Funny how many brokers took out Credit Default Swaps!

Alex Plotkin: Your criticism hits home at #4, where you talk about greed. It seems to me that we would need departments of 'Greed' to explain the social and economic worlds we inhabit. Or maybe just departments of 'Corruption."

THANK YOU ! It's just what I asked him... "What is a social science for you? I am a social anthropologist. As such, what is a group, what is a culture, what is a blockchain, and so on are genuinly what we study..."

An Ocean of Reification

The whole point from this presentation is "I come from philosophy".

Hey I'm a first year anthropology student and I really enjoy the course! I'm still insecure about career opportunities so how did you guys make a career with an anthropology degree?

Thanks young king I'll check it out

I'm a social scientist. So you're halfway there. We still have to focus on processes too. Increasingly there has been a move for mixed research methodology. Specifically using bother qualitative and quantitative methodologies. With fields like Data Science. I think there is a job market out there now for Social Scientists willing to pick up quantitative methodologies and theories, and are willing to learn how to code and gain an understanding in computer science.

This is an interesting comment, let me add some thoughts. I'm a sociologist ("social scientist" is just too vague, there are way many isolated traditions in what we call SS) and have studied some economic theory and its historical development. What you say is what economists have tried to do to portray individual decision making: start with some basic assumptions about what reality contains (people make choices; these choices are done as to maximize a utility function; this utility function is tied to an internal preference scale; and others). They mathematized these assumptions (a process going as back as Bernoulli, Fermat and Pascal), and by modifying some assumptions and developing theorems they have now an enormous logically-connected theory (that sociology, anthropology, and others can only dream of). Now: - Epstein's critique is not really about that process, but regards the "taxonomy" (what we call "ontology" in Philosophy) assumed by a social-scientific theory. And his critique also applies to individual decision-making economics because the taxonomy (people and preference scales) is very simple, compared what for Epstein are relevant objects all in all. I wouldn't say I agree completely with him, but he is right in pointing out that SS is hard and in the dark ages, because... - Even a very good mathematization does not warrantee you'll have a good scientific theory. This is because empirical research cannot be done only on the grounds of deduction (e.g. proving theorems out of some set of axioms): you need a way to evaluate which formal (mathematical) model actually fits what you are empirically observing. So you need to agree in some methodology and sets of standards to discard the models and explanations that don't describe the reality of what you are studying, EVEN if what you are discarding is mathematically consistent. This issue is non trivial and FAR from settled in any of the SS. For me the big issue with decision-making economics is not a lack of mathematization or a lack of a poor ontology. Rather it is a lack of a methodology to approach reality and discard explanations when they don't work. Economists tend to disregard evidence that goes against their predictions and theorems, in what some external observers (e.g. from the natural sciences) call dogmatism rather than science. I think there is some truth in saying they are dogmatic, but a remark to consider is that we don't really have anything better so it's hard to give up the small amount of progress done. As he said, we are in the dark ages of SS. I think we will need a touch of Newton or Einstein level of genius in this if we are ever to really progress.

The topic is one of the main legs in my perspective about epistemology. I’m an economist by the way, but in my opinion and probably aligned with you guys is that there is a misconception on how to proceed in social science. Scientific method is an epistemological way to approach social science but the problem, like some of you said, is that economists get model oriented heads rather than hybrid one that can considered the common sense. They cannot consider social intuition into their models as soon as they need numbers (even for a qualitative description). Descriptions about the human nature are very complex in order to set a reductionist scientific model that hopefully and only hopefully could outperform by its own the big picture of the whole reality. Regards.

Hit the nail on the head.

Freedom of own interpetition N expressing it is interesting in social scientific perspective, don't u think? Shit is reported W various resemblance N accuracy to any referred matter of if so in fact... Being as.. Ever such... It's South Park news or social sciences statistics stuff of interaction patterns shaping N aping N coping counter chain reaction ongoing as we speak... Yeah. N Then the numbers I realLy don't knoooowww.. But,... Hey... U wanna a a hear latest reports on what researchers studies showed?

+Nimi I'm not trying to be rude, however that comment made no sense at all. Please edit then restate what ever you just posted.

+warfire101 Thank you, I was pretty surprised by this talk. Only people who know nothing about science would find it insightful. +Nimi I'm also not sure I understand what you're saying. Maybe you can elaborate?

