In my 70-year lifetime, as best I remember, the first ersatz-science to successfully fob itself off as a legitimate “natural science” was Economics. [Today the most prestigious universities (i.e., Sophists) fob off all kinds of crazy sophisticated bullshit fields as if they too were legitimate sciences, sometimes even as if they were legitimate “natural sciences.” ] Once an ersatz-science achieves the political status of a truly useful natural science, the (worldwide) Social Oligarchy accepts its pronouncements as the factual equivalent of Newton’s Laws of Motion or any other principle of natural science. Fact – not opinion!!!
The Social Oligarchy of the Lawyer Industry (i.e., cartel of Judges and prestigious Lawyers) is joined by the rest of the (worldwide) Social Oligarchy of the varying worlds of professions and institutions, especially governments. Sometimes we get to see or hear a politician and his vaguely relevant foolish commentary concerning the “scientific importance” of innovative Social Protocols. So what!!!
Always we get to experience the coercive power of (all putatively legitimate) institutions and most especially governments through the latest innovative changes to Social Protocols (that come directly or indirectly) from the “regulatory” components of all the governments – local, state and federal.
For many years, decades even, I have not been allowed to throw out garbage as simple garbage without first inconveniently, even disgustingly, segregating component parts – unless I wish to risk criminal punishment for “breaking the law.” Those Social Protocols of garbage disposal were imposed as a non-political Social Protocol because of “Peer Reviewed” Environmental Scientific Study research. (Occasionally formal legislation is actually voted on and passed, but few have any awareness of details – even among the dopey voting legislators themselves.)
(I have never heard of “scientific proof” that we are really running out of space to dump the garbage. Much of urban civilized history was based in cities that had been constructed atop the garbage that was left by both prior civilizations and the early version of contemporary civilization – such as lower Manhattan in New York City.)
Until the inventiveness of post-modern Sophists (in the form of prestige University Social Oligarchies) altered its meaning, “Peer Review” meant every single rational individual (in the natural science at issue) in the entire world is encouraged to study the Methods and Procedures used and both the complete database as well as the hypothesis being tested (especially by independent repetition) for any and every flaw. (Any true scientist knows how easy it is to make a mistake.)
Lots of “Peers” around the world studied Gregor Mendel’s (1822-1884) research with the reproduction of pea pods centuries ago. (Today we have genetic engineering as a powerful, if imperfect, science to reliably improve human life.) Isaac Newton (1642-1726) and Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) three centuries ago published scientific material specifically for “Peer Review.” And both Newton and Leibniz were very cautious in publishing their independent discovery of the accurate mathematical techniques now called elementary Calculus – the basic mathematics that has been the misapplied vehicle carrying speculative Macroeconomics into the Social Protocols of post-modern life as if it were as reliable as a legitimate natural science.
My previous two essays referred to some of the “blow-ups” that powerfully exhibit the illegitimacy of MacroEconomic Peer Reviewed Scientific Research – exposing it as an ersatz-science. (Sophisticated bullshit is a more common sense description.)
Actually that requires a more precise description than that. The catastrophic financial “blow-ups” illustrate the unreliability of the conclusions that Macroeconomists come up with whenever they claim to precisely quantify and/or contain the natural risks that both human free will and the other variables of nature eternally contain.
[The eternally imperfect quest for “certainty” over the centuries among real philosophers is at the heart of all rational thought and inquiry since Socrates (with a definite knowledge of and from both Anaxagoras and Protagoras before him) began the whole philosophy (especially epistemology) narrative 24 centuries ago.]
My criticism of “Peer Review” is methodologically specific and very simple. As long as one Peer is in disagreement there is no real “Peer Review” until the research is corrected or the disputing Peer is hospitalized in a mental facility (at least until the flagrant irrationality passes). You cannot have partial agreement of opinion with Scientific Peers and still claim “Peer Review.” It is not a popular vote (as alleged by the “Climate Change” Political Movement of worldwide mandatory change to human freedom which is so dramatically and adamantly promoted by the worldwide Social Oligarchy.)
It may be partially true. It may be totally false. But then to compound the mere hypothesis with such draconian mandates on the world’s Social Protocols, all predicated on a complex set of hysterically promoted long-term implications and ramifications is far outside of any form of rational thought I am aware of.
