Math Isn’t Science
Now that I’ve got you here, allow me to make the case for what shouldn’t be taken as a bash against the excessive use of mathy models today but more of a quasi discussion on science vs pseudoscience. Though being a fanatic myself, I still feel that some things need to be put down a pedestal, while not tainting its very elegance whatsoever.
IS ML REALLY A BLIND CARBON COPY?
Yes, however predictive the economic theories could be, there’s something which differentiates the truth from mathematical reasoning, a theorem from an axiom. We’ve seen the cost of ignoring the limits which assumptions inevitably bring to a seemingly speculative and justifiable nuance. The Great Recession of 2009 simply tells us that even though having used Math in a fetishized fashion, having the art of (logical) fortune telling, the one thing which economists failed at was prophecy.
Did the ‘experts’ actually miss this?
Apparently not entirely. The founder of HSBC, the third largest bank in the world quoted that ‘not all the astrology stuff checks out, but some of it does’. The past has relied on mathematics to predict (read determine) the celestial motions way before the reality of cosmos as we know today was explored. The underlying assumptions did not hurt, until the practitioners extrapolated their theories to govern economics and god forbid, science.
This is where I would respect Astronomy more than Astrology. When the kings in the BCE have reportedly used Armillary spheres made of bronze, the then kingdom currency, to determine the optimal days to conduct political ceremonies and governing accordingly, the world was set to get doomed and the very meaning of mathematical modelling had begun to morph into a conundrum.
HOW DID WE EMBRACE IT? (IF AT ALL WE DID)
The west seems to have taken a rather rude ripple towards the humanities, art and journalism courses by shunning them down across many universities in the lieu of attracting stronger students to mathematically demanding economics majors. Where the salaries of humanities’ professors are frozen, the annual average of an econ has reached $130,000, higher than the very next lucrative genre- engineering.
According to a recently recovered historic piece, ‘if one shall not fathom both speech and numbers, thy shall fathom numbers, as numbers can speak but speech cannot number’. Let’s not even talk about the writers and the socialists.
But sadly, predictive analysis being done to find meaning in the markets couldn’t account for the bubble bursts we have seen in the recent past. The bar between mathematical elegance and empirical accuracy shouldn’t be seen as an intuitive mirroring but rather as a false (read illusionary) convergence.
BUT WAIT, ISN’T MATH THE ARBITER?
Ah, let me rationalize now. We’re tending towards that intercourse. Definitely. What the hindsight says is, not that we have too much of math now, rather we don’t have enough of it today. The 1999 & 2009 are our data points now. The model has got richer. With the rightly weighted probabilities, we might have our souls resonate with the bears and the bulls. But it clearly makes sense to not confuse that de bon augure moment with now.
The cognitive information processing is based on evidence based algorithms now and people are buying it crazy in every sphere possible. But, the decisions might be subtly influenced by non-rational factors too, and hence the share price of Netflix!
The fine line between rationality and reality isn’t something the economists aren’t aware of today. But the sunk-cost bias comes into the picture now. The enchanted Nobel prizes and prolonged authoritative ‘mathiness’ will keep the world bewitched. Well, the bronze sphere may have been defended for the expenses it was set up for, who’s to blame for paying the extended debts when the town ended in famine and extreme migration?
