alt Hacker NewsUntil this moment, I hadn't even thought that economics might be a scientific field. Do they really see themselves as one? It hasn't seemed like one from the outside.
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bell-cot • yesterday at 6:08 PM
Economics is a scientific field in the same sense that Astrology and Politics are. You formulate theories about what your customers want to hear. Then test those theories by telling your customers things, while observing both immediate reactions and how situations develop over time. That latter in conjunction with formulating updated theories about what your customers want... Endless loop.
Do they believe it's a science? Assume that Upton Sinclair's famous quote applies.
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without getting too deep into "field purity" [0], it's certainly a field of study insofar as game theory, psychology, anthropology, etc. are fields of study. It's possible to make certain models of behavior or outcome potentials, but running experiments is significantly more difficult than e.g. physics or biology.
So it's science inasmuch as anything with n=1 repeatability can be science
[0]: https://xkcd.com/435/