[Maybe I’m just stupid – and all those sensitive mega-millionaire entertainment industry actors and other celebrities (of the “politically active” type) are the real scientific Experts and Authorities. Since Climate Change always takes center stage at Davos, maybe Davos is a place where geniuses gather to bemoan the stupidity of common folk like me – still afflicted with an out-of-date “vision” of life requiring rational explanations to faithfully believe in what is True and what is Good and what is Fair in harmony with Justice. Doesn’t that sound stupid, today?]
Well, to get back to post-modern “Peer Review,” today it is considered reasonable and normal that disagreements of scientific fact between credentialed scientists does not negate the scientific legitimacy of the (preferably Politically Correct) “Scientific Study” and its conclusion.
The saddest truth in the entire topic of “Peer Review” involves medical research today. Sometimes it happens for parochial reasons (i.e., profitability of the businesses selling the product and funding the research) and often it happens for Social Justice Idealist motivations (i.e., Political Correct reasons misusing taxpayer or endowed philanthropy funding). The result is that non-scientific “Scientific Studies” arrive at unreliable (therefore unscientific) medical conclusions to the detriment of humanity and science (i.e., the pursuit of the truth). Even the sheer inadequacy of a statistically unreliable database does not seem to inhibit the arriving at, and promotion of, the desired “Peer Reviewed” conclusion.
Alfred Nobel’s 3rd Scientific endowed award, after physics and chemistry, was for “Physiology and Medicine.” That last science isn’t as rigorous and reliable (relative to the scientific tools and devices currently available) as was the case when the whole Nobel Prize enterprise got started back in 1901. Furthermore, the prestige and power of Nobel Prizes seems to me the essential motivation causing the invention, in 1969, of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science. (Alfred Nobel, who used and understood science, had nothing to do with it – he was long dead. Politicians did it all by themselves.)
Someday all these politically motivated prestigious assholes within the Social Oligarchy will find a way to extend the corruption of both “Peer Review” and “Methods and Procedures” to the rest of their politically motivated (and invariably idealistic) ersatz-sciences that have already turned 1 to 2 generations of college students into largely unemployable college graduates with a faithfully-believed (P.C.) vision of Human Nature devoted to all the Ideals, not just Social Justice, but also saving the “delicate ecostructure of planet earth.” They will also be blessed with a significant college loan debt to follow them through life (in place of a practical education which would enable them to think for themselves – that used to be the general consequence of attending a college or university).
Well, at least the new generations will be dogmatically sensitive and compassionate to all the Politically Correct ideals. [You know, top priority fighting eternally against (white) racism, sexism, homophobia and Islamophobia – the real existential dangers to the American People and the American Constitutional System as judged by the Social Oligarchy.]
(And don’t ever forget to “protect the environment” according to every Social Protocol scientifically researched by the great “ersatz” scientists of “Peer Reviewed Environmentalism” and “Peer Reviewed Ecology” – an ever-growing and credentialed set of career opportunities.)
Getting back to macroeconomics and me, I first encountered the subject in college over half a century ago. I had an excellent professor in the then standard 3 credit, 3 hour per week, Economics 101 that tens of millions of college students over the decades were exposed to. Though I was a physical science major, Economics 101 was a required course as it was for most college course work. Kind of a practical topic – money.
[Five years later, my cousin attended college and discovered the same 3 hour per week kind of introductory courses miraculously were reclassified as a 4 credit, 3 hour per week, identical text book, identical course. There are two rational explanations for that. First you attain an identical degree with 25% less coursework. Or, alternatively, you pay 33% more for the same identical coursework. Or both. But then they always raise the prices every year anyway in Higher Education. (Kind of more like a “racket” than a legal business.)]
This all took place a few years before the Nobel Prize foolishness began in 1969. My professor taught me that, as a natural science, Economics has only two natural laws. (Physics and Chemistry are filled with useful discoveries of imperfectly but usefully and precisely predictable “natural laws.”) The more important Economic Law is called the Law of Supply and Demand and operates in (and rationally explains) a Free Market. The lesser is called the Law of Diminishing Returns. It was all very rational, in harmony with the way Human Nature really operates with universal individual Free Will.
All the buying is called Demand. All the selling is the Supply. Wherever equilibrium or balance is found between the palpable aggregate Demand and the palpable aggregate Supply is the place where the price is established. If people didn’t ever change their needs or their desires, Demand would never change. Idealistic systems cold impose a Just Price – in theory.
