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Comment by futun | Hacker News Reader

Note: I said "purely economic" and you essentially said: "But social".

See the danger? Intellectual discussions must now be passed through the filter of social narratives?

So pointing out any mathematical reality which has negative social implications is therefore a display of support for said negative social implications?

No. That's ridiculous. The world isn't rainbows and unicorns. And many morally commendable policies will and must fail mathematically.

Being the "messenger" that points out said mathematical realities isn't a display of support for fascism.

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I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning. There are policies that could be economically beneficial that are socially deleterious and vice/versa. My point is that assessing policies through purely an economic lens is an incomplete view: the world is not an economic simulation.

Also consider that perhaps there are social policies that are economically detrimental but perhaps they are considered worth the cost. There are human costs that economic models may not consider.

Pretty much all the "social" policies enumerated are about pricing negative externalities. It may not be Economics 101, but every last one of these things has genuine economic value.

More generally, economics doesn't exist in a vacuum: for a working system of trade, you need rules, enforcement and redress. Thinking you can consider one without the other is like thinking Newton's Laws are the last word in physics.

You seem to be under the impression that economics is somehow objective? Why would you think that?

It's about value, and different people value things very differently.

You seem to be conflating Economics with Mathematics. Besides the fact that both use numbers, there's not much in common between the two.

No conflation.

But Economics uses mathematics. Not for proofs (although some misled academics disagree), but for understanding of prior performance.

The real disaster is that mathematics is increasingly using economics and other social sciences as a filter for what is permissible to be calculated. :/

It's not about what you calculate, it's what you do with it and how you represent it.

Hypothetical scenario: you calculate that people from country A are twice as likely to commit a crime in country B when compared to native citizens of country B. Ok. What do you do with that? I'll tell you what you don't do: you don't round up everyone from country A and kick them out and justify it with "mathematics." That is an incomplete view.

Perhaps I'm sorely misunderstanding what problem you see so please correct me of that's so.

You're being reasonable, but this is not how everyone views it. In the real world today, many would say you should not publish or even collect that information regarding country A, because it might result in discriminatory behavior toward citizens of country A.

You're right. In the real world there are messy concerns and problems that aren't present in academia. Innocuous research can be used for nefarious means. If there is a chance of that happening, should the research be published? A very interesting (and very real) ethical question.

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