"Now we realize that situation is the opposite" .... amazing just amazing

Exactly! I have a confused look on my face while if this professor has ever read sociological literature 😒

I think he might be talking about *economics* rather than sociology. His argument is probably more than economics should consume some concepts from sociology. I'm not that familiar about this sort of stuff, but I imagine he wants sociology with models and predictions... (if it does not exist laready)

I know very little about this, but he's not arguing that "what is it?" questions aren't studied at all in social science, but that they are studied a lot less. He shows a graph of, which questions articles in two journals answer at 4:19, though it is true he only showed this for two journals, so considering the social science journal he chose was an economic one, it could just be a problem in economics. You'd have to do a more comprehensive study to find out which fields are affected by the problem he describes.

+Mathew Toll I can't believe he talked to an economist about the foundations of their analysis as 'just people' and they didn't turn around and say 'factors of production'? Thinking about sociology, a founding discussion is what is 'social' what is 'society'....it's a staple of intro week 1.

@@mathewtoll6780 Marx has been discredited for about 100 years now.

lol ur the only one in the comments giving a progressive response - not to say other responses here are worthless of course

Read Bruno Latour

I get that things are complex but even the most complex thing has to fit with in the framework of reality or the best approximation if it which is hard science. I don't like seeing people denying the truth in pursuit of something that is socially acceptable or fit their narrative better.

In an abstract vector space, 1 + 1 might not equal 2 either.

Social ”scientists” are Not starting to dominate in the field of data lol. And I mean, why would they? Since they lack all type of quantitative knowledge.

I think some people predicted it.

Christine Lagarde said about american financial institutions "It was like a tsunami was coming and they arguing about the colour of the swimsuit to wear" ... 'nuff said.

Relevance and irrelevance is a matter of subjectivity. Relevant for who? The entire debates and dramas from the history of social sciences are a very useful lesson for long term policies, but, the kind of social scientist this man is proposing would be incapable of understand that amount of knowledge -he's proposing mere bureaucratic researchers, that will mostly rely on papers rather than books (that happens today yet).

It's a bunch of vapid nonsense.

i mean we do know why it happened? I learnt about it in 2010?

Oversimplifying humanity is what makes the social sciences dehumanizing.

I major in social sciences and I found nothing inconsistent in the first 4 minutes this is true. The huge problem of social sciences is that we don't ask the what is questions we go into automatic assumptions and pretend to know what these are rather than taking some time to actually what they are. We proceed to jump from step 1 to step 3 without taking step 2. Still to this day social sciences remain inconclusive in many of their assertions hence why the social sciences went to postmodernism the notion that there is no truth. It is truly the greatest failure but still, there is so much attractiveness with that field. Perhaps it's false hope but their uniqueness in combining anthropology, psychology, economics, political science, geography, sociology, and more was refreshing in its time. How they combine those things together to analyze the problems and find potential solutions to me personally can be quite breathtaking making one feel whole. However, it's clear there are clear problems within Social Science that one cannot ignore and that itself is a problem that needs to be solved.

@@CultofThings This just isn't the case, though. Sure there are various theories within each discipline that lives under the umbrella of the social sciences, and these theories address the questions they are answering with differing levels of complexity, but generally speaking the social sciences acknowledge the complexity and fluidity of our species and the institutions we produce. I'm studying sociology and anthropology, personally. In every sociocultural anthropology course I've taken, a central theme of the course has been that there are no completely right or wrong answers, and that things are always more nuanced than you think. A good social scientist isn't interested in finding a single answer or a clean-cut definition for a phenomenon. A good social scientist is interested in exploring s o m e of the possible causes for and solutions for different problems. A good social scientist wants to understand humans and human culture to the greatest degree possible while always keeping in mind that human behavior and society is far too complex and fluid to ever be pinned down by strict definitions or algorithmic prediction.

No, everything is a social construct, but 'the social' includes animals, plants, metals or chemical substances, radio-activity, electricity, artefacts and many other phenomena in the world which together co-construct/co-constitute/materialize/perform/ the becoming of matter and meaning in the world.

