Comment on Sabine Hossenfelder on ‘Follow the Science? Nonsense, I say.’
Sabine Hossenfelder gets directly to the heart of the matter: “Today I want to tell you why I had to stop reading news about climate science. Because it pisses me off. Every. Single. Time. There’s all these left-wing do-gooders who think their readers are too fucking dumb to draw their own conclusions so it’s not enough to tell me what’s the correlation between hurricane intensity and air moisture, no, they also have to tell me that, therefore, I should donate to save the polar bears.”
Obviously, science has been captured by political agenda pushers. Scientists have quietly left the realm of science and moved over to the political Circus Maximus with all its funny clowns and useful idiots and breathtaking stunts. The self-conception of science has fundamentally changed in the process.
“When I was your age, we learned science does not say anything about what we should do. What we should do is a matter of opinion, science is a matter of fact. Science tells us what situation we are in and what consequences our actions are likely to have, but it does not tell us what to do.”
Indeed, that was exactly what J. S. Mill told his fellow economists: “A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision.”
The decision has to be made by the Legitimate Sovereign. It is an entirely different matter to clarify who the Legitimate Sovereign in a given situation is but that much is certain: genuine scientists will refuse to get involved in the issue. The genuine scientist sticks to the principle of the separation of science and politics.
In economics, the principle of the separation of science and politics has been violated from the first day onward. The founding fathers called their subject matter Political Economy. What comes under the label of economics these days is in fact two economixes: political economics and theoretical economics. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, the goal of theoretical economics is to successfully explain how the actual economy works. (ii) In political economics anything goes; in theoretical economics, the scientific standards of material and formal consistency are observed.
Theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. Economics is a failed science.
Most people have not noticed it, but the official capitulation/sellout of science happened on Sep 3, 2020.#1
So, “Follow the Science is a complete rubbish idea, …” for various reasons. The worst of all is, that the prestige of science has been abused and ruined by the most unscientific assholes.
“You’d think it’s bad enough that politicians conflate scientific fact with opinion, but the media actually make it worse. They make it worse by giving their audience the impression that it matters what someone whose job it is to execute the will of the electorate believes about scientific facts. But I couldn’t care less if Donald Trump ‘believes’ in climate change. Look, this is a man who can’t tell herd immunity from herd mentality, he probably thinks winter’s the same as an ice age. It’s not his job to offer opinions about science he clearly doesn’t understand, so why do you keep asking him. His job is to say if the situation is this, we will do that. At least in principle, that’s what he should be doing. Then you look up what science says which situation we are in and act accordingly.”
There is no better exemplification of the indispensable separation of science and politics. In economics, in particular, there is no point at all to appeal to science because there has never been an economic science. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT, and Pluralism are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, and materially/ formally inconsistent.#2-#4
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
Related 'Economics: The greatest scientific fraud in modern times' and 'Economics, MMT, and the corruption of science' and 'Economics ― the science that never was' and 'Economics, philosophy, and the crapification of science' and 'Economists: The Trumps of science' and 'Your economics is refuted on all counts: here is the real thing' and 'How to make economics a science' and 'A rough business plan for science'.
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Wikimedia AXEC136g
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REPLY to Matt Franko on Sep 26
I stated above “Most people have not noticed it, but the official capitulation/sellout of science happened on Sep 3, 2020.”
It turns out that there is at least one person who realized the significance of the event: John Derbyshire “They Might As Well Put Bones Through Their Noses”— the Corruption of Scientific America.
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NOTE to Barkley Rosser on Sep 26, switch to EconoSpeak
On several occasions, I told you that economics is NOT a science and economists are NOT scientists but stupid and corrupt agenda pushers. With your replies, you regularly proved my point.
Things have now advanced into a new dimension. In a recent post, I stated “Most people have not noticed it, but the official capitulation/sellout of science happened on Sep 3, 2020.”
As it turned out, there was at least one person who realized the significance of the event: John Derbyshire “They Might As Well Put Bones Through Their Noses”— the Corruption of Scientific America.
Summarizing our exchanges about economics, it is fair to say that you played an active role in this development.
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REPLY to Matt Franko on Sep 27
You said “Egmont I think you are mis interpreting them ... you keep saying “they are not scientists” or “fake scientists” ... I don’t think they ever claimed to be scientists...”
What? Economists never claimed to be scientists?
They claimed it from Adam Smith/Karl Marx (Marxism = “scientific socialism”) onward and repeat the mantra every year, i.e. with the “Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”.#1
SCIENCES! can't you read?
Economists NEVER lived up to the methodological and ethical standards of science. Economists, including MMTers, do not even live up to the standards of elementary algebra.#2, #3
The fact of the matter is that economists claim to be scientists but are merely political agenda pushers.
However, there always was the role model of the genuine sciences with high standards and achievements that define every little piece of progress humanity has made over the last 200+ years.
Now, the significance of Sep 3, 2020, is that the genuine sciences have abandoned themselves by officially ending the separation of science and politics and by submitting themselves to political mob rule and the practices of the entertainment industry,#4 thus carrying the ongoing corruption of science one step further.
#3 See Ch. 13, The indelible scientific disgrace of economics, in Sovereign Economics
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REPLY to Barkley Rosser on Oct 3
You ask “So, do you want to give a quick explanation of what supposedly happened on Sept. 3, 2020, that was so earth shatteringly important about economics?”
The significance of Sep 3, 2020, is that the genuine sciences have abandoned themselves by officially ending the separation of science and politics and by submitting themselves to political mob rule and the practices of the entertainment industry. See Politics corrupts science, always and everywhere.
This, though, is what economists did long ago. Since the founding fathers, economists claim to be scientists but have never been anything else than political agenda pushers.
In the recent presidential debate, Mr. Biden called Mr. Trump a liar and clown. As above, so below. What holds for the occupant of the top institution holds mutatis mutandis for the occupants of large parts of the institutional body, academic economics in particular. See my assessment of Nov 2016 Economists: The Trumps of science.
