I know virtually nothing about economics but I really enjoyed hearing this perspective, and in fact I resonate a lot with what he said about nudge economics, and the economists and scholars who believe they know better about the individual than the individual himself. It’s similar to how I feel about psychologists who forget the limitations of the research and assume they know better than the patient. The CBT model for example, while clinically useful for some, is not “the truth” of human nature, and many therapists seem to forget that! I love that he straight up calls them stories, refreshing.
Game theory is a valid field of mathematics and is used successfully to model many things. It's uses in economics are not successful primarily because economics is not a science in any classical sense and lacks any valid theoretical underpinning. Just listen to the guy talk about how theories in economics change over time due to politics. Actual science doesn't do that. No physicist would say such crazy shit. No chemist would say that the theoretical underpinnings of how organic molecules can be formed changes based on the how the political winds are blowing. It is long past time for all of these practitioners of the "soft sciences" be thrown out of academia and these fields be reestablished with rigorous thinkers and researchers not tainted by these people and their bullshit.
There is a great book I think its "Nonesense on Stilts" by Massimo Pigliuci (has Phds in Biology and Philosophy of Science) where he explains the soft/hard science divide is kinda nonsense. That "soft science" can be just as good as hard science. Too lazy to spell it all out but you might find a video of him explaining the basics. One issue is maturity. Physic and biology use to be nonsense until they started to mature (look at pre Darwin crap early biologist believe for example, or Aristotle just guessing stuff like heaver objects fall faster (they don't). A "soft" example: Psychology use to be heavily based on Sigmund Freud and in pop culture Freud sticks around but even in my recent college textbook on Psychology Freud barley gets a page and it just to point out that he was a major figure but nowadays we know he had little to any insight that was grounded in empiricism. In addition just to mention Behavior economics and related fields they do actual experiments now, that can be reproduce unlike in the past where economics was often just people thinking about things and not doing actual tests. Tl:DR: Listen to some other folks (experts) on this question. I am skeptical of this guy quite a bit.
@@Kefka. LOL. Uh no. Psychology is still total crap. Is it less total crap than Freud and Jung? But that is saying nothing. They are still at the prescribe powerful drugs based on no clinical diagnosis and hope stage. I have a family member who has been through that stuff his entire adult life. He was on lithium at first, I was curious and paid out of pocket for every possible lithium test for both of us when he was off lithium. The result, no measurable difference in levels (some tests showed him higher and me lower and some showed the opposite). Then SSRI's came out and he's been on effectively all of them. The result has been short term results consistent with the placebo effect. Now he has the well known side effects of decades of use of those drugs to go along with his emotional issues. As to Pigliuci, do not make me laugh. He got laughed out of the real sciences with that crap. You can use Google so don't try and claim there haven't been scathing debunkings of his ignorant twaddle. One issue I will address is his ridiculous claim that biology is more mature than sociology for instance so it is unreasonable to expect sociology to have a foundational theory like the ToE is for biology. Sociology is as old as biology in a formal sense. People were studying both the people and the plants and animals of the world as it was explored by the Europeans. To claim it wasn't is just one example of the total crap Pigliuci peddled. The problem with Sociology, and the other soft sciences, isn't that they're newer or less mature. It's that they're infested with "experts" who don't allow quality work to be done. That's why spin off fields like econometrics have to be founded.
@@KenS1267 I've always thought that the problem of most soft sciences is that they either attempt understanding human brains (which are notoriously complex) or try to understand systems of interacting brains, all without understanding how brains work from the smallest elements up to the whole. But I don't believe such a lopsided approach to research has lead to absolutely no gainful insights in soft fields, say psychology. Or do you suggest dropping all soft fields until neuroscience has a good grasp of the brain?
As long as the models ignore cultural differences within and between countries they will be severely limited. "Bounded rationality" sounds like a wonderful way of saying "all models are wrong, but some are more useful than others"
Wrong is the wrong word! Abstractions are not complete pictures. Nobody claims that! No science gives the complete picture! But there is nothing else than science that we can use to describe the world and predict it. What we know from macro history and economics is that environment is the best predictor of success. For example Sub Saharan Africa can't sustain a big population. Just look where the biggest civilizations were in Africa. Egypt and Carthage were in places with a lot of fresh water and fertile land. Culture is a poor predictor of success. We have many different cultures in the world that were and are successful. Environment is very clear. No water, no fertile land, not enough food => no success!
What you should have asked is "is it a fair criticism to say that game theory tells as much about the real world as current state if economics do"? Because that would also be true.
This is what I hate about this segment. It gets totally misunderstood. Game theory tells very important truths about the world. For example it tells that cooperation is more successful than total competition and distrust. Ariel only told that models don't describe the full reality. That they are abstractions. But this is true for every science! And there is nothing else than science that we could use to predict the state of the world. This makes this discussion very useless.
