Comments on: In Defense of Rigor (Part 3 of 3) http://www.techdarkside.com/in-defense-of-rigor-part-3-of-3 Struggles of a Self-Taught Coder Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:07:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: A_Raybould http://www.techdarkside.com/in-defense-of-rigor-part-3-of-3/comment-page-1#comment-16239 A_Raybould Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:37:28 +0000 http://www.techdarkside.com/?p=122#comment-16239 I'm a couple of years late in replying, but there's been no discernible progress over that time! There has, however, been an event that should make it plain, to those who are interested in looking, that this matters: the financial crisis. Between the abuse of value-at-risk models, often by people who didn't understand them, and the corruption of information resulting from the ratings agencies selling out, there's plenty of evidence that lack of rigor hurts. Your article puts me in mind of Richard Feynman's fairly well-known talk on the nature of scientific inquiry, in which he compared pseudo-sciences to Polynesian cargo cults. In my opinion, economics has been perilously close to the latter, though I do believe it is getting better. I'm a couple of years late in replying, but there's been no discernible progress over that time! There has, however, been an event that should make it plain, to those who are interested in looking, that this matters: the financial crisis. Between the abuse of value-at-risk models, often by people who didn't understand them, and the corruption of information resulting from the ratings agencies selling out, there's plenty of evidence that lack of rigor hurts.

Your article puts me in mind of Richard Feynman's fairly well-known talk on the nature of scientific inquiry, in which he compared pseudo-sciences to Polynesian cargo cults. In my opinion, economics has been perilously close to the latter, though I do believe it is getting better.

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