And judging from how you misread everything I wrote in that last comment and leapt to beating up strawmen, what I can expect from you are more quibbles, personal attacks, and hysterical overreactions in defense of your field. I won’t miss those weaknesses when you depart.
You responded as though I need to take those articles I cited as gospel truths, whereas I used them to illustrate only the exact points I presented, those being the ones you dodged.
I used the CPI article only to make the point that economists help politicians deceive the public. That’s the part I quoted. I’m not tied to that article’s argument because there’s plenty of other criticisms of the CPI. Below are eight more articles on bias in the CPI.
So that was a quibble on your part since the problems with the CPI are common knowledge. You strawmanned what I was saying to dodge the larger point, which is that economists’ math is shifty enough to be politically useful (i.e. to work well with deceitful politicians). That’s one type of damage done by the mathematical turn in economics.
Your strawmanning of what I said about Match Day is more ham-fisted. You summarize my argument as, “You found a history of match day that does not mention any economists. Therefore economists were not involved.”
But that’s not remotely what I said. All I said about it was this: “As for Match Day, the article below points out how the economists only tested the algorithm that non-economists developed. The hero of the story is a maverick ex-carrier pilot and final-year student at Harvard Medical School. The economists are practically a footnote in that article.”
I never said the article makes no mention of the economists. I said the economists only tested an algorithm that was developed by others, and that the economists are a footnote in the story. So I chalk up that strawman of yours to hysteria on your part, to a highly emotional reaction to an outsider’s criticisms of your field.
It’s the same story with your warped take on what I said about the kidney transplants. Here’s your strawman: “You find an article about kidney transplants and there were a few quotations that say there are some issues that are not economic in nature. Therefore, economic math being applied is problematic, despite the author of the very article you cited pointed out that the math allowed researcher to explore the consequences of different normative positions.”
But I never said the math is problematic in the case of kidney exchanges. What I said is, “rather than highlighting an unambiguous success in economics, this case points indirectly to the wider problem with the formalization of economics, which is that economic thinking has become alienated from philosophical concerns like morality.”
In other words, the example you drew on to support your case points indirectly to a larger problem with mathematical economics, namely that the mathematical turn alienates economists from philosophy and thus from moral concerns in the economy. That’s the larger point I was making. But you twisted that into a clumsy strawman for you to trounce, wasting my time in the process.
You also missed the forest for the trees. You cited a few examples in which mathematical economics works well. I cited a bunch of major cases in which it doesn’t. Thus, I concluded, “It’s at least an open question, therefore, whether the formalization of economics is a net benefit or a charade.”
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/boc-review-summer12-sabourin.pdf
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-macroeconomics/chapter/examining-the-consumer-price-index/
