Comment on Asad Zaman on ‘Radical paradigm shifts’
Blog-Reference
If you can read this statement on the RWER blog
REAL-WORLD ECONOMICS REVIEW BLOG BLOCKS/DELETES ALL UNDESIRED COMMENTS
then it is NOT true.
However, if you CAN NOT read the statement on the RWER blog then it is true.#1
For further details related to the ongoing Paradigm Shift in economics see suggested links:
For details of the big picture see:
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 This is what one can actually read on the
RWER blog of Jul 22 in case one is a researcher of economic methodology and needs a documented example of how traditional Heterodoxy finally hit the bottom of idiocy/corruption.
Related '
The present non-existence of economics' and '
What’s the use of economists?' and '
Heterodoxy ― an axiomatic failure just like Orthodoxy' and '
Lars Syll, fake scientist' and '
Demarcation works, but it takes longer in economics' and '
Economists ― blinded by political balloons' and '
Real-World Economics: The sanctuary of stupidity and corruption' and '
Asad Zaman marches with the Zeitgeist down a blind alley' and '
Does Asad Zaman fly with POL or SCI Airlines?' and '
Economics: Not a pretty story'.
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#PointOfProof
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REPLY to Jan Milch on Jul 22
You summarize: “With all that in mind I will leave the reader with a quote from Joan Robinson and John Eatwell’s excellent classroom book
An Introduction to Modern Economics in which they clearly realise the problem that the idea of a static equilibrium between savings and investment has caused in the minds of economists since Keynes put it forward in his General Theory. What’s more, they also realise this problem in properly Myrdalian terms:
In the early days of the exposition of Keynes’ General Theory it was usual to argue as follows:
Y = C + I
Y = C + S
Therefore, I = S
But, since net investment and net saving are accounting identities, this was not a legitimate argument; it allowed hostile critics to create confusion. An ex-post accounting identity, which records what happened over, say, the past year, cannot explain causality; rather, it shows what has to be explained. Keynes’ theory did not demonstrate that the rate of saving is equal to the rate of investment, but explained through what mechanism this is brought about.”
The so-called “ex-post accounting identity” is provably false, to begin with.#1 The correct relationship reads
Q≡I−S with Q signifying the monetary profit of the business sector as a whole. This axiomatically correct equation tells everyone:
- Keynes never understood what profit is, which is disqualifying for an economist.#2
- Keynes was too stupid for the elementary mathematics of National Accounting.#3
- Because the conceptual foundations of the General Theory are defective the whole analytical superstructure of Keynesianism is scientifically worthless. All this has NOTHING to do with the distinction ex-ante/ex-post or with equilibrium/disequilibrium.
- After-Keynesians, including the Stockholm School, Post-Keynesians, and other dim lights like G.L.S. Shackle, did not realize Keynes’ foundational blunder in the last 80+ years.#4
Keynes’ I=S, including all variants of IS-LM up to the present, is a harrowing testament to economists’ utter scientific incompetence.#5
Asad Zaman urges a radical
Paradigm Shift. So be it. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism have to be buried at the Flat-Earth Cemetery.
First of all: Asad Zaman, Prof Dr. James Beckman, Dave Marsay, Vladimir A. Masch, Edward K Ross, Frank Salter, Craig, Helen Sakho, John Vertegaal, Jan Milch, Calgacus alias Some Guy, dingo342014, Robert Locke, and all others with a substandard IQ#6 simply get out of economics ― NOW.
#1
Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism (II)
#2
Keynes’s Missing Axioms
#3
How Keynes got macro wrong and Allais got it right
#4
Why Post Keynesianism Is Not Yet a Science
#5
Mr. Keynes, Prof. Krugman, IS-LM, and the End of Economics as We Know It
#6
How the Intelligent Non-Economist Can Refute Every Economist Hands Down
This is what the RWER blog looks like on Jul 23: a black hole of idiocy.