@@devalapar7878 I agree. My critique regarding this discussion is that economics as a social science somehow can tell us anything useful about what we as society should do policy wise, which is what they imply kind of when in fact economics as a field tell us very little - and it is used to perpetuate hyper financialization of our lives which is currently the driving force that is tearing both the planet and humanity apart (climate change and inequality). Economics, as taught in university and college, is what is being used as some sort of argument against socialism, when entry level economics doesn't even account for money or time. In the end it becomes a church for the religion of capitalism. He does go in to predictive utility and says that economic theory does not have that big of a predictive utility about it, which Pakman obviously did not understand as he wanted to gloss over that.
No offense, but no science is a complete picture of the world. Every time we abstract a problem, it won't describe the complete picture. Nonetheless the abstraction will tell something true about the world. Quantum physics doesn't give a complete picture of the world. You can't describe how an ocean develops with quantum physics. But that doesn't make QM wrong! But if we could take everything into account, it would describe the complete picture. I don't like this segment, because many will misunderstand it and will believe that economy or game theory is wrong. It is not! They tell something very important about the world. Game Theory tells that cooperation is better than total competition.
This is a nice change from US politics
Confirms the old adage of “economics is the dismal science.”
I loved this. Nice educational break from politics.
I know virtually nothing about economics but I really enjoyed hearing this perspective, and in fact I resonate a lot with what he said about nudge economics, and the economists and scholars who believe they know better about the individual than the individual himself. It’s similar to how I feel about psychologists who forget the limitations of the research and assume they know better than the patient. The CBT model for example, while clinically useful for some, is not “the truth” of human nature, and many therapists seem to forget that! I love that he straight up calls them stories, refreshing.
Matpat has been playing us all for fools. He is gaining power
Fascinating. Thank you.
I'm sure it would have made more sense if I could hear through his accent a bit more
Try using CC. I couldn't understand him without reading along.
"When I leave this well"
Game theory is a valid field of mathematics and is used successfully to model many things. It's uses in economics are not successful primarily because economics is not a science in any classical sense and lacks any valid theoretical underpinning. Just listen to the guy talk about how theories in economics change over time due to politics. Actual science doesn't do that. No physicist would say such crazy shit. No chemist would say that the theoretical underpinnings of how organic molecules can be formed changes based on the how the political winds are blowing.
It is long past time for all of these practitioners of the "soft sciences" be thrown out of academia and these fields be reestablished with rigorous thinkers and researchers not tainted by these people and their bullshit.
There is a great book I think its "Nonesense on Stilts" by Massimo Pigliuci (has Phds in Biology and Philosophy of Science) where he explains the soft/hard science divide is kinda nonsense. That "soft science" can be just as good as hard science. Too lazy to spell it all out but you might find a video of him explaining the basics. One issue is maturity. Physic and biology use to be nonsense until they started to mature (look at pre Darwin crap early biologist believe for example, or Aristotle just guessing stuff like heaver objects fall faster (they don't).
A "soft" example: Psychology use to be heavily based on Sigmund Freud and in pop culture Freud sticks around but even in my recent college textbook on Psychology Freud barley gets a page and it just to point out that he was a major figure but nowadays we know he had little to any insight that was grounded in empiricism.
In addition just to mention Behavior economics and related fields they do actual experiments now, that can be reproduce unlike in the past where economics was often just people thinking about things and not doing actual tests.
Tl:DR: Listen to some other folks (experts) on this question. I am skeptical of this guy quite a bit.
@@beezusHrist Looks like it! Gonna check it out when I have time been a while since I read the book.
@@Kefka. LOL. Uh no.
Psychology is still total crap. Is it less total crap than Freud and Jung? But that is saying nothing. They are still at the prescribe powerful drugs based on no clinical diagnosis and hope stage.
I have a family member who has been through that stuff his entire adult life. He was on lithium at first, I was curious and paid out of pocket for every possible lithium test for both of us when he was off lithium. The result, no measurable difference in levels (some tests showed him higher and me lower and some showed the opposite). Then SSRI's came out and he's been on effectively all of them. The result has been short term results consistent with the placebo effect. Now he has the well known side effects of decades of use of those drugs to go along with his emotional issues.
As to Pigliuci, do not make me laugh. He got laughed out of the real sciences with that crap. You can use Google so don't try and claim there haven't been scathing debunkings of his ignorant twaddle.
One issue I will address is his ridiculous claim that biology is more mature than sociology for instance so it is unreasonable to expect sociology to have a foundational theory like the ToE is for biology. Sociology is as old as biology in a formal sense. People were studying both the people and the plants and animals of the world as it was explored by the Europeans. To claim it wasn't is just one example of the total crap Pigliuci peddled. The problem with Sociology, and the other soft sciences, isn't that they're newer or less mature. It's that they're infested with "experts" who don't allow quality work to be done. That's why spin off fields like econometrics have to be founded.
