[HN Gopher] The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in ...
___________________________________________________________________
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of
Alfred Nobel 2025
Author : k2enemy
Score : 119 points
Date : 2025-10-13 11:23 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nobelprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nobelprize.org)
| GolfPopper wrote:
| "Unlike the Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Chemistry, Physics,
| Literature and Peace, which were created by Nobel in his 1896
| will and first awarded in 1901, the Economics Prize was conceived
| by Sweden's central bank in 1968 to mark its tricentenary and
| first awarded a year later."
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20071014012248/http://www.theloc...
| nabla9 wrote:
| HN discussions are predictable:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45566804
| huhkerrf wrote:
| Oh, there's much more, even: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRang
| e=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| stuaxo wrote:
| Sure, but if they keep awarding this non Nobel prize with a
| deliberately confusing name people will keep bringing it up.
|
| The other solution would he some equivilent of a community
| note for it every year, it seems like things work as is
| though.
| lysace wrote:
| I mentally place economic sciences sort of halvway between
| e.g. physics and social sciences on some imagined scientific
| rigidity scale.
|
| They seem rigid enough to be useful, but I hope they can be
| done better. Perhaps using better simulation tools.
| tovej wrote:
| Economics _is_ a social science, and a politicized one at
| that. Sociology is more rigid than economics when it comes
| to validation of theories and choice of methods (statistics
| vs. mathematical models filled with assumptions).
| Economics, especially neoclassical economics, has a serious
| problem in prediction quality, a physics theory would have
| been abandoned by now if it was so bad at predicting real-
| life phenomena as the neoclassical school of economics is.
| zwaps wrote:
| Define neoclassical economics beyond its use in the
| blogossphere
| tovej wrote:
| It's a school of economics that became dominant in the
| 60s, it emphasises free market dynamics, much like the
| classical school, and especially focuses on consumption
| and optimizing economic actors, these actors are a very
| simple (and unrealistic) model of consumers. They also
| neglect production as an aspect of the economy.
|
| Fun fact: The neoclassical economic school managed to
| remove the word "political" from "political economy" at
| the turn of the 20th century.
| username332211 wrote:
| If sociology is so much more rigorous, why aren't
| sociologists invading the economic field? Surely they can
| use their rigorous statistics to produce papers on
| economic matters and put the entire field to shame?
|
| If anything, we're seeing the opposite results, where
| economists publish influential papers demographics, crime
| and social structure.
|
| "When dealing with humans, linear regression is going to
| be good enough" is a huge assumption to make.
| tovej wrote:
| Are you saying linear regression = statistics? Linear
| regression is something you learn in your first class,
| it's hardly ever the main model used.
|
| And if you're going to claim that economists are
| publishing influential papers in other fields - and
| especially if you're claiming that they're doing so in an
| unprecedented way, with no inter-disciplinary
| collaboration - please provide some examples. And if
| you're thinking of Freakonomics, know that no researcher
| takes Freakonomics seriously, and neither should you.
|
| As for sociologists "invading" economics, they sort of
| are. Economics and sociology have quite a bit of overlap,
| and researchers from the two fields often collaborate.
| And any group researching economic phenomena, even an
| inter-disciplinary one involving sociologists, would be
| identified as economists, not sociologists, by people
| reading their work. Although David Graeber, an
| anthropologist, did write an excellent book on economic
| phenomena in "Debt: the first 5000 years", and it has
| done quite well. You could say that it's "influential".
|
| Unfortunately, neoclassical economics also has wide
| political support among the people it benefits: wealthy
| people and institutions, e.g. banks. Which also means
| they get bankrolled (hah) much more than other social
| scientists, which means they get preferential treatment.
| E.g., this very "Nobel prize" in economy that this theead
| is about is funded by a bank.
|
| The force to change economics qould have to come from
| within economics, perhaps from behavioural economics, or
| new Keynesian economics (the first one seems more
| promising), or even from movements like degrowth or
| circular economics. You can't expect a sociologist to fix
| a different field, and that wasn't the point. The point
| was simply that sociology doesn't suffer this
| embarassment because they are not burdened by ideological
| pressure backed by monies interest.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| This is completely false. The opposite is true. Economics
| had drastically improved reproduction over decades.
| tovej wrote:
| Please provide some proof that neoclassical economics has
| done this.
| lysace wrote:
| I mean, I think the onus is on you to prove the opposite.
| tovej wrote:
| Not really, they're claiming a positive, I'm claiming a
| negative. The burden of proof is on them. The failure of
| neoclassical economics has also been widely discussed,
| especially following 2008, so it's a claim about the
| status quo.
|
| But since you asked, here's an accessible overview: https
| ://francescosyloslabini.info/2016/06/01/neoclassical-
| ec...
| thrance wrote:
| The issue with this prize isn't that economics is not a real
| science. Nobel prizes are primarily vulgarization and
| communication tools, and as such are inhenrently political.
| The Sveriges Riksbank is piggy-backing off the popularity of
| Nobel Prizes to advocate for a certain vision ( _their_
| vision) of economic orthodoxy. It is overwhelmingly awarded
| to white western men, who, more relevantly, all share an
| anglocentric neoliberalist vision of economics. This, I hope,
| we are allowed to take issue with.
|
| EDIT: apparently not. I would rather you explain to me why
| than downvote mindlessly.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Well you are on an anglo-centric neoliberalist imperialist
| site filled with people that are economic beneficiaries of
| that. Basic economic game theory that you'd be downvoted.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Extreme poverty rates have been plummeting precisely
| because East Asian countries became economic
| beneficiaries. The rest of the world operates on the same
| principles.
| underlipton wrote:
| It's a, "They hate him because they told the truth,"
| situation. Frankly, it applies to the Peace Prize as well,
| but this one has an even more naked agenda. It would be a
| _disservice_ not to mention its history every time it 's
| brought up, because it is ever-salient to any discussion of
| the merit of the winners.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| White western men are no more represented in Economics than
| other hard sciences, and concensus in Economics is no
| different in East Asia and the rest of the world excepting
| the authoritarian Socialist experiments.
| andrepd wrote:
| There's no "consensus" in economics, let alone.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| That's nonsensical. There is overwhelming consensus over
| many things, e.g. tariffs.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Of course, there is consensus in economics.
|
| It's a field which is mostly interested in models and
| anyone can agree that a model is consistant and implies
| surprising things even if they think the hypotheses it
| makes don't faithfully represent reality.
|
| It's endlessly fascinating to me how some people will
| happily disparage economics while having very little idea
| of what it's actually about.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Modelling isn't the higher intellectual pursuit it's made
| out to be. Imo designing theoretical models post-hoc to
| "support" a desired conclusion is not unheard of in
| econ/finance.
