
Beware “mathiness”: Algebra and data to reinforce ideological preconceptions - nkurz
http://www.johnkay.com/2015/10/07/beware-mathiness-the-use-of-algebra-and-data-to-reinforce-ideological-preconceptions
======
triplesec
This is an interesting, if rather flawed, blog post. From what I can see, he
says this (skip bullet points if you have read it):

\- Mathiness is truthiness, but in the way that putting down any mathematical
symbols lends an air of intelligence and truth to an argument, for many
people, especially those who don't or can't take the time to understand the
argument logic.

\- Then he explains how economics data are not as easy to construct with
universal agreement as with, say, physics (temperature). Agreement on
practical action is hard when contrary frames and interpretations appear
valid.

\- He then mentions how this might be a problem for defining capital and other
constructs for Piketty, but without any useful argument beyond this assertion.

\- He then contrasts Feynman's integrity, trying to disprove his own work to
make it better, to economist George Stigler's rhetorical style of conviction,
ignoring contrary arguments, and playing the polemicist.

\- He then mentions Isaiah Berlin's distinction between foxes who know little
about something , and hedgehogs who know one big thing.

All these are interesting frames by which to compare and contrast various
things. Yet his analysis, after bringing in all these ideas, is just to say
that economics needs both careful analysis and effective rhetoric. Well, duh,
but how does this tie into all the great setups he's made so far?

And mathy people are good at neither rhetoric nor polemic? But surely, if
you're afraid of these people, they would be a mathy person who is using
rhetoric to undermine the real philosophy and logic that should - pace Plato -
be informing the argument.

It's a post full of story and setup, but as yet, signifying nothing.

~~~
nickbauman
It's an attack on Piketty without any substance, best I can tell. The problem
with any attack on Piketty is that you can test his theory. Ironically, Bill
Gates took issue with Piketty's famous _r > g_ formula with at least one
predicate he would add. He didn't extrapolate on it (he should if he wants to
make a real argument), but at least he put _something_ down. Kay didn't even
bother with going that far. He should.

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vonnik
One of my economics professors in undergrad used to say, when teaching Milton
Friedman's monetary theory: "Given these assumptions, only GOD could reach a
different conclusion." And then he would cackle absurdly. The point was that
the ideology was hidden in the assumptions, and economics as a discipline was
a) corrupted by ideology and b) using mathiness to obscure that.

~~~
barry-cotter
Economics often mixes up normative and positive stances but at least it makes
it easy to separate them by using models. It makes the assumptions explicit.
You can then take the models and relax or change the assumptions and see Evart
changes. That's why and where macroeconomics approaches a science.

~~~
guelo
Science involves experiments. The best economists can do is take a few poorly
recorded historical measurements of incomprehensibly complicated systems and
try to force-fit them to their simple models.

~~~
xixi77
A lot of social science, including economics, does not involve experiments.
Perhaps you want to argue that social science is not science, but if so, I
personally find your definition of science a bit restrictive.

------
bbq
The author goes from

 _Every careful person equipped with a reliable thermometer will make the same
reading of temperature. There are alternative scales, Fahrenheit and Celsius,
but both record the same thing..._

to

 _Economics is genuinely harder. National income is a more complicated concept
than temperature, and there are plausible alternative sets of rules for
calculating it. Serious minded statisticians have spent many years discussing
these issues, and there is now a UN-sponsored standardised system of national
accounts.

But it is easy to write a mathematical symbol without giving thought to what
observable fact in the real world corresponds to that symbol, or whether there
is such an observable fact at all._

But isn't that exactly how we settled on the truth of temperature? Years of
debate about what the right constructs for defining temperature mathematically
are?

~~~
XorNot
Not really. Temperature is one of those odd-ball scales where there's a real,
absolute 0 to it. Years of debate converged on a physical reality.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I don't believe anyone has ever shown something to measure at 0k.

~~~
jonathankoren
True, but irrelevant. The definition of temperature (average kinetic particle
energy) means it exists. Conversely, Absolute Hot[1], is an open question.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_hot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_hot)

~~~
jsprogrammer
Irrelevant to what? The poster claimed that there was a real thing in a
physical reality. If that is true, shouldn't we have observed it before? As
the statement stands it claims as absolute reality something which no one has
ever seen.

~~~
akiselev
_》 If that is true, shouldn 't we have observed it before?_

No. The concept of temperature is based on the bulk interactions of matter due
to the motion/collisions of atoms and molecules relative to an inertial
reference frame. A frame that usually has to exist outside of the system for
temperature to have practical meaning so it is a concept that _by definition_
has an absolute zero, even if we haven't observed it yet.