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REPLY to Asad Zaman on Jul 24
Take notice: Economics is a failed science for 200+ years. Economists are storytellers. All microfounded (Walrasian) and macrofounded (Keynesian) models are provably false and that is the greater part of the peer-reviewed literature. All textbooks are false because economists got the foundational concept of profit wrong. To this day, economists do not know how the economy works. Economics is a cargo cult science. The ‘Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel’ is a fraud. Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, Austrians, and Pluralists are complicit in the failure/fake/fraud. Economic policy guidance has had no sound scientific foundations since Adam Smith. Economists are clowns/useful idiots in the political Circus Maximus.
Your whole discussion of methodology is proto-scientific garbage.#1 Science is about true/false and NOTHING else. And the truth is established by logical/empirical proof and NOT by faith, belief, tolerance, pluralism, love of paradox, moralizing, appeal to the masses, appeal to common sense, populism, prophesy of doom, scapegoating, folk psychology/ sociology, historical storytelling, appeal to emotion “I feel therefore I am”, outright blather and disinformation. These are the tools and tricks of political rhetoric since the Sophists.
Science is about what is materially/logically provable, all else is non-science. Non-science is 99 percent of human communication and it consists of vacuous gossip, silly propaganda, and senseless blather.
All of human civilization and material progress has been produced by scientists/engineers. Economic/mental/spiritual misery of the world is NOT and NEVER has been attributable to binary logic, science, rigorous proof, and the genuine scientist’s commitment to scientific ethics.
Your assertion: “Attempting to universalize application of logic to ALL domains of human knowledge has been truly catastrophic …” is, therefore, a smear of the worst sort. What is truly catastrophic is the stupidity/corruption of non- and anti-scientists.
Yes, mainstream economics is false and refuted on all counts. But, at some point, dead-horse-beating becomes itself counter-productive: “The moral of the story is simply this: it takes a new theory, and not just the destructive exposure of assumptions or the collection of new facts, to beat an old theory.” (Blaug)
A Paradigm Shift consists of moving from the set of axioms that constitutes the false paradigm to a new set of axioms.#2, #3 So, stop waffling about “the blood flowing in my veins, the tingling of my skin, and a thousand other bodily sensations” and simply show what you think the new economic axioms are.#4 Or, even better, get out of economics and focus on feeling the farts in your brain.
#1
Does Asad Zaman fly with POL or SCI Airlines?
#2 For details of the big picture see
cross-references Paradigm Shift
#3
True macrofoundations: the reset of economics
#4
Show first your economic axioms or get out of the discussion
This is what the RWER blog looks like on Jul 24.
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REPLY to Asad Zaman on Jul 25
With regard to economics, the most important thing is to keep political and theoretical economics apart. The main differences are: (i) The goal of political economics is to successfully push an agenda, and 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.
The objective of theoretical economics is the TRUE theory: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)
The most important thing is to realize that 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. Orthodox AND heterodox economics is proto-scientific garbage to this day.
Agenda pushers ― right-wing, left-wing, progressive, conservative, liberal, communist, fascist, socialist, Christian/Muslim/Hindu/others, LGBTQ+, etcetera ― are the very antithesis of scientists. Agenda pushers have a disturbed relationship with the truth, more specifically with scientific truth which is well-defined by material/formal consistency and established by rigorous proof.
Political agenda pushers are stupid and corrupt and they identify themselves with a typical set of slogans:#1
- “… there are no universal truths out there.” (Zaman)
- “… there is true-for-me and true-for-you because our subjective frameworks interact with the objective to produce the ‘facts’.” (Zaman)
- “Anything goes!” (Feyerabend)
- “… instead of displaying the truth … we have to think seriously about HOW we can create consensus on new ways of seeing reality. This is where the now forgotten and lost art of rhetoric is required.” (Zaman)
- “We can only create an illusion of certainty.” (Zaman)
- ‘… mathematical reasoning, i.e. quantifying the unquantifiable, results in completely absurd and ridiculous conclusions.’ (Zaman, paraphrase)
- Data are questionable, test results are open to interpretation.
