I'm sorry but you can't say that about a field that gave a “Nobel” prize to Fama, shared with Shiller for his work which falsified Fama's.
And your following “effect of QE” example is actually a great example of the problem: pretty much none of the people who made wrong prediction retracted themselves, most of them still believe they were right but the reality just happened to turn otherwise.
> I'm sorry but you can't say that about a field that gave a “Nobel” prize to Fama, shared with Shiller for his work which falsified Fama's.
Or it shows things are complicated.
I once read the remark from a physicist (Feynman?): My job would be much harder if particles had free will.
Which is exactly what economics is trying to model: there are aggregate trends that tend to be followed (on average) by larger number of people, but there are plenty of folks off in the tails of the curve doing strange things (sometimes out of spite: see Gamestop and /r/wallstreetbets).
I participate in personal finance sub-Reddits, and during March 2020 when the world was going sideways, and markets were going crazy (e.g., oil prices went negative) there were a lot of people panicing about their retirement savings. There was a lot of explaining to people that they should not liquidate their investments, but just to ride it out, and you'll be fine over the long run:
A lot of people also learned that they weren't as comfortable with the risk of being in 100% equities as they thought.
Another regular question in those forums "I got an inheritance and want to invest, but markets are at an all-time high." Well, the 'mathematically correct' answer would be to do a lump sum and put it in all at once:
> And your following “effect of QE” example is actually a great example of the problem: pretty much none of the people who made wrong prediction retracted themselves, most of them still believe they were right but the reality just happened to turn otherwise.
Yes. See also Flat Earthers. But their existence does not invalidate the fields geology or astronomy.
This is true in all sorts of areas in life. I live in Ontario, Canada and the provincial government made a controversial splash† recently about ripping out bikes lanes to put in more lanes to improve traffic flow, never mind the decades of data on the topic:
> Yes. See also Flat Earthers. But their existence does not invalidate the fields geology or astronomy.
If flat earthers could become geology university professors then the field would be invalidated instantly, that's exactly my point!
Again the problem isn't that some people say wrong stuff, it's that you can spend your entire career saying fashionable bullshit that gets disproved over and over and face zero consequence in terms of academic reputation. This isn't what science is about, this field is still behaving with the ethos of political philosophy it is born from, not like a science even a social one (History is a good example of how you can do science on societies, and yes this is very different from physics in terms of what kind of knowledge it brings us, but so is biology).
> If flat earthers could become geology university professors then the field would be invalidated instantly, that's exactly my point!
Well then, better invalidate geology:
> Kurt Patrick Wise (born August 1, 1959) is an American geologist, paleontologist,[1] and young Earth creationist who serves as the director of the Creation Research Center at Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, Georgia. He writes in support of creationism and contributed to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.
> Again the problem isn't that some people say wrong stuff, it's that you can spend your entire career saying fashionable bullshit that gets disproved over and over and face zero consequence in terms of academic reputation.
When there are enough folks who believe a certain thing there can be a 'critical mass' for it to become self-sustaining so that there may be consequences from outside the bubble, but the folks in question simply ignore the external groups and live in their own echo chamber. The funding for this can continue because—in the case of economics which touches on (e.g.) tax policy—when there are billions of dollars floating around, and you can fund bullshit so that you get to make more billions and keep more of your billions, there will also be "support" for ideas:
Why do we still hear about climate change not being real? Or that it's real, but not caused by humans? Is climatology a bullshit field? What consequences can there be when oil tycoons throw money at people to keep repeating the same message over and over? How many oil-funded think tanks are there that publish on climate change? Or billionaire-funded think tanks that publish on tax policy?
One reason why you continue to hear about invalid ideas is because to some people truth is irrelevant, reality is irrelevant. The only thing relevant to them is "what can I get?" and they're willing to continue to throw money at getting what they want, and they don't care what is said as long as it gets results:
Here we are in late-2024-going-into-2025 and we're still "debating" the benefits of polio vaccines.
You seem to think that the [Tt]ruth will overcome the [Ll]ies. Maybe. Eventually. But that is the optimistic take—and which I tend to lean towards as well—but I also recognize human psychology and human history, and know that humans can (and do) choose another path. There are plenty of things that true that people choose not to believe in or trust, even with the evidence staring them in the face.
In fact, showing people evidence often prevents people from changing their minds and they makes them dig into their (invalid) beliefs more:
You keep confusing fringes views by weirdos in various field (like your Kurt guy who “serves as the director of the Creation Research Center”) that the broad field regards with a mix of contempt and pity, and only exist because it benefits from backing from outside the science world (mostly for religious reasons), and economists where the same kind of people get the biggest number of citations in paper and are granted the most prestigious award (and where the said award is a counterfeit one, “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel” pretending to be a “Nobel prize”).
If you don't see the difference (and can't articulate your arguments without annoying walls of text), it's time to end this discussion.
I'm sorry but you can't say that about a field that gave a “Nobel” prize to Fama, shared with Shiller for his work which falsified Fama's.
And your following “effect of QE” example is actually a great example of the problem: pretty much none of the people who made wrong prediction retracted themselves, most of them still believe they were right but the reality just happened to turn otherwise.