| thrance wrote:
| I don't see what point you're trying to make. Do you mean
| to claim that the Sveriges Riksbank is unbiased in who it
| chooses to give their price to? Unless you believe that
| 90% of economists come from the US (and the remaining 10%
| from the UK), you should take issue with this list: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Memorial_Prize_l..
| .
|
| > concensus in Economics
|
| _That 's what I was talking about_. This "consensus" is
| completely made-up and propped up by, among others, the
| Sveriges Riksbank. To the point that there are people
| like you who feel they should defend them against the
| evil "authoritarian Socialist", because of course, as we
| all know, that's all there is besides Neoliberalism. I
| sincerly hope you consider broadening your horizons,
| maybe start by Thomas Piketty's work:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| > I don't see what point you're trying to make. Do you
| mean to claim that the Sveriges Riksbank is unbiased in
| who it chooses to give their price to?
|
| I made no such claim. I don't take issue with that list:
| the US by far leads in number of high-profile economic
| researchers, high publication output, large number of
| employed economists.
|
| Just as Mathematics is still Mathematics in the rest of
| the world, the broad perspective on Economics is not
| meaningfully different in the rest of the world. Even if
| it originated in the anglo-sphere, it's global. That's
| the point I made.
|
| > This "consensus" is completely made-up and propped up
| by, among others, the Sveriges Riksbank.
|
| Leading Economists globally find consensus on all manner
| of policy issues. Many academic papers model the effects
| of tariffs on prices, welfare, and the consensus is that
| tariffs generally harm consumers. Surveys conducted on
| Economists show strong consensus there.
|
| > because of course, as we all know, that's all there is
| besides Neoliberalism
|
| It's not a long list. Even Social Democracy darlings of
| Europe are effectively just Liberal with a bit more
| spending. Incidentally, France is in deep trouble because
| of this. Their public spending as a % of GDP far exceeds
| peers.
|
| > maybe start by Thomas Piketty's work:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty
|
| Piketty is decidedly heterodox, and I've read Capital in
| the 21st Century, though not his latest which as I
| understand revisits much of the same. Wealth taxes have
| been tried in several countries including Austria, and
| promptly dropped. That's because they do not work well.
| It's difficult to implement and the returns just aren't
| good.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| >This critique sets the stage for a more political debate.
|
| oh spare me. Social sciences are inherently political.
| They've always been political and they will always be
| political. Denying merely makes it worse. that's how you end
| up with the racialist anthropology of the 19th and early 20th
| centuries.
|
| Don't hang a picture of a dog turd on your front door and cry
| about all the people pointing it out.
| em500 wrote:
| I'll add the obligatory Dilbert take: https://verisoeconomica
| .wordpress.com/2022/10/10/the-2022-no...
|
| Sure, it's paid by the Swedish central bank instead of the
| Nobel foundation, and it wasn't established by Alfred Nobel
| himself. Nobody cares. Value of such awards depends entirely
| on peer recognition, not on who pays or what exact labels
| they carry. Selection for economics is done by the Royal
| Swedish Academy of Sciences, like the other science awards.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah, "this isn't even a _real_ prize, it wasn 't selected
| at a time when it wasn't considered a distinct academic
| field by a benefactor concerned primarily about what his
| obituary might say" is even more tedious than pointing out
| that the Turing Award wasn't actually conceived by Alan.
| Much better arguments about issues with things individual
| Economic Nobel winners argued for than that...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| His descendants states that Nobel wouldn't have wanted a
| prize in his name. He didn't like economics because it is
| the science of greed.
|
| "Nobody cares" gotcha. Greed never cares.
| neilwilson wrote:
| " it's paid by the Swedish central bank instead of the
| Nobel foundation"
|
| And those who pay the piper call the tune.
|
| Hence the brand of 'economics' that gets the gong.
| andrepd wrote:
| Well, the thing is Economics is a very unique discipline.
| It's not quite a science but also not merely philosophy.
| Its object of study is affected by _the study itself_. It
| 's very strange. That's why mutually exclusive economic
| theories have won the Nobel prize!
| belter wrote:
| Predictable...but are those aholes wrong...? :-)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44013692
|
| Economics violates Popper demarcation criterion. Economic
| theories can't be falsified because you can't run controlled
| experiments on economies, rewind history, or isolate
| variables.
|
| When models fail, economists adjust assumptions ...
|
| Unfalsifiable = Unscientific.
| rtsil wrote:
| Neither are litterature and peace.
| belter wrote:
| They are not pretending to be sciences.
| atwrk wrote:
| Do you think Poppers demarcation criterion is falsifiable?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Nice use of recursion...
| belter wrote:
| It is not falsifiable because it is not a hypothesis but
| a framework for recognizing science.
|
| Rejecting Popper for that is like rejecting reasoning
| itself because you can't run a control experiment on
| it...but then one turns into an economist...
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > When models fail, economists adjust assumptions ...
|
| When models fail, physicist adjust hypotheses ...
| belter wrote:
| Physics can test those hypotheses under controlled
| conditions...
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not always/limited in some areas (astrophysics come to
| mind where we, e.g., cannot (yet) create a star under
| controlled conditions). Testing hypotheses or predictions
| vs observations is also a valid method.
| belter wrote:
| Science is not about where you test hypotheses, but how.
| Astrophysics builds falsifiable models and checks them
| against reality like spectra, gravitational waves, etc...
| When predictions fail, theories change.
|
| If these were economists, they would check if their
| equations match the economic universe they live in. :-)
| Instead, they conclude the agents just "did not behave
| rationally enough".
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Not about controlled conditions then necessarily.
|
| Not really my experience with economics - a lot of
| awareness of reality vs model (regardless of how
| "beautiful" they are).
| genericresponse wrote:
| That's just not true. The models have real predictive
| power, they just have limitations. Behavioral economics,
| which tackles this frontier is still a growing field.
| Thaler, Kahneman, and Taversky won the prize in 2017 for
| building the bridge between economic theory and
| individual decision-making.
|
| At the risk of being inflammatory-- These arguments are
| the equivalent of saying that Newton didn't really do
| physics because his models of mechanics break down at
| high enough speeds and small enough scales.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Physics can test those hypotheses under controlled
| conditions_
|
| I genuinely have no idea why so many commenters on _HN_
| will spout nonsense based on high school curriculum with
| the confidence of a PhD when it comes to economics, but
| won't embarrass themselves in other fields.
|
| Yes, economics--particularly microeconomics--is
| constantly subject to experimentation. Macroeconomics is
| closer to astronomy, in that models are developed, novel
| data sources sought, old models tested and then validated
| or rejected. Also like astronomy, or perhaps more
| accurately fundamental physics, it's currently off in a
| loop of DSGE optimizations which are mathematically
| pretty for the field but not super interesting outside
| it. (This work is not in that category.)
