On 2/22/2012 6:05 PM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/21/2012 11:26 AM, George Plimpton wrote:
On 2/21/2012 11:14 AM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/20/2012 11:53 AM, George Plimpton wrote:
On 2/20/2012 11:44 AM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/19/2012 3:39 PM, George Plimpton wrote:
On 2/19/2012 3:17 PM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/18/2012 8:09 PM, George Plimpton wrote:
On 2/18/2012 6:56 PM, Hawke wrote:
On 2/18/2012 12:53 PM, George Plimpton wrote:

Probably got a job somewhere too. Hardly Hawke's idea of
society.

So you too are completely ignorant of sociology too, huh?

He is aware that sociology is nothing but poetry - it has zero
explanatory power regarding human behavior.


Oh, so it's just like economics.

No. Economics has magnificent predictive power. Sociology has none.


Yeah, so you say.

So a comparison of the two proves.


To a layman like you, yes.

To the entire academic and business world.


Economics may be the best tool they have. I'm just saying it isn't
nearly as great as you make it out to be. You can cheer lead for
economics all you want but there are a lot of real smart people who
don't think much of economists. Both Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke
have a lot of people who think they are idiots and do nothing but bungle
things.

We're not talking about individual economists.

Economics as a discipline makes generally accurate predictions about
people's behavior. It has theory behind it that yields testable
hypotheses, and when too many anomalous predictive results occur, the
theory is revised. The biggest part of economics is not concerned with
predicting exact numbers, but rather changes in behavior. When
economists predict that imposition of rent controls at below-market
rates will lead to discrimination occurring on issues other than price,
those predictions are virtually always borne out.

Sociology can't make any predictions at all, because there's no theory
behind any of it.


I'm not a sociologist, and don't claim to be one, so I am not going to
go to bat for the subject.

Political science is little better, and to the extent it is, it's
because of the influence of economics. Economics "colonized" political
science starting about 30 or 40 years ago. Political science used to be
like sociology - nothing but political opinion. The economists
"invaded" poli sci and began to explain political phenomena - voting
behavior, party strategy - that the political scientists had never been
able to explain. The political scientists now use the methods of
quantitative taught to them by economists as everyday practice. But you
wouldn't have learned anything about that at Chico.