Eric Weinstein: What Math and Physics Can Do for New Economic Thinking
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- Опубліковано 29 жов 2013
- Welcome to our video series called "New Economic Thinking." The series will feature dozens of conversations with leading economists on the most important issues facing economics and the global economy today.
This episode features Institute for New Economic Thinking grantee Eric Weinstein talking about how math and physics can help foster new economic thinking. As Weinstein points out, while many of the mathematicians and software engineers on Wall Street failed when their abstractions turned ugly in practice, there are a number of physicists and mathematicians who have applied used the empirical disciplines of their profession to help refine many problems that have bedeviled traditional mainstream economics.
In this interview, Weinstein explores many creative ways that physics and more sophisticated forms of math can be used to rescue economics from itself and restore its now tarnished reputation.
17:24 is an amazing quote.
"I've never noticed physicists to be humbled, but I believe that the physical world has disciplined them to recognize that if they don't wish to look foolish it's best to learn to partition their questions so that they only ask the questions which are robust to the errors within any given theory."
Basic carpentry will teach you the same thing.
Minimize the assumptions in the question or answer
long winded verbal diarrhea.
@@alanross2876 To those who can't understand it or wish to take it out of context, certainly.
and economists need that fix!! they are the ultimate arroagant politicians
God damn I'm dumb.
Yes, you are :)
For some reason, I laughed when the interviewer said "..can you give me a little information about the evolution of your own thinking on this?" (2:20) then the shot showed a slow barge putting up the river.
The problem with economics is as follows: many assumptions are made, then mathematical models are created for these assumptions. That's not how science is supposed to work. A true science needs to test their assumptions, they need to experiment. Based on the results, they create mathematical models that explain the phenomenon.
any modeling really
Any serious economist will tell you (in secret), that all the models are nondeterministic. It's a soft-science that masquerades as real science.
@@Silkbandito lol what an infallible assertion. You get to choose who is serious and even added the protection of "in secret"
@@benwincelberg9684 Good job, you've managed to identify what an "opinion" is.
@@Silkbandito Well it's my opinion that, in secret, you admit that you don't agree with your own comments
the comments section is on fire... and extremely informative. thanks for the valuable comments
genius.
So minds are influenced by the market and are dynamic.Does this mean perfect price discovery is in question ? or are you suggesting many states of stability are possible ? sounds like multiple attractor systems.
I think you nailed it, or at least that was my impression also.
The other possibility is permanent (dynamic) disequilibrium between market fundametals and as you said minds. One of the fundamental concepts in Soros’s theory of reflexivity- Weinstein thanks him for contribution.
@@davorrudovic9580 Mises, in Human Action, says equilibrium is a changing potential ,never actualizing, because people continually make new choices in capitalism. George Gilder, in Knowledge And Power, expands on that. Static equilibrium is for feudalists and socialists because it rationalizes stagnation controlled by govt,
My new favorite video! Wow. Great stuff. I love the anology of economics to politics, as,
Astronomy to astrology.
Soon they will be sepperate, Bitcoin will change the paradigm so drastically, we will wonder how we survived before. The future is bright, very bright!
This is great! Very instructive and thought-provoking. It was especially nice to see someone argue that the problem isn't mathematics but rather 'bad, crude' mathematics. Still it would be great if someone could explain, maybe Eric himself, why Gauge Theory is a possible tool for making Reflexivity mathematically tractable. I gather that endogeneity is the key? Hence the invariant Lagrangian? That is, indeed, very elegant, but I was trying to work out the implications.
huh? speak English please LOL!
Wut this lady on about
@The Informaticist bruh.... to learn. To get educated. Hear people smarter than me speak. Why are you if you already know everything?
@The Informaticist Will you be my "dude"? ;) Would you say pre calculus is a sufficient pre req for the Hamming book?
From Pia's talk: a field theory provides the mathematical tools to have a theory about changing preferences at all wrt price and quantity indexes, by way of the bundles of indifference curves.
I always found it weird after Evergreen blew up and I found out about Bret, and then later Eric, that Eric was suddenly "thrust" into the spotlight, in my view anyways.