| belter wrote:
| That comparison collapses instantly. Physics has
| invariants...Economics does not. You can't rerun the
| economy under controlled conditions, so "experiments" are
| mostly natural or quasi experiments...statistical
| patchwork with fragile assumptions.
|
| Macroeconomics isn't like astronomy :-) Stars don't
| change behavior when you model them. Economies do. There
| are no stable primitives, no conservation laws, just
| shifting behavior and feedback loops.
|
| DSGE models are equilibrium sandcastles calibrated to
| past data. In physics that's failure while in macro it's
| tenure.
|
| Economics is interesting and sometimes useful but calling
| it an experimental science is self-flattery.
| "One thing we are not going to have, now or ever, is a
| set of models that forecasts sudden falls in the value
| of financial assets." -- Robert E. Lucas
| "As a policy-maker during the crisis, I found the
| available models of limited help. In fact, I would go
| further: in the face of the crisis, we felt abandoned by
| conventional tools." -- Jean-Claude Trichet -
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2010/html/sp1011
| 18.en.html "How Conventional Wisdom Failed Us"
| - https://youtu.be/c8LMWCko4d0?t=138
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _You can't rerun the economy under controlled
| conditions, so "experiments" are mostly natural or quasi
| experiments_
|
| ...you can 't rerun the universe under controlled
| experiments. That's the whole point of the "controlled"
| part. It's an artificially isolated environment designed
| to model a specific phenomenon.
|
| If you want examples of thoroughly experimental economic
| discipline, look to auction, bargaining and game theory.
|
| > _Macroeconomics isn't like astronomy :-) Stars don't
| change behavior when you model them. Economies do_
|
| Stars don't change, but the ways we look at them do. This
| sort of endogeneity in data collection and research
| methods is a constant source of noise and errors in the
| physical sciences.
|
| You're correct in that it's _much_ more pronounced in
| economics, since humans are agents. That puts boundaries
| on how much one can predict. But that doesn 't make it
| unknowable through the scientific method.
|
| > _DSGE models are equilibrium sandcastles calibrated to
| past data. In physics that's failure while in macro it's
| tenure_
|
| I'm not going to defend DSGE any more than I will string
| theory. (I know a lot more about the former to be able to
| properly critique it than I do the latter.)
|
| > _Economics is interesting and sometimes useful but
| calling it an experimental science is self-flattery_
|
| I'm not an economist. But I apparently know more
| economics than a lot of people who make confident
| statements on this board about the field.
|
| Several fields of economics are rigorously empirical.
| Others are strictly observational. And others are total
| nonsense. The fill of nonsense is higher than other
| fields, but that's mostly due to the relevance of the
| work. If the rise and fall of nations rode on the
| spectral pattern of Sagittarius A*, you'd probably have a
| lot of nonsense work around that, too.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Ha. Controlled conditions.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Argentina managed to save itself from hyperinflation by
| drastically cutting spending. By your logic, this could not
| be in the least bit predictable and inflation as a
| phenomenon doesn't even matter.
|
| Supposing it did was fairly predictable that not setting
| money on fire would help recovery, what does it matter that
| there is no controlled scientific experiment involved? Or
| to put it another way, are there no facts to be gleaned
| from data?
| thrance wrote:
| Argentina didn't manage shit, else they wouldn't have to
| be bailed out by the Trump admin. This should come as a
| surprise to no one, "General AnCap" may have artifically
| and temporarily given the impression of good numbers by
| destroying his country's public infrastructure, but this
| is at the direct cost of the future. Now they're starting
| to pay the price.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| > Argentina didn't manage shit
|
| You're deflecting. Curtailing inflation was an outcome of
| policy. The U.S. had fuck-all to do with it. Unless
| you're willing to acknowledge something so basic there's
| nothing else to say to someone disinterested in good
| faith discussion
| genericresponse wrote:
| Ehh... you're both wrong. Argentina ended 2024 with an
| annual inflation rate close to 100%. That's significantly
| lower, but still hyperinflation. It should be lower this
| year, but how much is the question.
|
| Whether that's maintainable long term is probably the
| decisive judgement. Argentina has had many cycles of
| hyperinflation, reset, hyperinflation again. The current
| bailout is not exactly a positive indicator.
| yard2010 wrote:
| These are all people using made up words to throw shit on
| other people.
| moritz wrote:
| And the story of how this came to be is absolutely wild. See
|
| Mirowski, Philip. 2020. "The Neoliberal Ersatz Nobel Prize".
| Pp. 219-254 in Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, edited by Dieter
| Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian and Philip Mirowski. Verso. Fulltext:
| https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/215796/1/Full-text-b...
| JCM9 wrote:
| Obligatory post that, despite common parlance to the contrary,
| there is no "Nobel Prize in Economics."
|
| That said, this is still a super prestigious award.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Such a post is definitely not obligatory.
| Tor3 wrote:
| And that's exactly why the title is "The Sveriges Riksbank
| Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". Not that
| it's a "Nobel Prize".
| btown wrote:
| More detail on accomplishments in press release:
| https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2025/pre...
|
| Press conference: https://www.youtube.com/live/EajZObplJ8U
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/mokyr-aghion-howitt-win-2025-n... -
| includes quotes from press conference, including commentary from
| laureates on present geopolitical climate
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a tiny article, but it does contain an interesting
| passage: "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained
| growth through technological progress" which is the core of the
| reason the prize was awarded. I find it interesting to see
| technological progress so tightly coupled to sustained growth and
| I wonder if the implication is that growth will stop when
| technological progress stagnates. Is there any proof to that
| effect?
| thrance wrote:
| At first glance, "sustained growth" sounds like an oxymoron.
| Nothing can grow forever, unless the growth asymptotically
| approaches zero.
| nathan_douglas wrote:
| This page: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-
| sciences/2025/pre... explains in more detail what they mean.
| It's a pretty clean and effective explanation.
|
| > Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new
| products and production methods replacing old ones in a
| never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained economic
| growth, which results in a better standard of living, health
| and quality of life for people around the globe.
|
| > However, this was not always the case. Quite the opposite -
| stagnation was the norm throughout most of human history.
| Despite important discoveries now and again, which sometimes
| led to improved living conditions and higher incomes, growth
| always eventually levelled off.
|
| ...
| fnord77 wrote:
| Stagnation is environmentally sustainable. Constant
| creation-destruction cycles will ultimately deplete the
| environment
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Innovation is such that efficiency increase requires
| fewer resources and land. Population growth is stagnating
| and will peak in less than 100 years.
|
| Neo-Malthusianism is as bunk as Malthusianism was
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > Innovation is such that efficiency increase requires
| fewer resources and land.
|
| ...to produce the same output. Growth requires greater
| output though.
|
| Just look at the timeline of energy consumption [0].
