I defined it some thirty years ago, ‘is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.’"
Even Paul Krugman, a high priest of mainstream economics, is critical of his own kind. However, in his view the problem is that there are too many solutions on how to solve the world’s economic problems (instead, everyone should just follow his advice and we will all be saved!). That divergence of opinion is yet another indictment of the lack of scientific rigor and precision that permeates the economics profession today.
The Consequences
Widely accepted beliefs in myths masquerading as science have consequences. The cartoon above could not describe them any better (and it’s better to laugh indeed). Must individuals continually walk the plank as advocated by “experts” that supposedly hold all economic truth, or should we instead have a clear-headed debate as a society on how to get our economies back on track?
In January 1988, a month before his passing, Feynman warned us against becoming arrogant and complacent in our current stage of progress, which otherwise could have dire implications on future generations:
“We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions and pass them on.
“It is our responsibility to leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are.
“If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming ‘This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!’ we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.
“It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.”
Right again Mr. Feynman. Now, will the real scientists please stand up?
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#Ebola
Mutant Ebola warning: Leading U.S. scientist warns…
Dr Peter Jahrling from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease says the viral loads in Ebola patients in Liberia are much higher than they are used to seeing.
http://tersee.com/#!q=ebola&t=text
Better link for the above:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2798086/mutant-ebola-warning-leading-u-s-scientist-warns-deadly-virus-changing-contagious.html
The http://tersee.com/#!q=ebola&t=text link comes up blank on my end.
You're referencing the Daily Mail. Your argument is invalid.
Low on my list of credible sources as well, but if you're sincerely attempting to refute the substance of observer007s off-topic comment, you'll need to do much better than an attack-the-messenger ad hominem.
I suggest about 60 seconds at the first link below, followed by about 30 seconds at the second, beginning at the second step from the bottom:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-propaganda.html#ad_hominem
Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement
ya beat me!
A scientist, an economist and a government statistician are deer hunting with bows. They spot a deer. The scientist estimates the distance to the deer, carefully calculates the angle to launch the arrow, and lets it fly. The arrow falls 10 feet short.
The economist see this and decides that since his is not an exact science he will just increase the angle a little and see where the arrow falls. The arrow lands 10 feet beyond the deer.
The government statistician looks at the two arrows and starts to jump up and down excitedly. We got him!
This Ebola garbage in every thread is getting lame.
Who and why? What is the agenda?
An ad hominum argument with an article about Feynman and science.
Who'd a'thunk?
- Ned
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/10/top-ebola-expert-strain-much-wors...
There;s not one word in there on the subject of "becoming more conatgious" which is the only thing that would matter; the "viral load" being higher is too ignorant to even comment on. Patients bcome viremic; look it up. viral load, my ass. This is a classic example of rubbish in the mass media.
I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do... http://goo.gl/yioYBZ
But, Krugman told me everything is great ...
/s
Quick, break some windows!
Economics was hijacked by politicians and bankers for their own ends back in the early 20th century. We had functioning economies long before we had "Economists".
...or economists were poxed whores selling themselves to those politicians and bankers....
Try the Austrian School/Free-market study of economics. It is NOT a form of government voodoo economics. Go to Mises.org and start your education. This guy has just determined that the government adulteration of economics is wrong. Just because the current alchemists are wrong doesn't mean that chemistry is not valid. Please, read some Austrian economics and free your mind by clearing away all the fog of centrally planned economics as proposed by Keyenes, which government promotes.
Just because Austrians proved many alchemists-economists wrong doesn't mean that there is something like science of economics either. Proving few theories wrong doesn't mean we have the scientific one. Free market is the default solution exactly because we do not have the scientifically optimal one. K. Popper wrote few books on scientific methodology and testability of scientific theories.
To think I wasted all that time studying to be an engineer when I could've taken a massive amount of LSD and become an economist instead.....
you would never have made it as an economist because you know stuff like what the x- and y- axes on a graph are.