Now I'm finding out he's been out there for years. I wish I'd known sooner!
Boston Comisionary? Fishering shell? Can someone provide more info towards that? I find that interesting.
I study fractals and am an economist. I have modelled the fractal and found the economy grows and develops (and much more) as a fractal. My model also corresponds with cosmology observations and conjectures. I am about to publish on quantum foundation problems; I have found they are all problems of the fractal. Understand the fractal, understand the universe.
Im a currency exchange trader, and i somehow have come to the same conclusion
Eric is awesome 🙌
The biggest problem though is that the core CPI index excludes goods with high price volatility, such as food and energy. This measure of core inflation systematically excludes food and energy prices because, historically, they have been highly volatile and non-systemic. This is a substantial piece of the pie for citizens below the poverty line and even an average wage.
Wow. This explains so much about me feeling like my expenses increased with closer to 50% instead of the official ~10%. Food and energy is around 30% of my budget.
Its excluded because inflation isnt suppose to capture exogenous supply changes, like weather. Inflation is suppose to capture price changes due to monetary policy, not acts of God.
STINE, not STEEN
schtein
Well, I suppose that's better than calling him Eric Wine-stain.
Wow - this is so skillful.
I plan to work in financial sector after will studying economics.
economic toolkit needs to be fixed not manipulated. Totally agree with statics need for inverse regression analysis of shot SIR statistics.
harmonic analysis used quantum fractal calculus.
I believe Austrian economics is based on harmonic analysis.
One worry I have is that the usage of formal tools in economics leads theorists to see economics as a discipline that is divorced from normative, historical, and ethical considerations. At the end of the day, every economic theory implicitly has a set of normative assumptions it makes not only about the nature of human agency but even of what constitutes 'utility'. Focusing more on math and less on history also is problematic because economies do not exist in vacuum but have histories. Economics is increasingly taught less in conjunction with political theory and history classes and risks becoming a skeleton with no flesh.
Despite these concerns, here are two prominent examples of famous economists modelling economic phenomena off of theories in physics. It remains to be seen how sensible this approach really is though...
(1) Adam Smith's 'gravity model of price' inspired from Newton. The following is a passage from 'The Natural Origins of Economics' by Margaret Schabas:
________________________
"Perhaps the most obvious example, one noted by numerous scholars, is Smith’s figurative use of gravitational attraction in his treatment of market prices. He draws an explicit contrast between the observed price in the marketplace and the “natural price” to which “the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating” (Smith 1776/1976, 1:75; see also Fiori 2001). While the analogy cannot be pushed too far, it does hold for several features of Smith’s schema. One feature is the attribution of market forces, which are by their very nature only inferred (from their effects on prices). Newton maintained the same about the occult force of gravity, that it could only be inferred (in this case from its effects on bodies). Another feature is that the market forces are central. That is, under the influence of these ever-present forces, a price will always tend toward its natural level, whether it is currently above or below it. Newton similarly maintained that, while bodies on earth appear only to descend under the attractive force of gravity, the fact of the matter is that those bodies are attracted to the center of a larger body and, therefore, could just as easily be conceived of as ascending. A third feature is the imputation of uniformity to all market forces. Newton similarly maintained that both the terrestrial and the celestial realms are subject to the same universal force." (Schabas, 2005, p. 88).
________________________________
(2) The work of the 1st Nobel Prize-winning economist Jan Tinbergen and the advent of 'Econophysics', a broader 20th-century movement to model economics explicitly in physical terms, rather than simply using analogies from physics as in Smith. One historian wrote:
"Tinbergen used the formalism of Lagrange and Hamilton to deal with problems of dynamics. He was interested in dynamics because he aimed at a socialist economic policy. He succeeded by translating problems of economic policy into optimal control problems, and this enabled him to make use of Hamilton’s formalism. Because of his background in physics he was familiar with this formalism. It shows exactly when one may speak of a dynamic system." (Marcel Boumans, 'Paul Ehrenfest and Jan Tinbergen: A Case of Limited Physics Transfer', p. 132).
read.dukeupress.edu/hope/article/25/suppl_1/131/129493/Paul-Ehrenfest-and-Jan-Tinbergen-A-Case-of-Limited
> socialist economic policy
Force rationalized by faith.
