this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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[โ€“] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Ugh. I feel dirty for defending economists, but...

Laws are just commonly observed relationships, and observed relationships always exist within a given set of boundaries and assumptions.

Change the boundaries or the context, and the law may no longer apply.

Consider Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation:

F ~ Mm/r^2

This observed relationship doesn't hold under very large M or very small r. In those contexts, a different relationship is required. That doesn't invalidate this one, though. It just maks it situationally useful.

Which all of these laws are.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

He has a point in that economics should be more humble. It's a social science, not a hard science, and it should treat itself with the same level of introspection and humility as sociology or psychology.