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Comment by Unklejoe | Hacker News Reader

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Unklejoe

My problem with that is:

> significant decline in economic activity

What is "significant"?

> more than a few months

How long exactly?

All I gather from their description is that they basically just get a "feel" for it. That's why so many people choose to follow the two negative quarter thing - it's objective and clearly defined, but maybe less accurate (particularly in cases like now where unemployment is still really low).

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You're approaching it from the standpoint that it's an exact science, but it's more of a social science and you can't really pin down exact specifics, but only best guesses. Unfortunately (and I fell into this camp for a long time) many people see economics and see the mathematical models and assume that it must be scientific or precise, but the marketing campaign to legitimize economics unfortunately confused many of us into that misconception.

It's helpful to think of economics as a field under the branch of political science, which itself isn't very scientific.

I like to think of it as not really one or the other, but as both. It’s like a venn-diagram intersection of finance and sociology. Some elements of economics are purely quantifiable, and some elements are purely human.

Both of those are up to the consensus of the group of economists. They regularly talk about it with each other and compare with historical data mostly. Keep in mind economics is a social science, not exact science.

It would strike me more as "feeling it out", but they are not in a rush to announce it is or is not a recession until they have a better feel. Everyone seems to be rushing to call it a recession as early as possible. The economist I heard talking had a "wait and see" attitude on the podcast which was refreshing to hear.

So it depends on if it's an election year and how much pressure is on them? Got it.

I'd say listen to the economists that are actually apart of the group and form your own opinion. I didn't get that impression personally. Although I'm sure there is some impact.

Of course it does. It always did at least at the margins.

Economics is a social science. It is probably the most data-driven of the set, but it is inescapably human, and therefore ultimately comes down to judgment.

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