| Either you're wrong and innovation requires more
| resources, or you're right and there's no direct relation
| between innovation and overall resource usage.
|
| [0] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-
| consumption
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The metric you're looking for is energy intensity of GDP
| [1]. How much energy does each unit of GDP cost. It's
| been going down, and it's lower in rich countries than
| less developed ones. (Its material counterpart is
| material intensity of GDP.)
|
| [1] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-
| energy-inte...
| cassianoleal wrote:
| Thanks, that's an interesting reference.
|
| I'm not sure that's what I was looking for though. That's
| unit consumption per GDP, so it may look stable or even
| declining regardless of actual consumption of resources.
|
| In a way, it indicates the potential for a more
| sustainable living but unless it goes down by greater
| amounts than GDP growth, it's still net positive
| environmental damage.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _unless it goes down by greater amounts than GDP
| growth, it 's still net positive environmental damage_
|
| Sure. Link in population and living standards and you
| start to get a toy model that dispels the notion that all
| growth must be about consumption. (A palette of iPhones
| represents growth from mainframes of equal mass and
| energy consumption.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Stagnation is environmentally sustainable_
|
| We _know_ this to be false given the number of
| civilisations that depleted their soil due because they
| didn't know (or care) about crop rotation. Stable-state
| economies which nevertheless collapsed because they
| missed a key technology.
| mallowdram wrote:
| There was more likely a series of 2K-4K golden ages
| diffused across areas globally 5-1K BCE where stagnation
| wasn't the rule.
|
| We've probably yet to even come close to that eden-like
| experience.
| geysersam wrote:
| > Technology advances rapidly and affects us all, with new
| products and production methods replacing old ones in a
| never-ending cycle. This is the basis for sustained
| economic growth
|
| since the end of the 19th century...
|
| Am I missing something?
|
| How can they assert that the current trajectory of economic
| growth won't end in stagnation, like every other growth
| spurt throughout history?
|
| Sure, the economic growth of the last 150 years is
| unprecedented in history. But so was the second most
| significant period of economic growth before it stagnated.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How can they assert that the current trajectory of
| economic growth won 't end in stagnation, like every
| other growth spurt throughout history?_
|
| Straw man. Nobody argues this.
| geysersam wrote:
| > production methods replacing old ones in a _never-
| ending_ cycle
|
| > _sustained economic growth_
|
| Is it really such an unreasonable reading?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is it really such an unreasonable reading?_
|
| It's reasonable but unnecessarily reductive. Particulalry
| when TFA is linked above.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| The world/universe doesnt last forever either. That does not
| say much. Unless you have reason to believe technilogical
| innovation will end in a foreseeable future, growth will not
| be expected to end in that timeline
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Nothing about "sustained" implies "forever". Sustained notes
| at the symphony don't continue after the audience leaves.
| creer wrote:
| More usefully, constantly looking at "forever" while living
| at human life time scales and engineering and scientific
| progress time scales - is absurd.
| dkural wrote:
| There is two contributors to growth: increase in population,
| and productivity gains. If tech adoption slows down and
| population slows down, we go back to the historical norm of no
| economic growth.
| geysersam wrote:
| Productivity gains don't only come from technological
| progress. Accumulation of capital, such as infrastructure,
| education, access to healthcare etc, also increase
| productivity.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Claiming "access to healthcare" is capital is a novel idea.
| It's a social infrastructure. It doesn't directly lead to
| production, any more than lunch breaks do.
|
| Capital is not simply "anything that I can tie to improving
| my work output".
| paganel wrote:
| If you view the humans actually producing stuff as human
| capital, which many economists have done, then keeping
| that (human) capital in decent enough form by allowing it
| to have access to decent enough healthcare is a logical
| step forward.
|
| We could then go a step or two forward and posit that a
| sick populace means a sick consumer class means reduced
| demand for goods that generate growth, but those are just
| details.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| nobody does. which is ironic since root for capital is
| latin for head count.
| twoodfin wrote:
| All healthcare beyond the village witch doctor was
| technological progress at one time.
| dkural wrote:
| Of course I agree with this, but without technological
| progress this "saturates" rapidly. Only long-term durable
| productivity growth per unit of labor comes from technology
| - i.e. better ways of doing stuff.
| scythe wrote:
| A somewhat unfair characterization of the historical norm.
| Before the Italian Renaissance, history was marked by periods
| of growth interleaved with periods of decline, in many cases
| because a societal crisis caused a destructive regime to take
| hold. For example, the Mongol conquests installed an
| extractive regime that was soon replaced by the
| ultraconservative Ming dynasty, which resulted in China's
| progress stalling for some four centuries.
| HSO wrote:
| This is a persistent mythology of western economic history to
| "cleanwash" the past and "explain" the present inequality (or
| what was the present until recently)
|
| Think about the components of all those innovations from the
| past and if they would have been possible (to scale) without
| violent and forcible extraction of resources from around the
| globe, incl forced labor.
|
| Think about when GDP was constructed and how, and from which
| point stuff got counted into it (ie from which point in the
| production chain it added to a country's gdp). If you take raw
| materials X and Y from somewhere, by force and for cheap, then
| make sth like a out of it and only count that topline, now you
| have a big gdp, congrats.
|
| Eg even the "US" was not even "settled" (forcible land
| expansion) until the late 19th or early 20th century. So you
| have a steady influx of cheap/free land to support a growing
| population that keeps adding to the "gdp". Lo and behold, soon
| after this dynamic stopped, financial bubble and bust ensues.
|
| The main lesson for me is that progress and growth are
| completely separate things/concepts. You can absolutely
| progress without "growing" (bloating) your gdp, if you change
| some things. You can absolutely regress while "growing"
| (bloating) your gdp. Look at "US" today.
|
| Chicken are coming home to roost. This is why first instinct of
| Trump and his cohorts is now to expand again "US" borders. Go
| back to extraction to "grow", since they are institutionally
| and mentally incapable of progress without extraction. More
| importantly, without "growth" the system as it is will
| collapse. It behaves like a cancer that has close to killed its
| host. It's over, and anyone who can see knows it on some level.
| newyankee wrote:
| May be progress is as simple as making energy very cheap,
| ensuring a diverse manufacturing capability with most
| efficient methods while making sure 1 or 2 inputs do not
| bottleneck you.
|
| Larger and bigger powers can control different parts of
| 'supply chain' (for lack of a better word) and make it
| difficult to progress without them getting a royalty. In
| their minds they are justified as they made progress first
| and others are simply copying their IP
| addcommitpush wrote:
| This is in line with Pommeranz (a western economic historian)
| and most of the whole "Great divergence" litterature.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The west didn't get rich from colonizing the world.
|
| It got rich domestically through industrialism. Then the
| newly rich countries went on to colonize the world, because
| now they could. If and how much the colonies made them even
| richer is debatable, but it was probably a net cost on
| average.