Haha! I feel the same way. I look at the average pay grades for economists and scientists and I want to scream. I spent years studying physics and here I sit in the same pay grade as an astrologer. Oh how Mr. Market works. I'm still glad that I'm a scientist rather than a magician, though (no offense intended at all to actual sleight of hand magicians. I only wish I were as adept at so many things as they are!)!
Religion: Things will go well for you if you do <blank>.
Economics: Things will go well for you if you do <blank>.
Every crook in town is trying to control how to fill in the <blank>.
Why is anyone surprised?
Contemporary 'economics' is a sham. News at 11.
Feynman was a true giant among men.
DavidC
You bet he was. If you haven't heard of him, you obviously never went far in physics, and that's OK. Quantum Physics isn't for everyone.
You can learn about him in Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
And his most famous book was "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman"
p.s. to 12:03 posting... He was a funny, witty, kind man, who had no use for Religion. His parents were not religious, and by his youth Feynman described himself as an "avowed atheist". He's a fine example that we do not Organized Religion to behave decently, or to give our lives meaning and purpose.
ask him now if he needs "religion"...\
no one ever dies, we just change places...
A disintegrated brain doesn't "go" anywhere. It just disintegrates and ceases to be.
Feynman broke through NASA's flagrant lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rwcbsn19c0
Yup... "Reality must take precedence over PR, for Nature cannot be fooled"
Feynman wrote several books. They're all a pleasure to read. If you really want to approach physics if you're just getting started, there is a published set known as the Feynman Lectures
http://www.amazon.com/The-Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed/dp/0465023827/r...
They are not for the faint of heart but they are an excellent elementary approach to physics. I wish I would have encountered them in my early years of study. Even if you have a few years under your belt, they are still excellent. I enjoyed them even after many years of study. Feynman's approaches are very refreshing.
you notice that even in dismissing the pseudo scientist he hedges his bet, because he does not want to accuse without strong evidence. A true scientist.
This article was disappointing. He starts with a quote from Feynman and then proceeds to do EXACTLY what Feynman points out is done in Social Sciences.
The author presents laundry list of his pet peeves as facts ....
Very infantile and disappointing.
Economics - a disgusting abortion masquerading as an academic "discipline".
If Debt is Good can I give you Mine... ?
What a great article!
Today we are inundated with psudo science. The real danger, as far as I am concerned, is that those who advocate such nonsense as anthropogenic climate change and Keynesian economics, demand we capitulate out rights to them because it is for our own good, or "the greater good."
Yet their practice of the scientific method is so flawed even a lay person can recognize the absurdities the psudo scientists argue for. Moreover, the psudo scientist always has a personal stake in their findings. The global warming "scientist" has juicy grants to lap up, and the Keynesian says all the drug addict needs, are more drugs.
Sadly the elite are the worst offenders. The unbiased media elite have a stake in their reporting, the political elite want to expand crony capitalism while they claim to be against it and the cultural elite back them all up. They indoctrination in our new class colleges and universities promote this mind set, making it appear virtuous, when nothing could be further from the truth.
You're right. The discipline Science has undergone its Orwellian transformation, at least insofar as our political and cultural elite have championed. Science is merely another tool in their kit bag of lies.
Update: Our Progressive elite have Postmodernized Science; ie, scientific truth is whatever they say it is. While they throw the word 'science' around like an orating Obama tosses around "I ... myself ... me ... I ... my", they are not referring to classic science, but to the absolute Postmodern truth that only they know and understand.
Obama is swimming with Beyonce at Martha's Vineyard, way out to sea to escape the SS' and Michelle's prying eyes. A great white shark bites Beyonce in half. Obama, panicked, begins swimming out to sea. Eventually, his panic abates, but he's so far out to sea that his attempt to swim to shore fails. He goes down for the 1st time... He goes down for the 2nd time... Then, his entire life passes before his eyes as he goes down for the 3rd time: Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.". The last thing he hears as he vanishes beneath the waves is the chorus from Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer.
numapepi
Your 2nd and 3rd paragraph tells me that you didn't read the article. Or you didn't understand that economics is NOT science.