I don't think he's actually saying the social sciences are dead or not working. I mean he's a philosopher of the social sciences at Tufts University with a PhD from Stanford. I doubt his whole argument is a strawman. I think what he's saying is that our conceptualizations of things are overly simple. It's like the example about a business he uses. For some reason our basic conceptualization or definition, or "what is it" for a business is a ceo, a cfo, cio, board, regional managers, employees, etc. If that was what a business was all you would have was people standing around at various business establishments. And it's when our what is it question like this one is insufficient that we struggle to understand how a business, or how an economy works; the "how it works" question (a lot of his examples have to do with people for this reason -- the driving forces in something aren't people standing around). In biology or something, we have less labels and categories and titles and more thorough definitions. I think it's in part because we're usually talking about things we can't really see. I can see how what he's saying can seem redundant, like that things are more complicated than they seem, thanks duh. But other times I was totally following him. I think it's hard to think about the relevance of what he's talking about, but if it's all you think about like he does, it's probably easier to understand it. I know there's already a field of social science or philosophy that studies money from a humanistic, holistic, psychological, sociological perspective, etc. I think what he's talking about is a need for a better integration, and a need to stop viewing it as "soft science," as if it should be influenced by intangibles and not cold hard facts and determinism. As a psychologist I can appreciate this, and is why I've always tried to distance myself from the "social science" label. I didn't perceive to this to be about rational choice theory or network theory (maybe a little bit in retrospect), but more broadly about something that to me seems like chaos theory. He's talking more about the determinism and causality of systems, like how something like "the mortgage crisis" isn't a sufficient answer to why the economy crashed. There are so many more layers of determinism that are equally important and in understanding how something like that arises. What was the political climate that led to the policies being in place that enabled this? What were the psychological incentives that caused people to both use and fall victim to this exploit? Were any of these culturally influenced? What are the fundamental qualities of this exploit (subprime mortgages) that caused the recession? Hindsight is 2020, part of his point was that in the weeks or months before the economic crash, nobody saw it coming. Next time it might not be a mortgage crisis, but because that was our fundamental answer for how this happened, we won't see the next thing coming. The same forces could be at work but be product of something superficially different. I'm sure the same mathematical processes that spiraled our economy into a recession or similarly destructive ones could take very different forms of economic "mechanical failures". This is why these superficial conceptualizations aren't sufficient.

@@f.b.6093 Silenced, fired and killed. IMO, this video is a bit useless...

+halneufmille What is the Popper reference? Which book/article?

+Mathew Toll The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1982).

A Ab Dream on...

A Ab I agree with you.

+A Ab You mean social sciences have been interested in the systemic interactions all along?!?!?!? (sarcasm) You are completely right, this presentation had barely anything correct in it, which in a way is impressive. As I said in another comment, even the biological facts were completely wrong. Only people who have no idea about either natural or social sciences would find it profound or insightful.

+A Ab There is plenty of good philosophy of economics being done, this just isn't an instance of it.

From his attack on methodological individualism, it seems to me he's mad economics is harder to transform into vapid advocacy research than, say, sociology. That's the only explanation I can see for this embarrassing talk.

I respectfully disagree. Try reading him in German. He was quite the genius, old Karl.

His interpretation of reality and readings of XIX capitalism are exceptional. Both him and Engels wrote a magnificent body of literature that are the base of a great part of XX century economy.

Marx' theories are full of flaws, but what is more important is that his predictions did not come true. Capitalism did not collapse but flourished, instead most communist economies, which are based on Marx' ideas, collapsed. The main reason Marx is still popular today is because it is a framework for an oppressor/oppressed narrative that is very attractive to professional victims and people with a parasitical mentality.

@@petersteenkamp People with parasitical mentality? Now what a great way of putting millions of oppressed people in the bag of "nah man, they're just lazy."

@@EduardoFlores-bt4fo Just because some Marxist SAYS that those millions of people are "oppressed" doesn't mean they are.

Supply and Demand is, in of itself, a giant experiment that's always evolving. That right there, on it's own makes it a product of the scientific method, and therefore, economics is certainly a science.

Economics falls under Social Sciences Joe.

Akshay Jain So? That doesn't make it a science.

+Joe Smith Science isn't a synonim of math or physics. Any discipline that uses the scientific method can be recognized as a Science, that's why there's also Natural Sciences. So, economics can be a Science, just as antropology, because it is not what they wanna prove what makes it a science, it is how, come up with an economical theory, like capitalism, or simple stuff like a deal, and they try to prove the different outcomes and posibilities based on data and past events in the field. Thats why politics, language studies, economics, and history can be as much a science as math, physics, chemistry. You'll have to excuse my english, it is not my language

What according to you is a 'science'? You can simply check any definition of 'economics' to see if it is a science. This is not a question for the youtube comments section, but something that can be answered by some basic reading as well

so if ur psyche is all the makes up a human u dont mind if i have all ur possessions i guess ? (obvious sarcasm). But dont wworry i respect ur beliefs

@@ivanc.6064 I never claimed the psyche is the sole make-up of being human, I stated it is what makes up the social world.

so if ur psyche is all the makes up a society u dont mind if i have all ur possessions i guess ? (obvious sarcasm). But dont wworry i respect ur beliefs