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Comment by dclowd9901 | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like you take issue with this simulation? It applies heavily academic and simplistic rules around behavior. I like build up of it all to illustrate _simulating things_, but I think almost any traditional economics theory outside behavioral economics ought to be shelved for good.

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I'd go the other way, behavioral economics ought to be shelved for good. Classic econ should come back, but with a stamp on its forehead that is is not science or a practice.

https://www.thebehavioralscientist.com/articles/the-death-of...

So what, we have no ground truth about economics? Is it just a close cousin of psychology?

Economy is not that different from psychology, physics, or indeed any natural science. All try to predict how they would change depending on various factors and invent explanatory models that are never perfectly correct.

It’s just that some have had more apparent prediction success than others (non-coincidentally, it’s those that don’t directly involve humans as subjects), while some are liable to affect people’s lives in more direct and drastic ways (non-coincidentally, it’s those that do directly involve humans as subjects).

Economics sits at that intersection between the social sciences and the exact sciences: you can get some useful quantitative predictions out of it, but that is discounted by the fact that people are messy, and become even messier where money is concerned.

Economics is bulk effect Psychology.

I would agree up until recently. I am starting to think, though, that behavioral is only relevant in an economy of choice. With choice I keep it simple to having the option to spend or not wealth (including consuming/selling some of your stock). The less choice in the market, the more the classical models will be reasonable and efficient approximations as they can accommodate one sided choices. Complex dynamics are not what we experience now. There is a market direction, the power to impose it and its application at clear sight.

Both have been shelved; the state of the art in economic modeling is far, far more sophisticated. It goes way beyond the limitations of economics’ loan from XIX century physics (static mechanics).

Economic modeling based on game theory with extensions (say, requiring that certain agent choices are computable and are so under a limited computational budget, or non determinism, or learning) you still get sensible results under much weaker hypothesis.

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