However, your last paragraph has some truth to it. So I will leave you with this exchange:
Charngchi Way: Why do you think that the privileged people miss the obvious truths?
Noam Chomsky: Well, several reasons. For one thing, the more educated you are, the more indoctrinated you are. After all, propaganda is largely directed towards the privileged. For the mass of the population, there is propaganda, but it's mostly to try to get them out of our hair, you know, it is distraction. Get them involved in professional sports, or sex scandals, or anything. Just keep them away from us.
That's why the political system in the United States has now degenerated to the point where the only issues that are talked about are what are called "the culture wars." You know, are we going to give gay rights, this sort of thing. Alright, CEOs don't care about that, so let's get the people involved in that, and you have red states and blue states and culture wars and so on. So for the population is mostly distract them.
But for elites, they have to believe. They are the ones who are the managers and the directors, whether it's political or economic, or doctrinal managers in universities and media and so on. They got to believe. Otherwise they can't do the job. So they have to be profoundly indoctrinated. Furthermore, it is in their interest to be indoctrinated, they are the ones who gain from these activities.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20051209.htm
He did NOT mention global warming. Climate scientists do exist and climate science is as important as any other branch of science. Every branch of science is important.
i dont remember who said "a man will find it very difficult to take the opposite side of where his paycheck comes from." That also includes fame and idolitary here.
Nuclear power is a science but Fukushima is an experiment involving badly applied science.
How much science is there in many of the dangerous pharmaceuticals out there?
The point is that both science and pseudo science suffer from an element of dishonesty and carelessness.
Exactly. "Government is not a science either."
Nor apparently is running a bank.
Can't speak for economists but both absolutely require economics. The oversight of both comes in the data...data is empirical...everything that can be counted counts.
Who even counts of course.
You know....numbers. HARD DATA.
Putting a searial number on something does not mean its been counted.
And if it hasn't been counted how do you know its even there?
Economics isn't dismal but TEDIOUS.
Seems to contain trivial matters that don't really "account" for reality. But when dealing with large numbers (leverage X everything) "little things kill." (Just the fear of Ebola?)
That's when economics moves into the realm of philosophy and then enters the world of a "rationalization." The numbers must be "manageable".... Especially if you're talking a large industrial concern or integrated business.
Well politician sounds better than crack whore with a social disease, though I do tend to find the crack whore's statements to be more believable generally.
Science is a methodology, and like most other methodologies, it can be used as a tool. In the case of science, it is a tool that we use to derive natural explanations of the natural world, often so that we may manipulate it. From an ethical standpoint, and in a very broad sense, it can be likened to knife or an axe. It can be used to put food on your table, heat your home, for defense, and it can also be used to murder innocents. It can also accidentally cause harm.
Like all methods and tools, we should understand the implications of how we use science.
I disagree.
By its very definition, science is the search for truth. Dishonesty and science are exact opposites.
Nuclear physics is a science.
Nuclear power plant design is an engineering discipline.
The problem is that professional disciplines are regulated by States, and States are subjected to political pressures. States end up straining at gnats and swallowing camels. Nuclear power plants are among the camels.
States license physicians, and you cannot get a prescription filled at the pharmacy unless the licensed physician has written out and signed the prescription.
States license engineers, and you cannot build a skyscraper or a public roadway, drinking water system, sewer system unless a licensed engineer has signed-and-sealed his design plan for that facility.
But many States exempt power companies, including nuclear power plants, from licensed engineer requirements.
Thus, your prescription works, your skyscraper stands, your roadway is driveable, your drinking water is clean, and your sewer doesn't back up, but Fukushima is emitting massive quantities of radiation.
Had Japan required licensed engineers to personally sign-and-seal all the Fukushima design plans, reports, and calculations, I believe that the design would have included fewer elements that we all now recognize as containing risk, and more safety measures.
