borrofburi
New Member
I found it interesting...
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Yeah sorry I was trying to form the thought and the question at the same time But you've managed to phrase it much better than I did.borrofburi said:I do not believe I understand the question... Are you saying if austrian economists made fantastic predictions that came true, would I believe them? Isn't that why I believe science?
Aught3 said:Yeah sorry I was trying to form the thought and the question at the same time But you've managed to phrase it much better than I did.borrofburi said:I do not believe I understand the question... Are you saying if austrian economists made fantastic predictions that came true, would I believe them? Isn't that why I believe science?
So basically, if Austrian economists made fantastic predictions is that positive evidence for their theory, or do they have to justify it another way?
Accurate predictions is partly why we accept scientific theories but Austrian economics is explicitly non-scientific and takes a rationalist standpoint, at least, that is my understanding.
From what I've been reading it's even worse than that. Austrian economists seem to think that their theories and even propositions can't be falsified with reference to external facts or experience. If it holds for falsification it seems to me that it should hold for verification. I understand borr's position on it though.obsidianavenger said:i've been reading von mises recently; my understanding is that the austrians start from a set of assumptions and state: if these conditions hold then our theory follows. there is an empirical component, namely the question of whether or not things in the world actually conform to the conditions they've laid out. if the world behaves as the theory predicts it should, that becomes more likely....
To be fair, someone could very easily juxtapose these same people and make Schiff look like an idiot when he was sure each year would be a giant bust while the economy boomed each year.obsidianavenger said:its actually quite shocking to see the two juxtaposed like that. i always thought austrian economics made more sense in theory... apparantly they make better predictions too
i do wonder how cherry picked those examples are though. i also wonder how free ben bernanke would have felt to say "we're heading for a recession" as such a statement from him probably would have caused a recession by making people nervous...
Except so far as I remember, schiff always said "it's coming", not "this year there will be a bust"; meanwhile the keynesians were making fun of him essentially claiming there was no bust at all coming.Ozymandyus said:To be fair, someone could very easily juxtapose these same people and make Schiff look like an idiot when he was sure each year would be a giant bust while the economy boomed each year.
borrofburi said:Except so far as I remember, schiff always said "it's coming", not "this year there will be a bust"; meanwhile the keynesians were making fun of him essentially claiming there was no bust at all coming.
Aught3 said:From what I've been reading it's even worse than that. Austrian economists seem to think that their theories and even propositions can't be falsified with reference to external facts or experience. If it holds for falsification it seems to me that it should hold for verification. I understand borr's position on it though.obsidianavenger said:i've been reading von mises recently; my understanding is that the austrians start from a set of assumptions and state: if these conditions hold then our theory follows. there is an empirical component, namely the question of whether or not things in the world actually conform to the conditions they've laid out. if the world behaves as the theory predicts it should, that becomes more likely....
2006? You mean right before it? Schiff was ahead of Krugman (and being laughed at by him) by quite a bit...richi1173 said:I don't think you have read Paul Krugman or Nouriel Roubini. Peter Schiff is just the most vocal and abnoxious one of the pessimistic bunch.
borrofburi said:2006? You mean right before it? Schiff was ahead of Krugman (and being laughed at by him) by quite a bit...
meanwhile the keynesians were making fun of him essentially claiming there was no bust at all coming.
Even if you could set up such an experiment it would probably be completely unethical given how many lives you would affect. However, there is a huge amount of economic data available and although it might not be able to call itself a science, economics surely has the ability to proceed in a scientific manner.obsidianavenger said:the basic idea seems to be that economics cannot proceed like other sciences because you can't set up controlled experiments or anything even remotely like them. which is true.
Well I don't think more regulation would have helped. From what I understand simply enforcing the current regulation would have prevent the bundling of mortgages into worthless yet highly rated derivatives. I don't know what the argument is for a low interest rate being a cause but it wouldn't surprise me given that buyers were accepting ridiculous amounts of money from the banks knowing full-well they could not pay it back.obsidianavenger said:everyone used the financial crisis to decry that part of the economy that they don't like. liberals said that this wouldn't have happened if we had more regulation of the banks, conservatives blamed the fed for manipulating interest rates to such a low level and creating a bubble. to me at least, both arguments seem pretty plausible, and theres little evidence to prefer one over the other.
Aught3 said:Even if you could set up such an experiment it would probably be completely unethical given how many lives you would affect. However, there is a huge amount of economic data available and although it might not be able to call itself a science, economics surely has the ability to proceed in a scientific manner.
Are you sure about that? The Austrian system seems to avoid scientific methodologies and take a more philosophical approach. A priori science is a contradiction in terms.obsidianavenger said:the aprioristic work of the austrians was meant to bring some level of scientific rigor to the mess.