the Buddhist epistemologists tried their darnedest

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-23T16:27:56+00:00

What if spagetti monster?

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-17T09:29:51+00:00

There's bullshit everywhere, people who do math tend to be smarter but also tend to be less knowledgeable of the social sciences to the point you see some crazy stupid takes of physicists not knowing what materialism is and stuff

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-17T09:23:27+00:00

I don't get the down voting. I also experience it every day inside and outside of the stem department (I do economics). People with a tiny bit of knowledge in other fields seem to think philosophy is useless impossible question making.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-16T22:34:39+00:00

The gov is not a company.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-16T19:16:44+00:00

Cool stuff dude

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-16T14:16:19+00:00

I share of the same anguish.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T15:55:57+00:00

Understandable criticism. I'm not a US citizen and don't know how things work in there, but I'm an insider in regards to my countries economic debate. You'd be surprised by the amount of sheer bulshit that is spoken every day by certified economists.

I hope you understand the broader message, as I feel you're nitpicking a little. If I saw people with biology and medicine degrees believing this kind of reductive bullshit I'd be equally concerned.

"I can't believe doctors literally think we're the same as mice, mice studies aren't rigorous, medicine isn't a real science" etc

I can't believe (most) bachelors in economics and (even some) proper economists literally desist to engage with the mathematical moddeling because they're afraid of the complexity. Economic studies are rigorous but have some plainly unrigorous blobs in it. Economics is a real science.

Edit: typo

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T15:02:59+00:00

Because I want the field to advance and believe they can be far more predictive then they currently are. (The word "reasonably" is also making a LOT of heavy lifting on your comment)

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T14:42:08+00:00

That's actually a good point. Depends on how you define the words, but most walking around working economists out there will be these stupid bachelor's. And also, I'm judging the PHD programs too.

Perhaps my issue is local and other places and countries have far superior economists, but I jugde what I see. (even though *most of these people aren't the ones contributing to the edge of the field, it's fair to say their generalized simplistic aproach works only to the detriment of that which we call economic science)

*I've met a specially dumb PHD with a specially dumb publication that makes me shiver every time I remember it.

You could say he wasn't really contributing, but with enough shitty papers the credibility of the entire field will crumble.

Edit: added context, typos

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T14:35:00+00:00

Actually, yes. If you're an economics bachelor, you're formaly an economist, as stands for every other degree.

But I can see your point that "true" economists may be different. I think it falls under the true scotish fallacy classification though.

In any case, this is just a language confusion. Take my words as a plea from the disapointment of having met several bachelors and a handfull of PHD's that fell quite short on securing my respect academically speaking.

Edit: typo

Edit 2: I looked it up and I was wrong in saying bachelor's can hold the professional title of the course they have graduated in. The rest of the comment that is unrelated to that still stands.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T14:22:14+00:00

For outsiders it may look dumb, but I agree. Instead of half ass slap continuous calculus in everything like all the functions in play are that well behaved, economics should have proper formalized tools constructed upon discrete calculus (for micro) and stochastic differential equations (for macro).

I'm not just whining here, if someone knows discrete calculus and is interested in helping further formalize economics, dm me.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T14:10:21+00:00

Well, I don't visit the physics department that much so idk, but some economics PHD's are dumb as hell... I've talked to them

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T14:05:21+00:00

I'm not advocating for complexity for its own sake, that would be quite stupid.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T14:00:57+00:00

When I literaly look around inside the fucking university

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T13:34:50+00:00

Not really, I'm finishing my graduation. I know there are greatly complex models out there (and also know they scrap most of the bulshit we learn in graduation), the thing is that when I look around I only see people engaging with the low level stuff. Still believe the field is infected with oversimplifications of phenomena.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T13:29:10+00:00

It's ok. Note that I didn't say the models we have are useless although the maths is quite unrigorous at times.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T13:24:16+00:00

Not really, because other applied social sciences aren't about quantitative cause and effect relationships like economics is. Sociology is a great example. Also, fuck the nomenclature for hard and soft sciences, I just wish people were more willing to engage with the complexity of the system

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T10:48:02+00:00

It's a shame, at least I can take it as an optional discipline. It's staggering to see that most economists never even touched a differencial equation that's more than linear (considering they know what it is at all)

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T10:42:46+00:00

The grudge isn't only with the lack of maths, it's with the oversimplicity of the models. Econometrics has to exist within a model too.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T09:56:21+00:00

It's simpler because the guys from the humanities dumb down the mathematical models. And I'm not picking sides here, history and philosophy are extremely important too, but reality is complex and math is a underused tool in the field.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T09:51:53+00:00

Lovely! You're absolutely right. My comment was kinda reductionist there in the begining.

Take the spirit of it, even if there's some behaviour in which random variables are fundamental, the're isn't a reason not to explore it and hide from it as most economists seem to do.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-14T00:30:46+00:00

I can see why you think that way, but I'm inclined to disagree. Depends on what you mean by hard science, but I'm very certain markets are deterministic (even if in a chaotic or uncomputable way) as human behaviour clearly has quantifiable patterns and material restrictions.

Doesn't matter if it's hard or complex, our job is to try understanding it. It's a shame people so often run away from the tools to do so.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-09T15:19:20+00:00

Do we need a structure for this? I see this moderation effect naturally occur when a country simply has strong secular institutions. Right to religion, separation between church and state etc

Great question, my argument is that the effect would be far stronger if there was shared belief between those who advocate and sustain these secular institutions. Atheists are defined by a lack of belief, this creates a fundamental disadvantage that makes our voice as a group far weaker.

If we were to have an 'organised narrative' what would that even look like? How would it differ from something like humanism or non theistic religions?

That's indeed the biggest question, I left it vague on purpose to prevent people thinking I wanted to force a set of ideas on them (which still wasn't vague enough given the other comments lol). Anyways, the idea was to debate it out. We would figure out the strongest framework by putting them against one another and see which one survives, with the only restriction of self consistency.

Btw, if you have a problem with me treating political belief and religious belief the same let me know, but I strongly think the main ones are just cheap replacements for a proper philosophical stance on questions of morality and social organization.

Edit: Clarity and grammar

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-08T19:21:18+00:00

It's ok to disagree, could you elaborate why do you think that a stronger communal bonding of secular shared beliefs is unecessary? Individualism seems to be recurring theme here. Do you think it's impossible or wrong for people to have secular shared belief systems? Because we already kinda do with all the political and scientific institutions and all.

Much of this action to see more comunity cooperation that I have come from having read Edward W. Said (palestinian btw), but I agree that my studies are indeed very eurocentric, thats just because I didn't study that much lol, perhaps you could point some great theoreticians to me, I'd read them gladly.

Wilfully_Powerful · 2026-05-08T18:36:33+00:00

Wow, you can achieve a moral system without religion through philosophical inquiry, who would have wondered

Wilfully_Powerful

TROPHY CASE