- “BINARY logic is a catastrophe … [It] ignores the role of the subjective ― every empirical statement represents truth-to-me and if this can differ from truth-to-you than the role of logic becomes very limited.” (Zaman)
- “… we need to create converts to a new paradigm.” (Zaman)
The last sentence proves that Asad Zaman thinks that a new paradigm is something like a new belief system. For any belief system or cult, the indicator of its truth value consists of the number of adherents and NOT in the proof of material/formal consistency. Obviously, Asad Zaman has NO idea what a paradigm is. And he has NO idea what methodology is all about.
Aristotle put it in rather simple terms: “When the premises are certain, true, and primary, and the conclusion formally follows from them, this is demonstration, and produces scientific knowledge of a thing.”
The methodological term for the premises of a theory is axioms. Hence, a
Paradigm Shift consists of moving from the set of axioms that constitutes the obsolete paradigm to a superior set of axioms.#2 The change of axioms changes the whole analytical superstructure. The critique of isolated assertions of the superstructure changes not much if anything. Heterodoxy criticizes Orthodoxy for 150+ years yet the methodological madness of constrained optimization and equilibrium is still around. The reason why economics is the worst failure in the history of modern science is that BOTH orthodox and heterodox economists are incompetent scientists.
The very characteristic of political economists is that they avoid clearly stating their axioms and instead apply all rhetorical tricks of the Sophist’s toolbox to keep the discourse in the swamp where “nothing is clear and everything is possible” (Keynes).
Vagueness/inconclusiveness/filibuster keeps the stupid and corrupt agenda pusher in his proto-scientific business because: “Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong.” (Feynman)
This leaves us with the pluralism of false economic theories, i.e. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism. But not all hope is lost: “I have made substantial progress towards developing an alternative paradigm within an Islamic framework.” (Asad Zaman)
Orthodox economics has committed suicide with DSGE and Heterodoxy is currently setting a new record of idiocy.
#1
Failed economics: The losers’ long list of lame excuses
#2 For the correct set of axioms see
Wikimedia
This is what the RWER blog looks like on Jul 25.
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REPLY to Asad Zaman on Jul 26
Economics started as Political Economy. Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx had any grasp of science but in accordance with the Zeitgeist, they had to dress their agenda-pushing up as science. Neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx nor their respective followers figured out how the economy works. What Walrasians, Keynesians, Marxians, and Austrians have put forward as theories do not satisfy the scientific criteria of material and formal consistency.
For 200+ years, economists have made policy proposals that have no sound scientific foundations. They are too stupid for the elementary mathematics of National Accounting but claim to change society for the better or even to save humanity. The fact is that economists have always been a hazard to their fellow citizens.#1
Economics is a failed science and what is urgently needed is a Paradigm Shift. Being political agenda pushers, heterodox economists do not understand what a Paradigm Shift is and think that it is, in essence, the replacement of one political clique by another.
Accordingly, Asad Zaman makes it clear that the whole point of a Paradigm Shift is not developing the true theory but developing an effective marketing strategy: “Before investing time to understand the world-according-to-Salter or according-to-Shiozawa, I would want the answer to two questions: [1] is this easy to communicate to others and to persuade others? If NOT, then there is no point in investing time in it, because we will not be able to build consensus on it. Judging by Salter’s own statements, he has not been able to find many takers, which means that he does not have a good strategy for persuasion. If the creator of the truth cannot market it, it does not seem that I would be able to market it better, and if there is Salter-truth that is valuable, but we cannot create consensus for it, then it would be useless as an instrument to create social change.”
Clearly, Asad Zaman is not interested in the truth value of a theory but in its propaganda value. Clearly, the soapbox economist Asad Zaman as the methodological loudspeaker of Heterodoxy stands firmly in the tradition of the founding fathers whose business was political agenda pushing.
Just like Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy has ZERO scientific value. Asad Zaman’s claim to bring about a Paradigm Shift is laughable. Heterodox economists do not know how the economy works.#2 This Radical-Paradigm-Shifts-thread proves beyond all doubt that heterodox economists are as stupid and corrupt as orthodox economists.
