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Re: Who Are The Education Mafia
Posted:
Sep 9, 2012 1:19 AM
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> If you are talking about conservative economists who reject
> mathematical economics, then of course you are right. Such economists
> have disgraced themselves as scientists in the name of political
> ideology - as have for instance biologists who in the name of
> religious ideology rejected evolution.
>
> But mathematical economists are at least as mathematical and logical
> in their thinking as any engineer. Look at 2010 Mathematics Subject
> Classification (MSC2010)
>
> http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/msc/pdfs/classifications2010.pdf
>
Well, my characterizations were somewhat a caricature. Economics,
like maths, is infected by the vogues of the day. We've recently
entered the chapter on dynamical systems aka "life at the edge of
chaos" wherein the unpredictability in principle even of deterministic
systems is studied. This tends to give the lie to a lot of faux
modeling, mathematical up the wazoo, but still depending on premises
of dubious worth. That's the thing: you can write reams of
mathematical mumbo jumbo and still not have a clue. I'm not one to be
cowed or snowed by a lot of symbols or lines of code, just because it
looks so "logical".
Economics itself has been changing, absorbing more thermodynamics,
which says Planet Earth is syntropic, not entropic. We're riding a
solar gradient and have the means to self organize, and we're doing
that. It's called our economy, but it's co-determinate with our
ecosystem (economy and ecosystem are the same thing -- the more
enlightened schools realize that).
The Henry George school of economics has been a good source of ideas,
among others. We've had guest speakers at our Linus Pauling House, or
at the bigger theater downtown (Schnitzer -- moving venues for next
year though). I've put together a mental model wherein the scarecrow
gets a brain. It's called STEM (or STEAM) in my plot line /
narrative. We go with the newer breed of economist that knows some
general systems theory (GST). We leave the 1900s in the dust, where
it belongs.
> and go to 91 and all its subsets. If you want to say that all this
> mathematical science that is published in this area is not legitimate
> just because you say so, then have at it.
>
> But I for one just don't respect science denial, no matter what the
> science is - never have, never will.
I think huge amounts of BS masquerade as science, a major example
being the Eugenics fad that a privileged social class used to justify
a lot of forced sterilizations.
Business tycoons were funding those Nazi experiments per Edwin Black's
historical studies, which is why I don't get Haim's big divide between
left and right wing.
He insists we remember it was Hitler's socialist party that was
uber-stupid (i.e. lefty) but most leftists associate the Third Reich
with big business fantasies of world domination. The Nazis weren't
Leninists, that much is certain.
The lefties are more likely to lionize the Spanish in their fight
against fascism.
Yet in the UK, young men who joined the resistance against Franco,
Hitler and Mussolini were considered somehow unpatriotic by rightist
writers (I'm thinking of a guy named Cornish in particular who is
actually Australian). How does that work again?
I just don't find the left-right spectrum all that coherent sometimes,
like a story that doesn't cross-check with itself. Too many
inconsistencies.
There's this guy George Walford who wrote about 'systematic ideology'
in an effort to collate and categorize the ideologies and chronicle
how they morph into each other over time. http://gwiep.net/wp/ His
clique might have been the ones to first identify how far left and far
right tend to merge at their extremes. But then Jungians talked about
the unity of opposites and Blake about the marriage of heaven and
hell... so I guess I'm into deep waters with these questions, should
probably just sleep on it.
Kirby
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