|
| This is one of several insights counter to "common sense"
| that economists have figured out.
| cess11 wrote:
| There are scientists that reach quite different conclusions
| from you.
|
| https://www.jasonhickel.org/research
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Let me just add that the colonizing of the Americas in
| the 1500s was of course unrelated to industrialism
| emerging centuries later. Much of that was an accident of
| immunology.
|
| Note that industrialized countries without colonial
| empires ended up at least as rich as the big European
| colonial powers.
| oa335 wrote:
| > If and how much the colonies made them even richer is
| debatable, but it was probably a net cost on average. This
| is one of several insights counter to "common sense" that
| economists have figured out.
|
| I haven't heard this before, do you have sources where I
| could learn more?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| of course he doesn't because he just made it up.
|
| he's probably grasping to "research" from before the 30s,
| if even that, expect to ignore elites and focus on
| average country gdp nonsense.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > Think about the components of all those innovations from
| the past and if they would have been possible (to scale)
| without violent and forcible extraction of resources from
| around the globe, incl forced labor.
|
| This is just silly. Everywhere had forced labour, but didn't
| manage to build what the west did. The African slavers
| selling their fellow continent-dwellers didn't somehow manage
| to pick all the people who could build the most advanced
| things in the world at the time.
|
| Oxford University was founded in 1096, long before what
| you're describing. This is very strong evidence that the UK
| has a thousand years of excellent investment in education,
| which much better explains all the advantages that built its
| empire, the good bits and bad. Its advances are in part due
| to the Roman colonisation, which allowed Britain to
| rediscover things that much more advanced civilisation had
| discovered 1000 years prior to that founding, and then push
| on to far greater heights.
|
| There are entire countries that still wouldn't have
| universities today if left to their own devices. But they
| would still have slaves, because western powers wouldn't have
| ended this practice, either through Christianity or, if that
| didn't work, by force.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| What racist and xenophobic BS.
|
| Other civilizations had great academic and scientific
| revolutions, much before Oxfordians did anything of note.
| Just look at the history of Indian, Chinese, Persian, and
| Arabic mathematics for a simple example, or Indian
| linguistic inquiry for another.
|
| The romans did not discover anything the celts had built in
| the british isles; they largely existed in opposition to
| them.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > Other civilizations had great academic and scientific
| revolutions
|
| I didn't say they didn't. The ancient Egyptians built the
| Pyramids, too. But that doesn't mean Egypt sustained that
| advantage and developed leading-edge science, values, and
| technology to the present day. They had a brief moment,
| and they are today in some ways a very cool country, but,
| as with most countries, they measure progress as "how far
| along the tech and culture trees we are compared to the
| West".
|
| > The romans did not discover anything the celts had
| built in the british isles; they largely existed in
| opposition to them.
|
| Maybe you should read my comment again tomorrow, with a
| clearer head.
|
| > What racist and xenophobic BS.
|
| A much clearer head.
| yobbo wrote:
| From an economist's perspective, energy is not typically
| recognised as a critical quantity. In so far as it is
| considered, it's thought of as an incidental property of some
| good or service being traded like oil or electricity.
|
| But technological progress can be understood as successively
| more sophisticated ways of capturing and directing energy from
| natural processes. Economic growth has always occurred
| downstream of technologies that extract more energy or increase
| efficiency. Sheep, horses, windmills, coal, oil, nuclear ...
| etc.
|
| Metrics like kWh per capita might become more interesting as
| the understanding of energy/growth matures. Or externally added
| energy (by electricity, oil, and fertiliser) per calorie of
| food.
|
| To achieve growth while also reducing energy use, efficiency
| must be increased proportionately through technology.
| Electrification of transport (bc low thermodynamic efficiency
| of combustion engines) is an example of how we are doing this.
|
| So even if technology continues to develop, unless efficiency
| grows faster than energy sources wane, there will only be
| economic degrowth.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| > From an economist's perspective, energy is not typically
| recognised as a critical quantity.
|
| Energy is a critical quantity in multiple subfields of
| economy including environmental economy where it's a core
| issue.
| paganel wrote:
| There's also almost the entire economics-related work of
| Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. From his Wikipedia page:
|
| > He is best known today for his 1971 magnum opus The
| Entropy Law and the Economic Process, in which he argued
| that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when
| put to use in economic activity. A progenitor and a
| paradigm founder in economics, Georgescu-Roegen's work was
| decisive for the establishing of ecological economics as an
| independent academic sub-discipline in economics.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > To achieve growth while also reducing energy use,
| efficiency must be increased proportionately through
| technology.
|
| And that's something which happens thousands of times per day
| all over the world in different businesses and in almost all
| human endeavour. We're constantly getting more and more
| utility out of the material and energy we use. So growth is
| both using more resources, as well as using them in better
| ways.
| bell-cot wrote:
| For reducing energy use, social values matter at least as
| much as technology. Imagine if we had no better technology
| - but most people drove small cars instead of large SUV's
| and trucks, and jet plane trips were not routine for
| hundreds of millions of people.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _and jet plane trips were not routine for hundreds of
| millions of people_
|
| So lower standards of living.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Feel free to live in a modest-sized, well-insulated
| version of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Breakers
| with a live-in domestic staff serving your meals on solid
| gold plates.
|
| Or is your definition of luxury "performative wasting of
| energy"? If so, the _lower_ the tech that you have access
| to, the better for the rest of humanity. :(
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's why I'm convinced Jean Baptiste Say is a much more
| insightful early economist than Riccardo.
| bawolff wrote:
| Isn't that almost a tautology? Technological progress is often
| defined as something that increases efficiency. It would be
| shocking if they weren't connected.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| Economist here...
|
| An unexpected (to me!) prize but definitely a good one.
|
| What's notable is that mokyr's research is very, very accessible
| to a layman. You can read his books and understand them nearly
| perfectly without needing substantial technical background. (Of
| course there's a huge existing literature in economics and
| history he's engaging with which you won't know, but I'm not an
| economic historian either so a lot of it is unfamiliar to me
| too.). Try it! Hopefully you learn something.
|
| Also the committee always releases a good non-technical summary
| of the laureates work and an even better "more technical"
| summary. You can start there for an overview.
|
| As for the point which will be raised endlessly here that this is
| "not a real Nobel" - whatever. No one in the economics profession
| cares. Alfred Nobel doesn't have a monopoly on prizes or priority
| to decide which fields are worth recognizing. It's our highest
| prestige prize. Call it what you want.
| dkural wrote:
| Agreed! I am a big fan of Robert Allen's books on the
| industrial revolution as a counterpoint to Mokyr. (The two are
| of course are friends with each other as well).
| laborcontract wrote:
| Are there any good papers floating out there?