Needless to emphasize that it is perfectly legitimate to push an agenda. The economists’ fraud consists NOT of spreading propaganda but of telling the general public that they are doing science. To throw both orthodox and heterodox economists out of science is not a restriction of free speech but the overdue implementation of well-defined scientific standards.
The mission of economics as a science is to produce the true theory ― not more, not less. What has been co-produced hitherto by Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy is nothing but proto-scientific garbage.
#1
Mass unemployment: The joint failure of orthodox and heterodox economics
#2 For details of the big picture see
cross-references Heterodoxy
This is what the RWER blog looks like on Jul 26.
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REPLY to Asad Zaman on Jul 27
There are revolutions in the political realm and there are Paradigm Shifts in the scientific realm. Kuhn associated the two concepts in his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.#1
The analogy is a good one because it thrills the general reader. Needless to emphasize that the title
The Structure of Paradigm Shifts would have turned off everybody except three specialists in the methodology field.
While the association revolution/Paradigm-Shift is good from the marketing standpoint it is bad from the methodological standpoint. Science and politics are entirely different realms and they run on incompatible principles. Both realms have to be kept strictly apart because politics always and everywhere corrupts science. This happened in economics.
Theoretical economics (= science) had been captured from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years. Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, and Austrianism is nothing but thinly disguised propaganda.
You retain the
modus operandi of Political Economy. What you are proposing is to gear up the propaganda and organize the necessary political revolution. I have NO qualms with this.
In order to make a revolution, though, nobody needs to study economics first, neither is a deeper knowledge of scientific methodology required, and least of all a critique of Positivism. All that is needed is a Manifesto (Craig has already produced the raw version), revolutionary furor, and a sufficient number of guillotines. What is NOT needed is the zillionst critique of
homo oeconomicus.
What is not quite logical is that you want a revolution but work yourself up with a Paradigm Shift. This is curious because everyone understands that the last thing the masses need to get into revolutionary action is a revelation about the catastrophe of binary logic.
The ultimate cause of the indisputable scientific failure of orthodox AND heterodox economics is that it has been captured from the very beginning by political agenda pushers. These moronic trolls kept economics for 200+ years in the proto-scientific swamp.
In order to make progress in economics, politics, and science have to be
strictly separated. So, the agenda pushers = fake scientists get out of economics and focus on the Revolution, and the genuine scientists get out of the useful-idiot-business and focus on the Paradigm Shift.
You try to be ironic: “Well Egmont Kakarot-Handtke — as far as I understand it, you have ALREADY produced a true theory, succeeding where everyone else, major thinkers as well as minor, has failed. So the job of finding the truth is done. Well done!! now we can all go home.”
Not quite. You have to decide here and now between Revolution or Paradigm Shift. If you chose the latter, stop filibustering about methodology and present what you think are the true axioms of the new economic Paradigm. Communicatively, this can easily be done on a quarter of a page.#2
#1See also the chapter How Kuhn Unwittingly Saved Social Science From A Radical Future, Fuller, S. (2000). Thomas Kuhn. University of Chicago Press, pp. 227 ff.
#2 For the benchmark see New Foundations of Economics on
Wikimedia
This is what the RWER blog looks like on Jul 27
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For a
SUMMARY of ‘Radical paradigm shifts’ on Jul 30 see
Real-World Economics: The sanctuary of stupidity and corruption
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REPLY to John Vertegaal, Calgacus, Craig on Jul 31
What neither orthodox nor heterodox economists have figured out since Keynes is that I=S is NEITHER an accounting identity#1 nor an equilibrium condition but proto-scientific garbage.#2
As a consequence, not only Keynesianism and Post-Keynesianism but also Walrasianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, and MMT have always been outside of science.
The correct equation reads
Q≡I−S. Do NOT try to understand it because it will explode your fruit-fly brains.#3
#1
Wikipedia and the promotion of economists’ idiotism (II)
#2 For details of the big picture see
cross-references Refutation of I=S and
cross-references Accounting and
cross-references MMT
#3
How Keynes got macro wrong and Allais got it right
This is what the RWER blog looks like on Aug 1
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Wikimedia
AXEC144