Without a successful search for grants and financing, there can be no search for truth within the establishment's realm.
Professional science is just as corrupt as professional bureaucracy, the scientists simply have better education and more sophisticated reasoning behind their arguments and delusions of impartiality and the search for a greater good or truth, as opposed to the search for a desired greater good or truth.
A few bad apples will spoil the bushel...
Food for thought
I'LL BEGIN with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn't have developed intelligent life.
Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it's very unlikely that we'll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let's take a look at Earth. And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation ... you're just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won't find it here for very long either because it's just a lethal mutation ...
He pointed out that if you take a look at biological success, which is essentially measured by how many of us are there, the organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects.
If nothing significant is done about it, and pretty quickly, then he will have been correct: human intelligence is indeed a lethal mutation. Maybe some humans will survive, but it will be scattered and nothing like a decent existence, and we'll take a lot of the rest of the living world along with us. — Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20100930.htm
They guide the sciences away from the unprofitable. A guy named Tesla comes to mind. Invented the 20th century almost by himself. Died broke.
Yeah, well, at university (as Engineers and Natural Science students) we used to joke that Sociology wasn't a science either, but it had lots of chicks -- as did Psych -- so we picked some of those courses as non-technical electives. Engineering/Science didn't have hot girls, but the other classes did. To us that was "Diversity".
Recall taking 1 semester of Eco 020. What a crock that was! Never been so bored in any class.
Sitting in those Psych classes were the carefree good old days. That's where you found out where the good parties were going to be. Good times.
Please allow me to re-term pseudo science to GobbledyCacaphony
You see, it's good sounding nothingburger.
Looks like he is holding the Romper Room magic mirror.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=td1KAgrYUGA
/sarc
Am I officially old if I recall the reference?
I work as a data analyst and do a bit of machine learning / data mining for my job.
The closet thing we as humans have to practicing economics as a true science is Machine Learning (which is basically statistics and computer science combined). And even then alot of this stuff is bullshit.
Many people in the field of economics and even econometrics to some extent, do not like Machine Learning and think it is futile. Econometrics is basically just applying regression analysis to economic data.
That alone tells you alot about economics. It's brain washing and useless.
~DipshitmiddleclassWhiteKid
"Extrapolation error." Academia only deals in the present...thus making the "science" of theory appear unscientific.
For example take your data mining and apply it to say....shale oil. The production curve is almost exponential. You also are creating an EXPERTISE.
This can be measured too...
This is why I think all of it should be held with a grain of salt and should more or less be used to aid human judgement. Too many people just run models, look at the numbers and go "eureka!"
A quant guy I work with insists im just getting lucky in my trading because im a discretionary trader and think machine learning and data mining is useless for trading unless you have the right infrastructure.I am not lucky, just disciplined.
Dude should spend more time trading and less time 'back-testing' and data mining.
~DipshitMiddleClassWhiteKid
Ahhh yes, the people who think that if the real world does not match the model, the real world must be wrong.
Oh, wait, that's a majority of economists.
What's a typewriter?
See how it is possible to be an Atlas without claiming to be the one... as "Galts" (money changers mostly, as I suspect) of this site drum on dialy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mn4_40hAAr0
years ago i read an excellent article on the "making" of an economist.
with an economics degree you're still a nobody. To become a Somebody (aka a "zandi") you need to get published ... in PEER reviewed journals.
Long story short ... if you want to get published ... you need toe the mainstream way of thinking ... cranks (aka realists) need not bother.
Social science is social alchemy promising to transmute worthless dross into productive assets.
Remember Trofim Lysenko
Michael E. Mann
Halton Arp
"Science" has become increasingly politicized to the point I hardly recognize it. Very Soviet-like. Even the supporters don't believe their own shit. You can't tell the truth without offending some protected political class with special interests and seems it has been going on forever.
