[nirvana]

There's a great deal of examples of this in economics, and this is not just a theoretical problem-- it causes bad electoral outcomes.

For instance, the idea that "government spending stimulates the economy" is a naive concept. It sounds good- right, because they are spending money, that means it is creating demand and the goods and services they are buying increases economic activity.

The scientific reality is, this naive concept is ignoring the cost of that government spending. All of the money government has comes from two sources- inflation and taxes. Whichever way they raise the money, they do economic damage.

Thus government spending, like Obama's so-called "stimulus" plan, actually hurts the economy.

This is why, for instance, the unemployment rate ended up being higher than Obama claimed it would be if his plan wasn't passed.. even though his plan was passed.

But it is not very hard to find people who believe that some other thing caused unemployment to be higher.

In fact, both the Republican and Demcorat parties, and their partisan's ideologies, reject the science of economics and embrace pseudo-science.

In my lifetime, I've seen a great increase in embracing pseudo-scientific concepts or even anti-science positions, most recently and alarmingly, by people who insist that they are right because "science" agrees with them.

Another example: Glaciers are getting smaller because of global warming. This belief is completely unscientific-- there is no way to know how many glaciers there are on earth, let alone whether they are getting smaller, and nobody has even tried to guess whether more of them are shrinking than growing.

Another example: The idea that the TSA protects us against airplane hijackings. Or that somehow the government is protecting us against terrorism. Or that mass shootings would be worse if guns were less regulated (the stats: 9.2 is the average number killed in areas where guns are banned, but only 2.2 people die in areas where the intended victims are allowed to be armed.)

Politics' natural enemy is science.

[josephlord]

Hmmm, a very political comment...

Firstly confusing Economics with a science rather than pseudo-science (or at least very bad science in that in most cases the assumptions required for the mathematical models are unrealistic and instantly forgotten), then stating as a fact some simple controversial (among economists too) statements which if true at all have a great deal more subtlety behind them and a number of which I believe to be flat out wrong.

I think trying to tackle the points would go way off topic but in my view the parent post gives a good example of some naive beliefs (although economics is insufficiently scientific to be able to prove them inconsistent with reality).

Edit: Changed 'post' to 'comment' and 'unrealistically' to 'unrealistic'.

[Steuard]

As far as I can tell, nothing that you've written here is at all relevant to the content of the linked article. (It's not a generic "people don't pay enough attention to science" article, though I suppose the headline could be misread that way.)

Also, economics is far, far, far from being a science. Does it have important things to teach us? Absolutely. But calling it "science" just muddies the waters about what science actually is.

[seanmcdirmid]

Stimulus is more about wealth redistribution in times of duress, when income equality is seriously out of whack. The only problem today is that the money is coming from low interest loans from China vs. heavy taxes on the rich (as during the Great Depression).

The flipside of stimulus spending is supply-side economics (or Voodoo economics according to the elder Bush), where cutting taxes magically increases revenue since there is more economy to tax. In reality, they basically drive up inequality, though either position can be useful in moderation and both are incredibly damaging when used too much.

Neither technique is based on scientific theory, rather they are more like strategies or heuristics to be used in managing the economy that are based more on experience and perhaps ideology. Economics is not a hard science, its a social science. So is forecasting their effects, or forecasting future economic behavior; without stimulus unemployment might have been worse, meaning Obama could have been more optimistic about the future outlook of the economy at that time.

[ppod]

>reject the science of economics and embrace pseudo-science.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that many professional practitioners of the "science" of economics disagree with your analysis. You can't just say that the guys who agree with you are good economists, and those who don't are bad economists.

[hazov]

The "market" that economists say about is their model of what they believe a market is, it's a mathematical model with a good amount of gaps, this is why you will always find economists disagreeing among them, it's not like physics because they have to decide to rely on more assumptions and less experimentation.

I used to work in earth sciences although not in glaciology, and their models are very sound to say about the now, not so much about the future, that glaciers retreats and expands is common knowledge (the Missoula flooding event is a good example), but I am sure with a warming planet, if that's the case, more glaciers would be retreating than expanding, this is easier to search for, but I know the World Glacier Monitoring Service have good data about that.

[yummyfajitas]

Your post would be much better if you avoided hot-button topics and focused on political examples that don't inspire strong emotional reactions. There are plenty of these - farm subsidies, a lot of occupational licensing, patent/copyright regimes, for example.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

[zalew]

> Politics' natural enemy is science.

I'd rather say science's natural enemy is politics.

[igouy]

>>... there is no way to know how many glaciers there are on earth ...<<

Because...?