In this case, absolute zero really means zero motion relative to the
instrument measuring the sample so it is possible for a Type 1+ civilization
to build a planet sized (or bigger, don't know how the math works out but it
probably has something to do with constricting atoms to a precision within a
planck length) laser or other electromagnetic trap to cool some nontrivial
number of atoms to absolute zero like those used for Bose-Einsten condensate
experiments.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>it is possible for a Type 1+ civilization to build a planet sized...

It may be possible, but we seem to be a very long way away from being able to
test such a hypothesis.

~~~
jonathankoren
It's not a hypothesis. It's a definition.

Let me turn this around. What do you think the hypothesis is, and how would
you know if you've succeeded? Do not use the term "absolute zero" because you
think that is a hypothesis, and not a definition.

~~~
jsprogrammer
What is a definition? The assertion that it is possible to build a planet
sized laser that could cool something to absolute zero?

~~~
jonathankoren
No. The definition of Absolute Zero is zero kinetic energy of the particles of
a substance. You've been complaining that this definition is somehow a
hypothesis, or otherwise suspect because it has never been observed, which
I've said, was irrelevant, we can calculate it. It's not hard. It's junior
high physics. What's the kinetic energy of something that has stopped? It's
zero.

Your position is absurd. It's equivalent of saying, that distance is an
unproven hypothesis, (which literally doesn't make any sense, because that's
not what the word means), or perhaps more charitably a suspicious concept
because we've never measured anything with zero distance between two items,
because the closest two particle can get is planck length.

I'm not trying to be mean, but what you've been saying is pure gibberish.

------
matt4077
This seems to be closely related to Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science", the use of
the form and mannerisms of hard science to lend legitimacy to research or
opinions that actually lack evidence.

[http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm](http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm)

------
j2kun
Mathematical descriptions of things are fundamentally different from "truthy"
arguments. Because once the math is laid down it stands on its own,
independent of what anyone says about it. Whereas a truthy argument has no
facts to stand independent of the argument because the facts themselves are
false.

I'm no economist, but I am a mathematician, and I'd guess the problem isn't
that people are trying to use math to knowingly give false credence to plainly
ideological ideas, but rather that the mathematical skills of those who listen
are too weak to isolate the problems in the arguments. I would hope economists
are better than that, but I know politicians are not.

~~~
xixi77
Part of it is about skills. Part of it is about things like making
questionable connections between what is actually mathematically shown in the
model, and what is claimed in terms of real-world relationships. Of course
this is much easier to do when they don't clearly define how exactly real-
world objects translate into the model :)

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Mz
AKA "garbage in, garbage out." If you like this piece, you might also enjoy
"How to lie with statistics." There appear to be free copies currently
available online:
[http://www.bing.com/search?q=How+to+Lie+with+Statistics+PDF&...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=How+to+Lie+with+Statistics+PDF&FORM=QSRE1)

------
spikels
This is a political argument in the economics profession. Beyond the obvious
points that math/data can be used to obscure weak arguments and that
idealogical binders are bad for clear thought, Romer is simply attacking his
political opponents. Oddly going after George Stigler - a Nobel winner who
died 25 years ago who Robert Solow said "was never an ideologue."

~~~
DArcMattr
Kay was referencing an idea originated by Stigler, the Inventor, to use as a
contrast to Feynman's stance. There was no attack on Stigler as such.

~~~
spikels
Neither Kay nor Romer are the clearest writers but I think Romer was clearly
attacking Stigler (as well as Lucas and others at Chicago) and Kay was just
repeating what Romer said. See this:

[http://paulromer.net/stigler-conviction-vs-feynman-
integrity...](http://paulromer.net/stigler-conviction-vs-feynman-integrity/)

I don't have access to Stigler's 1955 paper. It would be interesting to know
what he was talking about but putting him in opposition to Feynman seems
pretty harsh. It makes it sound like Stigler is a proponent of idealogical
thinking and that's how he practiced economics.

------
Fede_V
I blogged about a very similar topic (in biology) over a year ago:
[http://federicov.github.io/Blog/deception-by-
mathematics.htm...](http://federicov.github.io/Blog/deception-by-
mathematics.html)

People give a lot of authority to mathematics, because mathematics is
immensely powerful to explain the natural world. This unfortunately leaves the
opening for charlatans to do fake math and lend their garbage research a
completely unwarranted air of legitimacy.