Example, long ago the 'Bell Curve' controversy was about how IQ was distributed in mass populations and blacks didn't happen to fair well in the overall distribution so all Hell broke loose. The late great evolutionary biologist Gould, of Harvard, blasted the report saying it was racist and all that... but down in the latter paragraphs of his own op-ed, however, he admitted it is very true that a lot of people just aren't cut out to be anything but janitors and the like. Huh?
They know the truth but they cannot speak it. Don't get me started on Keynesianism and economic 'science'.
There is a really good interview with Michael Cremo on the "Stench of Truth" podcast on iTunes that gives an example of this.
One of the things he talks about is a top geologist and teacher losing her career because she did the carbon dating on some tools and the results of her findings didn't match with the established theory. When the paper on the project she had done the testing for was published they changed the data she had provided to support the currently accepted theory. She went on to have the actual results published and lost her position as a university professor, as well as her work as a geologist.
They took problems that Jews were good at, and then defined them as the means to determine intelligence, and thus deduced that Jews are the most intelligent race. They could just as well as counted the number of great German composers or counted the number of great English plays. The racism was built into the equation. Perhaps Black people are not quite as good as maths, or not as verbally inventive, but it was they who quadrupled their own number in the last 40 years, while white populations have fallen. Who are the greater fools?
Um, just in case you haven't realized, most of the breakthroughs in modern society are the products of science and engineering, which are based in mathematics.
People with high level math skills tend to be more successful because they are more intelligent, it is't a coincedence.
The muds (blacks and latinos) are producing like the useless vermin they are because they have no concept of what it costs to raise a family, since most of them are back stopped by .gov (mostly blacks)
If they had no idea of the costs they would not have raised their population from 300 million to 1.2 billion in 40 years.
Research r- K- selection theory, please.
Feynman should have thought about the consequences of handing his work over to the feces flinging monkeys before he gave them the bomb. He realized his error later. Because of Feynman no self serving pinhead fiddling with technology can ever plead ignorance. Feynman set the precedent.
This is why the State is so interested in bright young people, because they don't know the State for what it is yet. No State or State Religion has ever had any qualms about committing genocide. Joy, Wosniak, Ellison, Gates, and all the others, no excuse. Concentration of wealth, power and information will always be abused when it becomes financially advantageous to do so. NO RULES
The bomb was OK. Creating it was a noble effort. Any other attitude is trying to transform reality into a fucked up fantasy utopia, driven by idealists who don't know a hole from a protuberance.
Any other attitude
Effie git mah gun. There's a messenger a comin'!
Feynman must have written the comment about humanity being in its youth - in his youth.
The bomb puts humanity in its middle age crisis at the least, if not its crazy old geezer stage.
Whoever said that meant collective humanity has alot of growing up to do before they get the car keys. If Feynman said it, it would have been after he gave the keys to Trumonkey
Was there a point to all this topical post about a 1981 rant?
"Economics is a psuedo-science, a religion."
Everybody knows everybody and everything is shit, but the only solution the wise, knowing individual suggests is, "We can't fix the problem until after the world economy implodes." Using Sherlock Holmes logic (eg, when you have excluded the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth), the world economy is controlled by aliens.
Surely, he's Joking.
Thirty years ago, that might have been more commonly true than today. Today, the "social sciences" are far more rigorous than they used to be. I know research psychologists, and their methods are quite rigorous. Anthropologists don't write equations, but they certainly identify patterns in geography and time, make hypotheses, interrogate data to test those hypotheses, and draw conclusions that are tested by other anthropologists.
Without a formula to summarize what those anthropologists do, we are unable to follow their reasoning objectively, and rely on their interpretation. The lack of formula maintains them in the role of priests. They may have something to say, but it is not science.
Your point is correct. They do not do science. They do do many things, but not science. Science has proofs, fundamental and unchangable mathermatical proof. Thermodynamics never gets it wrong, never, it always gets it right. So Womans studies gets what right? History study is all it is, subject to human bias, every bit of social science is heavily colored with a built in bias, and it can never be proved, or disproved. Don't they claim to be a science when they have no mathematical proofs, none.