Only people have Free Will. It screws up every Just Price over time. It’s those damn common people with free will making their own damn choices and screwing up the system. (In the “tool kit” of the politically idealistic, stronger criminal sanctions inevitably follow.)
Over the course of space and time in human nature, financial activity cannot escape the Law of Supply and Demand. But it has a big deficiency in contrast to the natural laws of physics or chemistry or any other real science. There is no rational way one can specifically predict When and How the inevitable corrections (or adjustments or reversals) will occur. The Time Parameter cannot be used rationally – therefore, the “model” can never be dynamically and reliably matched to nature.
It’s just guesses and estimates. Those glorified guesses make a lot of people (in the Social Oligarchy especially) feel comfortable, even though they never get a rational explanation which they can use to explain rationally to someone else. [You know, without cliches and generalities and emotional appeals and all the other forms of Sophistry (i.e., sophisticated bullshit).]
(Rational explanations always include answering everybody’s questions about Methods and Procedures and data and its verification the way an eternally annoying Socrates would ask so as to “clarify” what is being described and to “clarify” all the fancy terms the Sophists we call Experts and Authorities so casually throw around in the schools, the universities, the professions, the organizations, the institutions and, of course, all the governments.)
Before bringing this first part of the topic of MacroEconomics and Peer Review to a close, I need to emphasize with 3 little anecdotes (one from television, one from a movie and one from a cab driver) how unprepared for individual rational judgment American students have been formally educated to responsibly perform. The next essay will be about Economics as a natural law scientific field, and the “Econometric” ersatz-engineering that politically (in the Social Oligarchy) was used to impose the ersatz-science of MacroEconomics on the Social Protocols of human life starting with the politicians’ invention in 1969 of the Nobel Prize for Economic Science (no pun intended).
Anecdote One. It was over 20 years ago when Homer Simpson was recruited to move his family to a different community for a significantly improved job. Bart Simpson was asked by his new teacher: “Bart, don’t you know your multiplication tables?” His witty answer was: “Well, I know of them.” I thought he was such a bad student that he uniquely avoided learning what every grade school student used to learn by the 4th grade (or never get to enter the 5th grade).
Anecdote Two. Five or ten years ago, the movie “Blood Diamond” was released. Set in Sierra Leone in West Africa, one of the leading characters has a young family with a young son, maybe 10 years old, who wishes to grow up and become a doctor. The father is played by the African actor (Djimon Hounsou) with the beautiful smile who plays the medically-helpful gladiator friend of Russel Crowe (Maximus) and never stops smiling all the way through my favorite movie, “Gladiator.” In an early scene in “Blood Diamond,” the young boy is sitting on the ground, crossed-legged, with about a dozen or so fellow students, led by a teacher, as they recite their multiplication tables. (Everybody who does not wish to go through life as “easy prey” to be cheated by others has to learn to calculate for themselves – even in a backward village of a corrupt government run Third World largely destitute country. [You do not knowingly cheat people in the Social Oligarchy and expect to avoid retaliation of a much more abusive type. On the other hand, cheating common people is rarely punished in this fucked-up (pardon my Thracian, as Socrates would say) post-modern era. Lying and cheating, to be secure practices, merely have to conform to the Politically Correct patterns and rhetoric. Why do you think it is called “Politically Correct?”]
Anecdote Three. Last year we were in a cab in Brooklyn, driven by a young man who had emigrated from Ghana (also in West Africa) a few years earlier. He was married and had young children in grade school in the Brooklyn version of the New York City public schools. He could not stop complaining about a public school system that refused to teach his son his “multiplication tables.” He kept asking: “How is he supposed to calculate and think for himself if he doesn’t memorize his multiplication tables?” I will never know if he really heard me when I said several times: “They don’t want the common people majority to think for themselves.”
It is a bizarre hypothesis to contemplate – especially (downward) from the bubble-like existence of the (worldwide) Social Oligarchy looking down on the more numerous but common people with their supposedly more base tastes and “insensitive” proclivities.
Alternatively, if you contemplate the hypothesis from the perspective of the non-professional class (lower middle class American common citizen) perspective (i.e., looking upward), it explains away quite a lot of the irrationality our world has operated with for, what by now is, almost a couple of generations.
