Comment on It's barely a science.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 11 hours agoI think “Faith based technology” is a fine working definition of magic for most practical uses. Many people say if something requires faith to work, it’s magic and not science. But I believe we can use science on faith the same as we can use science on anything else.
Capitalist economics only work if society has faith in the money issuing authority (e.g. the US treasury). Money is a faith based technology and therefore magic. So I think economics should be a field of magical theory. Magicians seem more qualified to answer economic questions than mathematicians. When we let mathematicians do economics, they start making up nonsense like perfectly free markets, because they’re not used to human fallibility. Magicians are perfectly aware of human fallibility, and that’s why we should be in charge of the science of economics. We know capitalism is a scam, just like horoscopes or three card monte.
thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net 10 hours ago
Ah, I’m glad you clarified. I think there are some magics that don’t have a specific requirement for belief, e.g. casting a spell on a non-believing target, or, depending on how broadly you define magic, gravity (in that, while we have robust theories about how gravity works, we still don’t have a broadly accepted theory about why gravity does what it does). But I do think it’s an interesting type of magic and it can absolutely be subjected to scientific testing. There are a lot of things in that category that aren’t traditionally called magic, like fiat currency, placebos, nation-states (for that matter, laws), human racial categorizations. The impact of belief on a fiat currency (or, belief in the value of that currency) is, I think, pretty well studied though I’m not enough of an economist to know what, if any, theoretical model predicts the fluctuation (or collapse) of a currency’s value.
I’m curious to know what your take is on behavioral economics. It essentially tries to incorporate human fallibility into classical economics. Thaler’s concept of “nudging” is the kind of sleight-of-hand trick that a magician might use to create the illusion of choice.
Also, I’m not a mathematician but they can’t be uniquely responsible for ignoring human fallibility with money. That’s a human problem and capitalists profit by exploiting that tendency, which is why econ (specifically, investments in economic research) tends to focus on research that enables capitalism. The same thing happens in chemistry, pharmaceuticals, anthropology, history, art. Any area of human endeavor can be distorted for personal gain. It just happens that the science of capital, particularly the jargon of economics, is useful for legitimizing and entrenching capitalistic nonsense. Mathematicians are (broadly speaking) more interested in scientific endeavor, at least as much as researchers in any other field.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 8 hours ago
Oh, yeah, I’m just pointing out that mathematicians are not well known for their people skills. They are not very accustomed to experimental subjects that behave messily and unpredictably, because numbers act the same every time. Biologists and psychologists and historians, on the other hand, are used to having messy unpredictable subjects.