Anthropology: the study of how people act, that study made in the hope of predicting how they will act. Anthropology uses tools which science has developed, but is not real science, because real science is the study of the real world.
Feynman's observation on how he was used by the people in Washington during the Challenger investigation is another example of his genius.
He knew when he was out of his element.
That he took a stand and got his findings in the report (appendix) was a monument to his ethics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report
Chernobyl, which took everybody's mind off the Challenger, occurred the day before Congressional hearings were to take place on why the Reagan White House overruled Thiokol and sent the rocket up on that chilly morn.
Something to do with Reagan's State of the Union speech and chit chat with the astronaughts.
Then CIA director, William Casey, got brain cancer, had a lobotomy and was dead a little over a year after that first explosive Kivan event.
2 + 2 = 5
Just saying. Casting no asparagus.
Chernobyl was to the Challenger disaster, as Ebola is to the current economic disaster.
Don't you love it when the pieces of the puzzle fit together so nicely?
I told my wife (at the time) that Casey was going to be murdered.
If you check the press announcement at the time, he was going in for a "routine brain operation".
Feynman also found that the presidential speech had nothing to do with the launch.
I think it was the NASA beef with the AF over vehicles and budgets that had more to do with it then anything else.
NASA was scared to death they were going to have to give control to the AF.
Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age Hardcover – February 1, 2007 by Richard C. CookI saw the explosion of the Challenger live that morning and within a day, 2 at the most, this story was already circulating.
The most media savvy president talking to the astronauts from the podium of the House of Representatives.
Congress announced it would conduct the inquiry, foreclosing any other investigation.
Chernobyl on the day before that committee was to open hearings.
Casey unable to speak after the operation on his brain tumor. And dead a year and a week after Chernobyl.
Call John le Carre
There's nothing routine about a brain operation when the brain being operated on belongs to the Director of the CIA.
While picking on social science and economics is easy what this article missed is that Feynman faces a much more difficult battle with the "hard" sciences. This is because quantum theory cannot sit alongside traditional science as it is at odds with time and distance based science. However rather than focusing on the true key conflict within hard science the author has tried to use Feynman to attack social science. There is a problem with doing this as the dominant paradigm in social science "social constructionism" fits in with quantum theory and strongly contradicts the old positivist approach still operating within parts of hard science.
In what way does social constructivism fit with the axioms of quantum theory? Show us the maths.
This article may help you
http://www.science20.com/alpha_meme/postmodern_physics_description_relat...
It is gibberish.
The Social Sciences has always had 'physics envy' but some universals have been established. For example, Behaviourists have established that the 'best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour' in the long run
of sampling over time. Depth Psychology has established the universal
of psychosexual stages of development [See Erickson, Freud, Fromm, Piaget] and these theorists, while qualitatively different, all posit similar structures that are universally accessible to verification by empirical hypothesis testing. Sensation and Perception in Experimental Psychology
is a discipline that utilizes the tenents of Psychophysics moreso than most might think in contemporary science. Experimental Psychology has a much more broad theoretical underpinning through the Scientific Method and peer-review assessment, and should not be characterized as 'pseudo-science' in all instances. Information Theory, Psychophysics, Cybernetics, et cetera, are hard science disciplines by definition.
Give us a formula for quantifying 'the best predictor' so we can plug the numbers in and test the theory.
The author of the article has at least one glaring blind spot regarding the purported validity of the "social sciences".
When mocking the "truisms" allegedly claimed by the "social sciences",
he apparently is oblivious to the point that,
given his repudiation of "social science" methodology,
the OPPOSITE to those alleged listed "truisms" about the "free market" etc.
would ALSO have to be debunked as equally unproven.