Actually Amazon lets you read the 1st chapter and that is where he talks nuance about hard/soft science.
@@KenS1267 I've always thought that the problem of most soft sciences is that they either attempt understanding human brains (which are notoriously complex) or try to understand systems of interacting brains, all without understanding how brains work from the smallest elements up to the whole. But I don't believe such a lopsided approach to research has lead to absolutely no gainful insights in soft fields, say psychology.
Or do you suggest dropping all soft fields until neuroscience has a good grasp of the brain?
“They are all fables”
I love him. LOL
this is true. the problem with economics is that somebody loses when somebody wins. so the rules must change constantly in a nonlinear fashion.
@@Loxpas-Doccould you talk more about that?
For those who don't know, Tzadik (pronounced Tsah-Deek) means "righteous person" in Hebrew.
צַדִּיק
This was a Great interview
As long as the models ignore cultural differences within and between countries they will be severely limited. "Bounded rationality" sounds like a wonderful way of saying "all models are wrong, but some are more useful than others"
Wrong is the wrong word! Abstractions are not complete pictures. Nobody claims that! No science gives the complete picture! But there is nothing else than science that we can use to describe the world and predict it.
What we know from macro history and economics is that environment is the best predictor of success. For example Sub Saharan Africa can't sustain a big population. Just look where the biggest civilizations were in Africa. Egypt and Carthage were in places with a lot of fresh water and fertile land.
Culture is a poor predictor of success. We have many different cultures in the world that were and are successful. Environment is very clear. No water, no fertile land, not enough food => no success!
Need subtitles bruh.
Available on TH-cam through cable TV
I read the subs and they were still pretty bad, and some lines were completely missing towards the end.
I had subtitles in the android app
The only person Pakman should interview about game theory is MatPat.
What you should have asked is "is it a fair criticism to say that game theory tells as much about the real world as current state if economics do"? Because that would also be true.
This is what I hate about this segment. It gets totally misunderstood.
Game theory tells very important truths about the world. For example it tells that cooperation is more successful than total competition and distrust.
Ariel only told that models don't describe the full reality. That they are abstractions. But this is true for every science! And there is nothing else than science that we could use to predict the state of the world. This makes this discussion very useless.
@@devalapar7878 I agree. My critique regarding this discussion is that economics as a social science somehow can tell us anything useful about what we as society should do policy wise, which is what they imply kind of when in fact economics as a field tell us very little - and it is used to perpetuate hyper financialization of our lives which is currently the driving force that is tearing both the planet and humanity apart (climate change and inequality). Economics, as taught in university and college, is what is being used as some sort of argument against socialism, when entry level economics doesn't even account for money or time. In the end it becomes a church for the religion of capitalism. He does go in to predictive utility and says that economic theory does not have that big of a predictive utility about it, which Pakman obviously did not understand as he wanted to gloss over that.
@@simonfarre4907 There are politicians that use WRONG ECONMICS to justify their policies. If you meant this, you are right.
Thumbs up and an additional comment to beat the algorithm. Thanks for the video! 👍🔥👍
Could’ve used subtitles
Nice change.
Fell asleep 5 minutes in
why is it that isreals sound so very french when they speak english? i've noticed this a bunch before and it still boggles my mind
didn't understand, poor audio quality and more.
it was a difficult listen for sure
Has someone named Rubinstein on the show, puts a chess board as the video thumbnail.
I see what you did there.
No offense, but no science is a complete picture of the world. Every time we abstract a problem, it won't describe the complete picture. Nonetheless the abstraction will tell something true about the world.
Quantum physics doesn't give a complete picture of the world. You can't describe how an ocean develops with quantum physics. But that doesn't make QM wrong! But if we could take everything into account, it would describe the complete picture.
I don't like this segment, because many will misunderstand it and will believe that economy or game theory is wrong. It is not! They tell something very important about the world. Game Theory tells that cooperation is better than total competition.
But hey, it's just a theory....
i think i can actually hear David's heart breaking and worldview shattering at 4:39. ;)
professor rubenstein should talk to destiny, they both have female names
Haha I like this guy. He is cutting into all the BS.
So basically, hippie stuff
Wtf why is the view count so low??
Maybe because many people can't get through this rambling stream of consciousness...
Sounds like he has limited faith in science
Does game theory work in the real world? Yes and no. Does that help? Jk
Disappointed. I was looking forward to this conversation but the audio is trash and I can't seem to suffer thru it.
The giant nitrogen naturally fix because panties originally hate absent a elite colt. interesting, thoughtless cocoa