[PEN-L:30109] RE: Re: McCloskey & Post-Autism

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:30107] Re: McCloskey & Post-Autism

(sorry, but I sent this out before I finished. I'll answer the second part of Doyle's message later.)

Doyle write:>The term "Post Autistim" economics or "Autistic Economics" is an anti-disabled phrase.<

Though I say below that "autistic economics" is "bad," it's a different sense of "bad" than the kind of "bad" that applies to psychological (i.e., neuro-biological) autism. The latter type of "bad" is _bad for the individual with autism_. Someone with autism -- especially hard-core autism -- cannot survive without constant attention from parents and/or experts.

On the other hand, autistic economics is a waste of resources on the playing of mathematical games. (They don't even develop new mathematical principles.) However, the real problem here is not autistic economics _per se_ but the fact that this brand of economics dominates the profession as a whole.

The phrase "post autistic economics" is not "anti-disabled." Rather, it is the application of a general term (autism, being cut off from the reality perceived by society at large) to two separate phenomena, i.e., a neuro-biological disorder (psychological autism) and a socio-institutional phenomenon (the domination of the Bourbakist school of economics in the minds and hierarchy of economists).

I wrote: >>The piece by McCloskey reminded me of a basic point: "autistic
economics" is not identical to "bad economics," so that one can embrace
bad economics without autism. (However, I'd say that _all_ autistic
economics is bad.)

>>McCloskey opposes "autistic economics" of Debreu, Roemer, _et al_ by
embracing the empirically-oriented Chicago-style economics of Stigler
_et al_. She's right that the latter isn't autistic, but it's really bad
stuff, ideological, dishonest, etc.

>>Perhaps we should invent the category "sociopathic economics" to refer
to the empirically-oriented version of Chicago economics. After all, the
DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible of psychologists, has more disorders than
simply those on the autistic spectrum. <<

Jim Devine