Social sciences, when studying human behavior, properly aim to best DESCRIBE what has happened in the past. Of course predicting on the basis of past behavior what humans will do in the future is not something scientific which can be lab tested.
The study is called epistemology. How do you know what you know when you know it.
There are economic truths -- knowledge that you can acquire with a certain systemic thinking. Other social sciences can come to truths as well
To argue that because the social science don't arrive at knowledge in the same way the hard sciences do they are inferior is silliness. When I want to observe the behavior of objects that have no free will, I will choose the hard sciences. Otherwise, fuck off.
I agree that numbers and the hard science methods dominate the discourse because they're seen as more credible by fools. But that doesn't make them any more valid.
I have never been a fan of the so called Social Sciences, and many of the ecnomics schools. Human nature? Are you telling me that a study of it can reveal laws of nature? No, it can reveal tendencies, but never fundamental laws. Sorry. Universities are loaded with highly paid hangers on and time servers hiding behind social sciences. Lebian studies are my least favorite school of social science. A gang of man haters sitting around hating men. I wonder, If men decided to form a social science where we all sat around and hated women, lesbians and blacks, How would that go over?
I never understood a hatred of lesbians.
Alfred Nobel considered economists as conmen in his time and nothing changed since then. Whatever economical theory is promoted in media or academia, it is always and solely for benefit (or direct profit) of ruling elite.
But reality is even worst. Not only economy, but also psychology, sociology, history, law, biology, psychiatry and medicine, (may be except for microbiology) so called behavioral sciences are all deeply flawed in their foundations and methods. I would even call them pseudo-sciences in comparison to physical sciences. And I would not have problem with that if they did not demand nor obtain superior authority from world elites and their governments to edict their unsound judgments upon world populace.
One may say, for their defense, that they are dealing with difficult, complex systems. I would say, they, as for now, after several hundred years of “trying”, are still UNABLE to deal with complex systems with no perspective in near nor far future for breakthrough of any kind, simply because they have no vested interest in it and never did.
Mainly, it is due to rigidity of their “scientific” establishment class focused on satisfying demands, from their sponsors, for specific financial and politically expedient results. That’s why they hold on to dead, again and again disproved theories as long as their backers are happy. And no matter what dire consequences of their willful ignorance are suffered by population. This is not benign. This situation is dangerous. Authority, of any kind, in hands of ignorant or willfully ignorant is a threat to society.
I am not against science, I strongly support it, but for me science must have high predictability to be called science. In physical sciences the predictability is around 99.9% of success if theory is to be accepted, in behavioral (social) sciences it is typically 10% to 20% while random guess would give them 50% of overall predictability. They are not even moving in right direction.
The worst example of that, even worst then economy, is psychology and psychiatry which focused solely on verbal and/or pharmaceutical manipulation of human being mental state for political purposes, without gaining any valuable scientific inside into underlying physical processes or cure for over 250 years of modern scientific era. The same applies to theory of law, history (obviously orwelian principle) and surprisingly to most of modern medicine.
Medicine especially, undergoing the same corruptive processes as other fields of science. Making up diseases for insurance money. Treating symptoms by dispensing pain killers or highly addictive psychotropic drugs while ignoring causes of disease or inexpensive preventive measures. Seeing army of PhDs sucking up millions $ for secret ” Liz T. fountain of youth project”, and in the process defrauding falling Hollywood star just before her death is disgusting but revealing sign of times.
What’s interesting and concerning is that even in realm of physical sciences disturbing trends of pushing dubious theories and associated multi billion dollar spending, seems to be on rise. It is worth to note, that so called serious “climate science” is not physical/foundational science but a behavioral (model based) science attempting to describe complex physical systems, while more accurate, subject to the same ills and failures as social sciences and therefore should be treated with due caution as far as its prediction capabilities.
What I am calling for is to reduce social authority of scientific establishment to fit reality of modest expectations, regarding results of their scientific endeavors, otherwise we will continue moving on slippery slope back into dark ages while spending billions $ on “science”, unless revolutionary changes to science establishment and politics of science come soon.