Questions that are robust within the errors of a given a theory, eh?
a group wedded to a particular point of view....
How can someone be so smart?
Pass Kall i dont know. All I know is, its scary
Yeah, his I.Q must be insane
Basically due to the finite world we live in unless we decide to set limitations on productivity (macro economics/biophysics/ecology) and govern a sustainable pie to distribute safely we are going to create a regressive evolutionary biocycle as earth attempts to maintain homeostasis.
I agree that Differential Geometry is an awesomely interesting field of study. Eh. I hadn't heard about the roseta stone though. The interviewer is doing a good job - because Eric is sort of naming dropping subjects of Economic Analysis - while ignoring the scope and type of economic impact of that Analysis.
Eric is driving a potent narrative. A chance to shine light on the cockroaches and have an honest discussion about applying mathematics to a stagnant discipline that is economics. Sprinkle in some game theory and programmable money from emergent properties of digital assets like bitcoin and we can fix the monetary system.
WEALTH is accycrm W-weather cycles theory(planets) E-economics A-accounting L-finance T-data science H-health and physical activity.
The problem is not math, the problem is uncertainty and believe that math can eliminate it.
This is basically the best example of a UA-cam comment.
It doesn't need to be eliminated. It can be worked with.
What an ignorant remark. Ever hear of probability? Just for an eighth grade answer. Math for dealing with uncertainty only gets more interesting from there.
How can you understand the corruption in government economics and still be a Liberal?
@14:00 Eric went through a portal and comes back
.........core consumer price inflation index does not include food and energy prices which can fluctuate significantly due to various factors such as supply and demand weather geopolitics etc cetera..... widely used by economists and policymakers because it is considered a more stable and reliable measure of inflation as it reflects the long term trends in the prices of goods and services that consumers buy.... however some critics argue that the core consumer price inflation index is not representative of the actual cost of living for most households as food and energy expenses account for a large share of their budgets..... therefore some alternative measures of inflation have been proposed core consumer price inflation index that includes food and energy ...... the personal consumption expenditures index etc cetera..... each of these measures has its own advantages and disadvantages depending on the purpose and perspective of the analysis..... impact of inflation on the economy depends on various factors such as the rate duration and causes of inflation as well as the expectations and reactions of consumers businesses and policymakers...... some of the possible effects of inflation on the economy are........reduced purchasing power as prices rise the value of money decreases meaning that consumers and businesses can buy less goods and services with the same amount of money...... this can lower the standard of living and the quality of life for many people especially those on fixed incomes or low wages......inflation can lead to higher interest rates as lenders demand higher returns to compensate for the loss of value of their money over time..... higher interest rates can make borrowing more expensive and discourage investment and spending which can slow down economic growth and reduce employment...........inflation can lower economic growth by reducing the real output and income of the economy....... when prices rise faster than wages consumers have less disposable income to spend or save which can reduce aggregate demand and consumption..... when prices rise faster than productivity businesses have lower profits and competitiveness which can reduce aggregate supply and production......inflation can distort the price signals that guide the allocation of resources and the coordination of economic activity....... when prices change due to inflation rather than changes in supply and demand it can be difficult for consumers and businesses to make rational decisions based on relative prices and opportunity costs...... this can lead to inefficient outcomes and misallocation of resources.....inflation can create uncertainty and instability in the economy as consumers and businesses face unpredictable changes in their incomes and expenses...... this can reduce confidence and expectations and increase risk and volatility which can adversely affect economic behavior and performance...... uncertainty and instability can also undermine the credibility and effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies which can make it harder to control inflation and achieve other macroeconomic objectives......
#AwarenessConsciousness
I've kind of been thinking about economics really with no real insight into it. But you just start thinking in terms of cause and effect logic paths. Ridiculous to think you can form a picture that's remotely accurate, but you can roughly get an indication of big trends or consequences. Really because of leaving the EU, the biggest threat is to economics.