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| Sure...
|
| Mokyr's northwestern website has links to a lot of his
| papers.
|
| An _extremely crude_ selection rule:
|
| Anything published in the American economic review, quarterly
| journal of economics, journal of political economy has the
| profession's "highest stamp of approval". It's really hard to
| publish anything there. (There are two journals im not
| listing in that "top" category but he has no papers there on
| his website.). On aghion or howitts websites, look for the
| above journals but also econometrica and the review of
| economic studies. Those are the "top five" in the field.
|
| There are surely papers in good history and Econ history
| journals on mokyr's website but I don't know the journals!
|
| Standards for any chapter in a "handbook of X economics" or
| "handbook of the economics of X" are high - those should be
| good surveys.
|
| Similarly a paper in the "annual review of economics"
|
| Also mokyr has a bunch of work on Amazon. "The lever of
| riches" is a classic. "A culture of growth" is well regarded.
|
| Finally he has a forthcoming book called "two paths to
| prosperity" with two other distinguished guys - one Econ
| historian (greif) and one political economy guy (tabellini).
| It's coming out in about three weeks. Good timing, Princeton
| U Press!
|
| Aghion and howitt have a growth textbook at the advanced
| undergrad level called "the economics of growth."
|
| They have a much more advanced work called "endogenous growth
| theory" which is for specialists (or at least anyone with
| first year PhD macro)
|
| Aghion has a book called "the power of creative destruction."
| nibles_and_bits wrote:
| _No one in the economics profession cares._
|
| Another contradiction by a member of the economics profession.
| It seems to me they care very much. By linking the prize to
| Alfred Nobel's name (and to the Nobel institutions), the
| Riksbank ensured the prize would immediately carry great
| symbolic prestige. The Nobel brand was already well established
| internationally, so adopting the name helped the economics
| prize gain recognition, gravitas, and legitimacy.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| I stand by my statement.
|
| I'd love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the marginal
| effect on the profession's "legitimacy" (which is what? and
| how's it measured?) from having the prize include Nobel's
| name vs. not including it.
|
| Really we don't care.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| You care so little you spent time to claim you don't care
| twice in a row.
|
| > I'd love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the
| marginal effect on the profession's "legitimacy" (which is
| what? and how's it measured?) from having the prize include
| Nobel's name vs. not including it.
|
| I don't have an estimate for that, but we have an estimate
| on how much money the Sverige Riskbank bankers were ready
| to spend in that effort. Maybe it didn't pan out but some
| people definitely had a multimillion dollar interest in
| making that happen. As an economist you must wonder what
| their incentives could have been ...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > You care so little you spent time to claim you don't
| care twice in a row.
|
| I've seen this style of argument before and I think it's
| a non sequitur and total BS. The fact that he may care
| about feeling his opinion is being misrepresented is
| totally different from what his original "we don't care"
| statement referred to.
| baxtr wrote:
| Are you sure though? I don't have an opinion on this
| specific case, but I have been in situations where
| someone claims to have no interest at all in a topic and
| then doesn't stop talking about it.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Imo the economics profession very much suffers from
| inferiority complex known as "physics envy".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _economics profession very much suffers from
| inferiority complex known as "physics envy"_
|
| You're mixing up quantitative finance and economics.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Excuse me? Quant finance doesn't claim to be devising
| grand theories about how the world operates (is more akin
| to engineering). And when it does, any delineation from
| economics is moot.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Quant finance doesn 't claim to be devising grand
| theories about how the world operates_
|
| What do you base this on?
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| What's quintessential quant finance? Black-Scholes and
| no-arbitrage pricing. Don't you agree it's much more of a
| tool than a theory of how the world works.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's quintessential quant finance? Black-Scholes
| and no-arbitrage pricing_
|
| This is a bad model to pick to exemplify physics envy
| given it's based on thermodynamic dispersion.
|
| The term "physics envy" broadly applies to all social
| sciences lacking a mathematical basis. It's a criticism
| of using math where it doesn't belong. That hasn't really
| fit (until very recently) with economics. It's been a
| classic complaint about quantitative finance's loftier
| visions of universality.
| nibles_and_bits wrote:
| _Really we don't care._
|
| My point was speak for yourself, the history does not
| suggest you are correct. Evidence economists do
| care[1][2][3]. Economics was still a relatively newer niche
| discipline[4].
|
| [1] https://developingeconomics.org/2024/10/22/the-nobel-
| illusio...
|
| [2] https://ideas.repec.org/b/pup/pbooks/10841.html
|
| [3]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/nobel-
| priz...
|
| [4] https://cooperative-individualism.org/parrish-
| john_rise-of-e...
| HSO wrote:
| I'd love an estimate from you (or anyone) about the
| marginal effect on the profession's "care" (which is what?
| and how's it measured?) from having the prize include
| Nobel's name vs. not including it.
|
| Since you stand by your statement so strongly, you should
| have it already, correct?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It seems to me they care very much_
|
| I'd actually argue that the only people who love this piece
| of trivia are economists, financiers and a particular vein of
| Reddit.
| caycep wrote:
| I think OP meant that economists do consider the prize highly
| despite the distinction between its particular situation vs.
| the "core Nobels"
| dkga wrote:
| What the other poster meant was that economists don't care
| that it is not an original Nobel prize.
|
| Source: also an economist
| bawolff wrote:
| I mean, i hear people call the Turing prize the "nobel" of
| computer science, and the fields medal the nobel of math.
| Sports that arent in the olympics usually have some
| competition people refer to as the "olympics" of that sport.
|
| Who really cares, its the top prize in the field, that is all
| that matters.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the two others but Aghion really isn't a
| surprise given the track record the Nobel committee for the
| econ prize has of following hype rather than anything else.
|
| (I've been very critical of Aghion's work for the past few
| years since I've been exposed to his work over that period, but
| it always appeared to me as a potential laureate given the
| resonance of his work)
| currymj wrote:
| if you run into anyone who is serious about the "fake Nobel"
| complaint, just ask them why they have such a high opinion of
| taking money from an arms dealer, and such a low opinion of
| taking money from a public institution in one of the Nordic
| welfare states.
| snowAbstraction wrote:
| Maybe I will try Mokyr. I saw his "A Culture of Growth" is
| available as an audio book. What do you think about that book?
| Thanks
| mallowdram wrote:
| Sustained growth, like "economic science", is an oxymoron.
|
| There is no science that correlates the use of arbitrary symbols
| posed as capital. Risk is risk, a primate bias.
|
| Economics is essentially "mathematical politics". We can no more
| create a science of economics than a science of mythology.
