Re: Newton Lives !

[David Lloyd-Jones <dlj@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

James R. Olson, jr. wrote:
>
> Newtonian physics remains only as a pragmatic method of dealing with the
> most common special case, where the frames of reference are close enough to
> be considered identical, and as an exercise for students in order to build
> their problem solving ability.

So far, so good.

> The problem of economics today is to find that totally different way of
> looking at things that will resolve the problems that are leading us into
> social/economic collapse.  the difficulty is that there are political
> forces at work which oppose that new way of looking, since the old way,
> despite its obvious disadvantages, gives them a moral justification for
> their rapacity.

This makes about as much sense as saying that Newtonian gravity had to
be replaced because people kept falling off their horses.  Falling down
coal mines.  Dropping cricket balls on their heads.

> I had been thinking about how differences between theory and observation
> generally produce an advantage for those who can detect the gap, and
> wondering if there were any examples of this.  George Soros' thesis is that
> he is one of those people, and his fortune is proof that he has at least
> some effective grasp of that gap.  Perhaps his ideas are a starting point
> for a new perspective.

Yeah, sure.  Einstein travelled by train, never owned a horse, so I
guess this must be it.

> Side note:  the major advantage that I see physics having over economics is
> that the character and relationship of the important quantities have been
> established, and conversions that produce new insight are possible.  I've
> seen various uses of quantities here that make it obvious that that is not
> yet true in economics, and I would consider that to be the first project.

If that were true, why would it be a side note?  Surely you'd want to
book your ticket to Stockholm on the basis of this important discovery
alone.

> Of course, such a project cannot be completed all at once, physics has the
> advantage of dealing with simple consistent behaviours, and even so it took
> hundreds of years to establish the various quantities.

And then along came Planck and Heisenberg, Goedel and Shroedinger, to
say they couldn't be established, after all.  So maybe what we have here
is a distinction without a difference, a thought entirely devoid of
content or contact with reality.

I think it's time for people to get used to the fact that economics
works pretty well.  We can predict ups and downs in business a hell of a
lot more accurately than we can predict the folding of proteins, the
splatter of quarks, or the timing of supernovas.  We know the world's
economic product within an order of magnitude; I don't think we know the
mass of black holes within an order of magnitude of orders of
magnitude.  For interdisciplinary lagniappe, economists can tell you how
nuclear power works vastly better than engineers can tell you what it
costs.

Perhaps this last gives us a clue why hard scientists, i.e. people in
the easy sciences, are so often shooting off their lip about how
economics needs to be brought up to their standards.  Economics has
measures of success and failure, and does reasonably well by their
lights. The "hard" sciences, by contrast, make up their own criteria for
success as they go along, and still fail to get very much usefully
correct.


-dlj.