My point was not that there is evidence to support Freudian theory, it really is bunk. My point was that non-experts have a tendency to dismiss entire fields of inquiry as bogus because of single imperfect ideas within the subject.
For instance, my Women’s Studies professor was flat out wrong when she said observed sex differences are purely “socially constructed”. This does not, however, give one a right to say that Women’s Studies can be readily dismissed by an outsider as totally worthless.
Getting “good experimental evidence” to support any macroeconomic theory is all but impossible, but that doesn’t mean there is no evidence whatsoever. A good rule of thumb is that if two absolute ideologues like Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman agree about an issue, there must be pretty damn good evidence.
A good rule of thumb is that if two absolute ideologues like Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman agree about an issue, there must be pretty damn good evidence.
I happen to agree with them about the issue of rent control, but taken as a general rule, this is absolutely fallacious. Within any belief system, leaders of different factions will often hate each other ferociously over their differences, even though from an outside perspective, they may well look almost indistinguishable. Just look at various religious and ideological disputes over incomprehensibly obscure points of doctrine.
(And yes, I do think that modern economics has some fundamentally unsound beliefs that are a matter of virtual consensus nowadays. See e.g. this discussion for some examples.)
I agree that a part of a theory can be shown to be invalid even though many other parts are shown to be valid. Even the basic assumptions of a model can be wrong and parts of the model may still work. That is not the point I was making.
I was saying that the onus is on the model to be shown to work in a real life situation. It should not be assumed to work and its critics have the onus to show that it is “totally broken”.
As I am not sure what experiments have been done to show the validity of neoclassic economics in the real world—I ask. You want “actual evidence that neoclassical economics is totally broken” but I think it is more reasonable to ask for evidence that it works. Is there good evidence?
My point was not that there is evidence to support Freudian theory, it really is bunk. My point was that non-experts have a tendency to dismiss entire fields of inquiry as bogus because of single imperfect ideas within the subject.
For instance, my Women’s Studies professor was flat out wrong when she said observed sex differences are purely “socially constructed”. This does not, however, give one a right to say that Women’s Studies can be readily dismissed by an outsider as totally worthless.
Getting “good experimental evidence” to support any macroeconomic theory is all but impossible, but that doesn’t mean there is no evidence whatsoever. A good rule of thumb is that if two absolute ideologues like Paul Krugman and Milton Friedman agree about an issue, there must be pretty damn good evidence.
knb:
I happen to agree with them about the issue of rent control, but taken as a general rule, this is absolutely fallacious. Within any belief system, leaders of different factions will often hate each other ferociously over their differences, even though from an outside perspective, they may well look almost indistinguishable. Just look at various religious and ideological disputes over incomprehensibly obscure points of doctrine.
(And yes, I do think that modern economics has some fundamentally unsound beliefs that are a matter of virtual consensus nowadays. See e.g. this discussion for some examples.)
I agree that a part of a theory can be shown to be invalid even though many other parts are shown to be valid. Even the basic assumptions of a model can be wrong and parts of the model may still work. That is not the point I was making. I was saying that the onus is on the model to be shown to work in a real life situation. It should not be assumed to work and its critics have the onus to show that it is “totally broken”. As I am not sure what experiments have been done to show the validity of neoclassic economics in the real world—I ask. You want “actual evidence that neoclassical economics is totally broken” but I think it is more reasonable to ask for evidence that it works. Is there good evidence?