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RE: Why Economics is not an Empirical Science but a Synthetic A Priori - Analysed and Explained with Comedy.
Wow great post :) I like how you combine science, philosophy and funny stuff!
One thing though... You convince me economic principles are largely based on synthetic judgements a priori, but isn't a big part also derived from other sciences that are empirical and therefore grounded on knowledge a posteriori? Biology for example is an emperical science and we use the anthropology derived from this field as a foundation for our economic models, don't we?
Nothing can stand on its own. There is always the supporting causes that exist along with primary causes. Blockchain is based on top of the internet. But blockchain technology is becoming more and more important than the internet itself. I remember a nice parable about 2 people walking along a beautiful river and one person eloquently describes the beauty of the scenery. The other person says"Whatever man, I'm just hungry".
You need to have those primary supporting causes. You need a powerful device to run a great video game (Can it run Crisis? etc.) But when talking about video games, the specs take a backseat. The biology and the physics of the universe can limit or influence a person's mind and therefor economic actions. But they will not govern human action. Empirical sciences can act like a parent that limit the child. But the parent can only do so much.
Then what governs human action? Reason? Will to power? Greed?
Remember I said that the human mind cannot be lab tested. Each mind is unique. You can't make it fit into some neat little criteria. You can't predict it on a large scale. If there was a way to know the mechanics of the mind, then both Human Action and the resulting Economic activities would be empirical sciences that can be calculated and predicted.
Surely the individual mind cannot be lab tested, but we can study minds in general. This gives us an average that we can base on predictions on right? I mean you can't predict the outcome of flipping one coin, but you could make a very good guess what'll happen if we flip a thousand coins.
I'd say the interactions are just too complex (butterfly effect) to predict anything usefull in the trading industry, but that doesn't mean economic science isn't informed by experience.
Sorry for the ongoing attack, but your very strong claims deserve it ;)
This is what Technical Analysts do. I'll quote from a great TA named @haejin
Remember I brought up Newton in my post. His theories were very useful in mundane activities. But ultimately they were just mostly BS. You could find some patterns and statistics. They can have some limited usefulness. But they won't be anything more than some generalizations like women don't make great leaders or men suck at cooking. It all works until it doesn't. If you depend on these empirical things you are eventually going to get screwed like a space program planned with Newtonian Physics in mind.
Even the best TAs can only claim little over 85% accuracy and even they can't say anything consistently accurate about timing. Empirical evidence can be used as a rule of thumb or an archetype or a cliche. But they will never be an economic science.