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049658/blunt-instrument/
|
| Downvoting only proves the point: economics is like any primate
| bias, it enforces status at the cost of the collective or
| institutional. The US is a sad case for economic "modeling."
| sethammons wrote:
| A stable biome feels like sustained growth to me, via
| destruction and recycling. The jungle is always growing, even
| as plants die and rot.
|
| Maybe the word should be "activity" vs growth.
| mallowdram wrote:
| On a desertifying planet trapped in climate extinction, the
| jungle is only shrinking.
| sethammons wrote:
| Look up reforestation work. It is a light in dark times.
| mallowdram wrote:
| We're inside the first animal created mass
| desertification project. Reforestation is nonsense.
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SG8IGOzeF49Pbf8JZ-
| JWyzPq...
|
| We lose 10 million sq miles of forests a year and have
| lost 1/3 of forest areas since 1000Ad, so "reforesting"
| isn't a viable reversal project.
|
| And reforestation is poorly understood as "reforesting"
| is pursued on land already lost to forest capability.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59799-8
|
| "Reforestation is a prominent climate change mitigation
| strategy, but available global maps of reforestation
| potential are widely criticized and highly variable,
| which limits their ability to provide robust estimates of
| both the locations and total area of opportunity"
| sethammons wrote:
| Wikipedia says "Globally, planted forests increased from
| 4.1% to 7.0% of the total forest area between 1990 and
| 2015." And the Green Wall in China is arguably doing cool
| things.
|
| Reforestation might not solve our issues, but I don't see
| "nonsense."
| simiones wrote:
| A jungle is generally stable and doesn't grow in the sense
| that we say that GDP grows - definitely for large periods of
| time, with occasional exceptions. The fact that individuals
| grow in this jungle doesn't mean that the jungle itself
| grows. By whatever metric you look at it (mass, CO2
| consumption, O2 emission, etc) the jungle doesn't grow, at
| least not for the majority of its lifetime (obviously, at
| some point it grew from an original small size to its current
| size, and it will occasionally experience waxing and waning
| as the climate and other geographical features change).
|
| By contrast, when people talk about sustained growth in
| economics, they do actually mean growth, an increase in the
| amount of goods and services consumed by the totality of
| individuals.
| mallowdram wrote:
| It's an extinction project, growth or sustained growth,
| you're describing mathematical politics, which is
| arbitrary. All animals reach a homeostasis/allostasis with
| the environment. Humans don't require synthetic categories
| ie "goods and services" we require functional relationships
| to resources that become streamlined into ecological
| categories in order to survive.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _jungle is generally stable and doesn 't grow in the
| sense that we say that GDP grows_
|
| Jungles today are fantastically more complicated than they
| were a billion years ago.
|
| Earth's biosphere's energy flux is higher today than it was
| hundreds of billions of years ago [1]. This is due to
| various metabolic "innovations." It also occurred because
| life directly altered Earth's atmosphere and at least
| surface geology that made it more conducive to more life
| [2].
|
| > _By contrast, when people talk about sustained growth in
| economics, they do actually mean growth, an increase in the
| amount of goods and services consumed_
|
| This is not how _this fucking paper_ defines growth. Nor is
| gross consumption how most models define growth--the word
| production is right there in GDP.
|
| [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10288578/
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-020-00116-w
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| The US has among the richest citizens in the world, with a high
| quality of life. You could do worse for modeling, like perhaps
| your socialist darlings.
|
| Growth is not necessary but provides benefits. A country that
| grows improves its quality of life. Extreme poverty levels have
| been plumetting for decades because of said growth ( mostly
| represented in China and India). The poorest countries trade
| the least.
|
| Economics today is mostly about data. For instance tariffs lead
| to worse outcomes for consumers; only populists like them. Or,
| compare housing affordability between areas with lax zoning or
| strict zoning. Just because data isn't gleaned from a physics
| experiment doesn't mean it isn't useful; more than likely you
| probably invoked social science research data to support a POV
| that wasn't a controlled experiment; was that all in fact nil
| in value? The facts don't matter, or rather, there are no facts
| and only ideology exists? That must be why communists twist
| themselves over "is" and "ought"
| mallowfram wrote:
| As a post-symbolic, post-causal thinker (not a "socialist"
| which is also political nonsense), economics is purely the
| translation to settlement coercion for the production of Myth
| of the State/center-worshipping ("richest citizens in the
| world" in what sense? cash? real estate? these are arbitrary
| variables).
|
| Until we move to measurement (ie analog) rather than binary
| statistics (which is still merely a project based in
| counting, yes, 1,2,3) then we are totally informationally
| emasculated.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| > As a post-symbolic, post-causal thinker (not a
| "socialist" which is also political nonsense)
|
| That tells me nothing about your perspective. Your ideology
| is as identifiable as anyone else's and you have to do
| politics like anyone else.
|
| > economics is purely the translation to settlement
| coercion for the production of Myth of the State/center-
| worshipping
|
| It's not up to you. Economics has a definition.
|
| > richest citizens in the world" in what sense? cash? real
| estate? these are arbitrary variables).
|
| Wealth.
| mallowfram wrote:
| Wealth is arbitrary post settlement. Show me a currency
| from 700AD still traded on a regulated market. In that
| sense, wealth is a decadent category the West will be
| destroyed by, look at the current state of oligarchy,
| particularly tech. There's little if any ecological
| parity in these displays of wealth and extraction status.
|
| My ideology is the replacement of symbols with
| measurement. I have no relationship with politics, which
| is clearly a dinosaur still walking the Earth. Politics
| will vanish in the post-symbolic like a disease we cured
| easily.
|
| No economics is like any word, it's arbitrary, that is
| HOW it needs a definition that varies from state to
| state.
|
| "Economic theory has never gotten any better at
| prediction. Its explanations are always after the fact.
| The mathematical models economists have devoted
| themselves to for more than a century can't be improved
| to enhance their empirical relevance." Alex Rosenberg
|
| The deadness of the West is so unusual, as if the whole
| enterprise was for self-extinction of a way of poetically
| enhancing words, narratives and myths/religion. The West
| was simply a temporary state.
|
| The west assumed individual happiness (politics,
| entertainment, biographical myth making, celebrity) was
| the path to collective happiness. But of course, in our
| agentic languages, that was simply the hydra of our
| undoing. The west was like a temporary infection that
| colonized and dominated more collective people, but now
| we will be subsumed if we don't destroy the world in a
| suicidal urge to dominate
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Downvoting only proves the point
|
| You keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel any
| better.
|
| In real life, it may mean that people feel that, though you
| state your points as though they are obviously true, you have
| given no reason for us to actually agree with your dogmatic
| assertions. That doesn't prove that economics is a primate
| bias; it proves that you are not doing well at persuading
| people.
| mallowfram wrote:
| There is no such thing as economic science. If you can find
| an empirical, demonstration of mental events, biology,
| correlating value through arbitrary means, I'm all ears.
| Until I see proof, this is witch doctor level thinking
| hoisted onto the West as a self-immolation project.