Science is the process of proving what's working in spite of the observer's idea, not a process of proving the observer's idea.
I thought the scientific method was making observations, coming up with a hypothesis (idea) and then proving it.
It's not just looking at stuff and saying "that's how it works" and I have no idea why.
Social science is like a Dis-ease investigating itself, but then, it does develop interested observer's games.
Duuuuude, get yourself to a bookerie, get "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and (if u have the brainz for it) get into Karl Popper.
You think OK, but not complete. Science is all about dis-proving the idea de jure (aka "scientific consensus")
This is where the flak-miniscule thang and our very own GW have their anal-cranial inversions on view for all of us to inspect.
Feynman was also all about saying in a published paper, "I thought x would happen, and these things disproved that x was possible." Or a near-paraphrase.
- Ned
Popper kicked Plato's fascistogenic ass, and did Hegel a treat, just sayin' McLuhan was the fork in the road.
Here is an opening paragraph in Wikipedia on the term "science": Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge"[1]) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[2][3][4] In an older and closely related meaning, "science" also refers to a body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied. A practitioner of science is known as a scientist.
The term paradigm comes from the writings of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This book is an excellent resource for understanding how a discpline in a scientific community is created.
Most all disciplines in the "social sciences" are questionable fulfilling the phrase "in the form of testable explanations". Almost all social sciences are descriptive rather than explanative. Economics may be the one social science that comes closest to being explanative since it uses models in an attempt to predict future patterns. However, economic models are often based on debatable assumptions weakening the ability of the models to have a high degree of accuracy. Also, the application of econmic models lacks soundness with economists declaring the real world must function according to its models rather than creating models that deptict the real world.
I was involved in interdisciplinary studies after exiting the academic world of economics. I believe there are a number of conceptulizations that do not receive much attention in the area of General Systems Theory These approaches attempt to make social sciences more "scientific". One I am most familiar with is the work of Alf Kuhn, who also came out of the world of economics, wrote a model called The Logic of Social Systems. The source of Alf's ideas stem from many of Kenneth Bouldings writings.
what he describes is exactly what happened to the study of economics. economics is essentially a behavorial science, monys' effect on the behavior of man. it starts out with the premise that man's mind is selfish and only looks out for the welfare of itself. that works well on the basic level it is used to prove the workability of economic theory but there is very little about the nuances of self interest and psychology as a science is never introduced as a cross reference to economic theory(there should be papers written on the economics of fetishes) even though economics clearly falls within the psychology discipline.
economics as a social science has been overtaken by the quants and math model building to explain economics is the cornerstone of the discipline. it is what gives the field its cred(because nobody knows math so math guys are special and what they say is important). so economics has become mathmatized. this system, ironcally, works well with bankers because money is denominated in numbers but it is also the reason yellen can say people need to kill their rch relatives to get their inheritance as a means to create wealth for themselves, with a straight face.
true economic study in theory terms is best studied as a sort of history based psychology where there is enough behavioral data from past episodes to project what future behavior will be. i only had one professor who agreed with me and he was actually reluctantly allowed in the economics department because he was actaully a history professor and was dismissed by the rest of the department. he was my epiphany that economics is inadequately studied because of the ego of men. this applies to all disciplines including the hard sciences.
the true math & science of handling an economy should resemble the odds-making & security aparatus... of a casino.
Political Science.
Think about it. When the balloon pops this will be the last one canned in a bankrupt state university due to the source of funding. It should be the first.
Whatever the social subject, be it the size of women’s handbags, dating etiquette for tweens, second marriages, Facebook likes, the right holiday gift for the elderly, and of course the economy, there is always some self-appointed expert at the ready with a study or test results to tell you exactly how to think, feel, and act about it. Just watch Good Morning America, you’ll see what I mean.
It’s insane. Who are these people? Where do they come from? Who pays them to do what they do? Who really gives a shit what they say?