Experts in economics? What kind of experts are they if they don't know the reasons for the transition of primitive society to civilization? They are experts in secondary problems, and what can they predict without knowing the main thing - the reason for the birth of civilization and modern economics. Tens of thousands of scientific papers have been written to find out the reasons, starting with Morgan, and all to no avail. The phenomena that scientists consider the reasons for the emergence of civilization or its signs do not work. The value of an academic education after the advent of the Internet as a source of knowledge is not worth the lost time.
In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to dispute some of the finer points of the foundations of economics (with me taking a pro-Austrian point of view) in email exchanges with Bryan prior to his going to Princeton and studying economics under Ben Bernanke (Bryan received his Ph.D. around the same time that he wrote the 1997 article mentioned above).
The key shortcoming of the intellectual trajectory Bryan has been on is that he doesn't seem to have fully understood Austrian criticisms of the use of experimental methods in economics (and other social sciences). With individual mental states being the key causal factors driving human action, economists simply are not in a position to set up controlled experiments involving them or even to directly observe the relevant mental states of other economic agents (let alone quantify them by comparing them to concatenation of a measurement standard). It is this false methodological analogy with the natural sciences that Austrians reject in their critique of what they call behaviorism.
Moreover, the "modern neoclassical" assumptions that Bryan embraces are not founded any experimentation, nor even on a pretense of experimentation. For example, when Bryan protests that indifference between two contemplated courses of action can somehow be a basis for action, he is embracing a logical impossibility, not a proposition that has been verified somehow in something claiming to be a controlled laboratory experiment. Unlike Austrians, Bryan has never attempted to make a rigorous case for his preferred foundations, let alone resolve the contradictions implied by them that Austrian critics like Rothbard called attention to.
Economists have in fact set up controlled experiments: Vernon Smith won the econ Nobel for experimental economics. Pure logic is for abstract domains, for messy reality you need empiricism. Psychology should be the science of "mental states", though unfortunately much of it is woefully unscientific and begat the replication crisis. "Much" is not "all" though, as some things have in fact replicated.
Great letter. Look forward to your response.
Haven’t read this piece yet, but love the photo!
Are you planning to write a response to Matthew's query, Bryan?
😊
Experts in economics? What kind of experts are they if they don't know the reasons for the transition of primitive society to civilization? They are experts in secondary problems, and what can they predict without knowing the main thing - the reason for the birth of civilization and modern economics. Tens of thousands of scientific papers have been written to find out the reasons, starting with Morgan, and all to no avail. The phenomena that scientists consider the reasons for the emergence of civilization or its signs do not work. The value of an academic education after the advent of the Internet as a source of knowledge is not worth the lost time.
In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to dispute some of the finer points of the foundations of economics (with me taking a pro-Austrian point of view) in email exchanges with Bryan prior to his going to Princeton and studying economics under Ben Bernanke (Bryan received his Ph.D. around the same time that he wrote the 1997 article mentioned above).
The key shortcoming of the intellectual trajectory Bryan has been on is that he doesn't seem to have fully understood Austrian criticisms of the use of experimental methods in economics (and other social sciences). With individual mental states being the key causal factors driving human action, economists simply are not in a position to set up controlled experiments involving them or even to directly observe the relevant mental states of other economic agents (let alone quantify them by comparing them to concatenation of a measurement standard). It is this false methodological analogy with the natural sciences that Austrians reject in their critique of what they call behaviorism.
Moreover, the "modern neoclassical" assumptions that Bryan embraces are not founded any experimentation, nor even on a pretense of experimentation. For example, when Bryan protests that indifference between two contemplated courses of action can somehow be a basis for action, he is embracing a logical impossibility, not a proposition that has been verified somehow in something claiming to be a controlled laboratory experiment. Unlike Austrians, Bryan has never attempted to make a rigorous case for his preferred foundations, let alone resolve the contradictions implied by them that Austrian critics like Rothbard called attention to.
Economists have in fact set up controlled experiments: Vernon Smith won the econ Nobel for experimental economics. Pure logic is for abstract domains, for messy reality you need empiricism. Psychology should be the science of "mental states", though unfortunately much of it is woefully unscientific and begat the replication crisis. "Much" is not "all" though, as some things have in fact replicated.