------
obrero
> attention given to the work of Thomas Piketty, with serious questions raised
> about the relationship between his data, his theory and the political stance
> which motivates his work.

Yes, you see, there are ideologically-driven economists like Piketty, who have
a political stance. Then there are are the fair, neutral, unbiased economists
who disagree with Piketty, who are only motivated by the search for the truth.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Then there are are the fair, neutral, unbiased economists who disagree with
> Piketty, who are only motivated by the search for the truth.

There is no such thing as truth in Economics. There's not even a defined goal.
Creating a mathematical model of how 7 billion people behave in a global
economy is impossible.

You're always going to have to simplify your model enough for it to be useful,
as the expense of something. That compromise is your bias. Economists always
make assumptions about something, and those assumptions are always driven by
some sort of world view.

Not to mention, the other part of economics is deciding what policies or
actions should be taken. Do you optimize for economic growth? For happiness?
To reduce inequality? To eliminate poverty? Maximum employment?

Other sciences describe things which can be replicated, or things which are
(more or less) concrete. Economics can't be a concrete, truthful science
because people are react to their environment, which is ever changing and will
never be the same at 2 points in history. And everything affects human
behaviour, from the weather to things like religion which aren't exactly
concrete...

~~~
marcoperaza
> Not to mention, the other part of economics is deciding what policies or
> actions should be taken. Do you optimize for economic growth? For happiness?
> To reduce inequality? To eliminate poverty? Maximum employment?

And if that's not difficult enough, you have to assign time-values to all of
these. E.g. reducing inequality today might lower growth in 20 years.

It's not called the dismal science for nothing.

------
jrkelly
Also this post on "the mathiness of Nassim Taleb" \-- Taleb is a serial
offender on the mathiness front:
[http://www.inexactchange.org/blog/2015/07/24/the-
mathiness-o...](http://www.inexactchange.org/blog/2015/07/24/the-mathiness-of-
nassim-nicholas-taleb/)

------
lambdapie
Parable of the Polygons[0] is another example of mathiness, where math is used
to dress up a political message. The basic idea is simple and intuitive:
people like diversity, but also don't like to be in the minority (e.g. they
would like a 60/40 ratio of people of the same race to them vs people of
different races). But when everyone applies this logic then you get completely
homogenous regions.

The mathiness comes through the fact that the simulation is nothing like real
life (e.g.people care about far more than their immediate neighbors) and yet
the claim is that tweaking the parameters of this model gives some intuition
about the quantitative real life effect.

[0] [http://ncase.me/polygons/](http://ncase.me/polygons/)

------
raincom
What mathematical models do: provide ad-hoc support. It is better to call them
out for what they are: ad hoc explanations do not contribute to sciences.

~~~
evincarofautumn
All scientific explanations are fundamentally ad hoc. We get scientific facts
through falsifiable models based on evidence.

It’s the same in economics, but economics is a field that is both complex
(informationally) and complicated (incidentally), so our models aren’t very
good. Often they’re only falsifiable in theory, because a practical assessment
would be too costly.

~~~
raincom
I have not heard anyone from Philosphy of sciences saying "all scientific
explanations are fundamentally ad hoc". In fact, Adolf Grunbaum studied the
nature of Adhoc explanations. Even Imre Lakatos claimed that prima facie ad
hoc (those from the protective belt) can end up being non ad hoc.

What I have in my mind when I said mathematical models provide ad hoc suport
is this. Today, it is consensus in the philosphy of sciences that there are
two kinds of confirmation of a theory: confirming instance vs positive
instance. Mathematical models generate "positive instances". A non-adhoc
hypothesis generates confirming instances, a special type of positive
instances. For more, pp. 61-62, Larry Laudan's "Science and Relativism: some
key controversies in the philosophy of science.

Lets look at a hypothesis that says "All swans are white". One keeps on doing
field work, saying that 1001th swan is white, 1002th swan is white, etc. All
these field reports are "positive" instances. Such field reports don't add
much.

~~~
evincarofautumn
We differ on our definition of “ad hoc”. I wanted to convey the fact that
scientific explanation is just that—explanation. The basis of science is the
creation of mathematical models to approximate phenomena that we observe.

~~~
raincom
Definitional fiat does not solve any problem. For more,
[http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm](http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm)
&
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/definitions/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/definitions/)

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msellout
Most commonly seen when referencing statistics. 5 of 6 readers agree.

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newyankee
is there an objective alternative to more data and more assumptions ?

