Occasional X: AI — boosting scientific competence in economics (XXI) / Axiomatization

“Oh, look, Grok thinks you are full of shit. I can try Claude if you want another opinion?” (RFB) No, I don't want another opinion. With the Grok piece, we are methodologically about 3000 years back in time. Grok doesn't know the difference between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (episteme). With brute computer power, Artificial Intelligence has become the biggest Sophist of all time. In my view, there is no other way to end the hype but to run American and Chinese AI against each other and check who produces only opinion and who can do science. I have a pretty good idea of who will lose and who will win. That Austrians are pro-Grok is an almost sure indicator that it will lose. Austrians are genetically on the wrong side. To recall, it was the ancient Greeks who first introduced the distinction between doxa and episteme, i.e., opinion and knowledge. And then they drew the line of demarcation between non-science and science. The term ‘conventionalist stratagem’ has been introduced into methodology by Popper. Boiled down to essentials, it amounts to the application of all possible communicative means in order to prevent a clear-cut true/false outcome. As a matter of fact, the stratagem issue goes back to the origin of science. Plato had been confronted by the Sophists, whose selling proposition was that they could win the client’s case no matter whether they were de facto right or wrong. “Plato’s main concern with the Sophists is that their rhetoric does not provide an adequate view of justice Doxa – public opinion: Sophistic manipulation of doxa is aimed at persuasion only, Episteme – true knowledge: Plato’s goal beyond persuasion is to discover epistemic truth.” I will wait for the great showdown between the cheap Grok hype and a genuine AI. Current economics is the ideal case for establishing whether AI can do only big-style Sophistry and whether it is failed/fake science (cargo cult science in Feynman's term). In the meantime, some obvious faults of Grok: G: “This is a promotional claim from Egmont Kakarot-Handtke’s AXEC …” A: No, this is the clear answer to a clear request: “Define the 'economic system'. I'll wait...” (Yope) Sophistry, i.e., framing, starts with the first sentence. G: “… it does not constitute “systemic economic laws” in the sense of robust, predictive, behavior-independent regularities … nor does it fully replace von Mises’s Action Axiom.” A: Yes, it does; the Paradigm Shift does exactly this. G: “The “First Economic Law” consolidates the axioms/ratios into something like …. (under market-clearing conditions).” A: Provably false, ρX is generally NOT market clearing. Grok overlooked the paper Primary and secondary markets https://t.co/whzBvrTfRr G: “The model is elementary by design and therefore limited.” A: Sheer idiocy. Axioms are the most abstract and shortest formulation of a discipline. Limitation is the very characteristic quality. Grok does not understand the starting problem: “What are the propositions which may reasonably be received without proof? That there must be some such propositions all are agreed, since there cannot be an infinite series of proof, a chain suspended from nothing. But to determine what these propositions are, is the opus magnum of the more recondite mental philosophy.” (J. S. Mill) To call axioms accounting identities is one of the dumbest phrases in economics. G: “'Behavior-free' is largely illusory.” Sheer idiocy. The axioms are systemic, i.e., behavior-free. That does not mean that the AXEC approach is behavior-free. Grok obviously overlooked the Propensity Function. The Propensity Function as general formalization of Economic Man/Woman https://t.co/aiUTmdmA6l G: “The framework has not displaced mainstream macro, Austrian economics, or other approaches in the literature; it remains a niche blog/SSRN project with strong claims and limited engagement with formal testing or competing explanations.” What does this prove? That the academic representatives of legacy economics are intellectually incapable of getting out of their provably false Paradigm. They violate scientific standards since the Founding Fathers: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (Morgenstern, 1941) Grok only parrots long-refuted excuses. For details, see Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses https://t.co/0wJu2eGRjN Grok is a new iteration of Sophistry. It stands no chance against genuine scientific reasoning. Grok will go down the scientific drain, together with Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism. Let the AI games begin with economics as the all-decisive test case.

— AXEC (@EgmontHandtke) October 27, 2026