| addcommitpush wrote:
| Aren't there quite a few historians, anthropologists and so on
| that study mythology?
| mallowfram wrote:
| Of course, both scientific approaches of history and myth are
| the work of fabulists. eg Jung, Campbell. The point is to
| examine the myth and then history as the source of causal
| illusions.
|
| "The myth is the prototypal, fundamental, integrative mind
| tool ... to integrate a variety of events in a temporal and
| causal framework." Merlin Donald
|
| That's folk science, what Donald is describing (he admit this
| in Origins of the Modern Mind).
|
| Remember that the causal framework must be evaded to reach
| scientific correlations, where multiple contradictions can
| lead to knowledge. Myth and history were addictive hiccups
| that trapped humans in way simplistic explanations.
|
| We evade this "plain English" silliness, like economics, or
| go bust.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| What is the smallest fraction of a Nobel Prize that a winner can
| be awarded?
| nradov wrote:
| 1/3
| arjunnarayan wrote:
| 1/4. The max number of recipients of any prize is 3, but it can
| be split into a half, and then one of those halves into two
| further halves, for a 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/4 split. (It can also be
| split equally into 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3).
| Tycho wrote:
| I was thinking about this concept of creative destruction
| recently.
|
| I move to my neighbourhood in 2019. Before I got round to
| visiting them, a bunch of pubs and eateries closed down for the
| pandemic, and never re-opened. One pub became new apartments. A
| cafe became some sort of spa.
|
| Take the pub for instance, I could imagine it was a lifestyle
| business for someone who made enough money from it, but not a
| whole lot. Is it net good or bad (for the area) for somewhere
| like that to close? Was this lifestyle business depriving the
| area of better services, more tax revenue? Or does the area now
| get less services and the money is mostly extracted into the
| coffers of a non-local property development enterprise. Quite
| hard to judge. Maybe there's some good heuristics for estimating
| such things?
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Just in case you missed it, last year's winners included it as
| one phenomena in their 2019 book, The Narrow Corridor, it's
| kind of like an interpretation of history through their
| particular lens.
| Maxion wrote:
| A park will generate less revenue than an apartment building, a
| sports complex, or a cafe.
|
| Not all value is quantifiable in USD.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Tycho didn't claim it was. In fact, they explicitly asked if
| such a heuristic existed.
| jlhawn wrote:
| this isn't necessarily true. While it generates less _direct_
| revenue, it increases nearby land value in two ways: 1)
| business activity which would have taken place on that parcel
| "overflows" to nearby parcels, ie, the demand for those other
| land uses doesn't go away and increases prices in the
| surrounding area. 2) the park provides real value to its
| users and access to that value also increases nearby ground
| rents.
| andrepd wrote:
| In the year 2025 the zeitgeist is decidedly against any
| considerations beside crude profit. Like someone pointed out: a
| park generates less revenue than a cafe. And a neighbourhood
| cafe probably less than a hyperoptimised gigachain. But is an
| urban park not an important part of quality of life? And is not
| a neighbourhood cafe with its crowd of regulars and familiar
| faces and accessible prices a better thing that yet another
| chain store #28174? [1]
|
| No space in 2025 for any such considerations.
|
| [1] Case in point: I just read a news piece announcing that an
| 85 year old cafe in downtown Lisbon will be closed down to make
| way to yet another generic gentrified """brunch place""" for
| tourists. The regulars, many of them elderly and for whom the
| friendly place was basically a living room to help stave off
| lonelyness; many of them working people used to stopping by for
| fresh bread and a chat on their way home from work, are
| dismayed of course. But it's more "economically efficient" to
| cater to tourist jerkoffs and sell them the same overpriced egg
| on croissant that they can have in any large city in the
| world...
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| This seems like a continuation on the theme of last year's award.
| Very nice!
| jcattle wrote:
| I find macroeconomics fascinating. These theories to explain how
| growth works, what incentivizes it, where value comes from, I
| find them really fascinating.
|
| It kind of echoes a common theme with LLMs, of humans creating
| systems that somehow work and only afterwards trying to make
| sense of _why_ they work. We know that transformers are good at
| capturing context, and gradient descent is good at arriving at a
| working model of that context but how exactly this knowledge is
| being distilled and stored in an embedding space, no exact clue.
|
| Is there some course which teaches the basics of macroeconomics?
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| You can start with a used copy of an older edition of mankiw's
| text which is a standard undergrad reference.
|
| Barro also has an old undergrad macro text which is good
|
| The gap between undergrad macro and professional macro is
| extremely large. That shouldn't dissuade you it's just a note.
| xbar wrote:
| Fantastic selection. As ever, it is worthwhile to be familiar
| with the winners' works, particularly this audience and this
| year.
| hearsathought wrote:
| Why not just Economics. Why do they have to play games with
| everyone by adding "science" to everything? Economic "Sciences"
| is just as absurd as Creation "Science".
| Perz1val wrote:
| "Just economics" would go to the best businessman, no?
| hearsathought wrote:
| Is this a real question? Businessmen are in the business of
| management. It's why businessmen tend to get MBAs. Whilest
| economists get degrees in economics.
| mediaman wrote:
| This is terribly confused.
|
| Economics is the study of scarcity. Scarcity comes in many
| forms: land, attention, materials, time. (It is not the study
| of money, which is a common belief of those who have not
| thought about what money is. Money is merely a fungible token
| claim on resources, not the resource itself.)
|
| You could also believe that the study of physics is just the
| study of business, because businessmen operate in a world
| governed by physics.
| btown wrote:
| There's actually a fair amount of drama around why this is!
|
| https://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/the-nobel-family-disso...
|
| Apparently, when the Riksbank decided it wanted to publicly
| fund a prize for the category, the verbosity of the name of the
| prize was a concession to distance it from the other simply-
| named Nobel Prizes, funded by the family.
|
| > What was the position of the Nobel family? Three days before
| the meeting of April 26, the then director of the Nobel
| Foundation, Nils Stahle, met two members of the family and
| telephonically talked with a third one. Their position was that
| "it should not become like a sixth Nobel Prize", but that if
| the economics prize could be kept clearly separate from the
| Nobel Prizes then it might be an acceptable idea.
|
| > They obtained her written approval of the economics prize
| "under given conditions," namely that the new prize in all
| official documents and statements should be kept separated from
| the Nobel prize, and called the "prize in economic science in
| memory of Alfred Nobel." In a telephonic conversation with a
| nephew, Martha Nobel said that the whole thing was prearranged
| and impossible to oppose, so that one could only hope that they
| would keep their pledge that no confusion with the real Noble
| prize should occur.
|
| > What has happened is an unparalleled example of successful
| trademark infringement. However, nobody in the world can
| prevent journalists, economists and the general public from
| talking about the "Nobel prize in economics," with all its
| connotations.
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