Tilting at windmills. I trade a dollar for an apple, because I value the apple more than the dollar. Economics can say nothing about how MUCH more. Quantification is a non-starter for dealing with economic cause & effect. /story
Mises, in Human Action (1949), proved that cardinal math and statistics are invalid for economics because free will makes stable units impossible. Atoms act the same way all the time. Man chooses. Economists have no substitute for mans independent mind.
Economics says the price of the apple is probably equal to marginal cost to deliver it. It does not measure consumer surplus directly.
I'm somewhat disappointed that Eric steeped so much into Mathematics that he's missing the revolution in machine learning.
Consider the fact that it's from 6 years ago...
He was on Lex Friedmans podcast talking about AI and machine learning, check it out. He makes interesting points.
Economics is so damn simple, but because it’s connected to money and banks, it is complex like the tax codes.
I'm all for learning new things and find interest in just about everything I look into but it doesn't get any more dry than talking about economics )=
Could you tell me why you’re anti democratic from an economic standpoint? Just curious on your opinion
“People say to me ‘I’ve been studying economics for 15 minutes’ and I tell them they’ve wasted twelve minutes”
~ Peter Lynch
How can you pronounce WEIN correctly and then immediately fail to pronounce STEIN.
You can thank a guy named "Harvey" for that...
You mean someone cares? Jews change their names all the time and for good reason. Michael Savage would be an example as disgusting as he is.
Eric Weinstein -- "King of Legos"
Just google a chart for m1 money supply. That explains asset prices more than anything.
Only numbers don’t lie
Using numbers to lie should become a criminal only then would those that do this will become more careful in this crime
Frank DiMeglio has surpassed Einstein and Newton.
"Gage theory opens a wealth of possibilities which has not yet been explored" ..."Gage theory and Inflation.. yada yada..." How about one example of applying any of his theories! So frustrating to listen to.
Reflexivity wasn't an idea originated by Soros, but by Karl Popper in The Poverty of Historcism.
REDEX SUBZERO anything with kouch or soros is bad
he is right we have the wrong math.. but that is just a part of economics
Correct, the other part is politics
I just read the paper amazing that we operate in such an antiquated way and people want government run healthcare
Government health care is simply better than what we have but needs to evolve to keep responsive to new thinking.
>we operate in such an antiquated way
Relative to your hidden transcendentalism ,agreed. See Plato and Marx. And, yet, very curiously, capitalism, not statism , has decreased global poverty to 8%. People want social med because they fear independent judgment so much that they would rather be sick than think for themselves.
You'd be shocked if you knew how complicated pricing health care is.
They might as well be sitting on each other's laps
and they said women could't be funny
In the modern state with this video. I get the joke that economics is closest to phsics and mathematics. Some economists on economocs.
@9:54 Strange that this very intelligent human got played by some government commission. Or is he just spinning some yarn...
There is a reason , mathematics can't work in economics , its too precise , human beings are complex , there can't be an optimal solution , and futher more if socio-physcological analysis is not incorporated in advanced consumer theory , its bound to be doomed because it doesn't explain or help people , which is the sole mandate of economics , Increasing material wellfare ,
Our limitation in grasping the complexities of mathematics does not demonstrate mathematics doesn't work in economics.
@@Chipwhitley274 It is not about our limitations in grasping the complexities of mathematics; it is our limitations in grasping the complexities human irrationality. And because of that, using mathematics to derive fundamental axioms of human behaviour is a futile endeavour.
This can't be the same Hollywood who virtue signals all the time??!
Mathematics and physics are easy as economics is hard and complex...I like my eggs fried over easy the flip over easy is hard and complex it requires finesse control eye hand coordination precise movements acting in conjuncture with each other and the slightest conjecture and its busted yolk runny egg. Complex math and complex physics are hard on paper but once explained understandable. It could be as simple as not using hard or easy as defining terms because time and time again we do the impossible. It is all just really a matter of time and even that is constricted in such a way it could be hindering us. Remove the stumbling blocks lets hit the gas at a steady smooth rate with humanity in full view and plain sight and stop killing each other?
"There are a number of physicists and mathematicians who have applied used the empirical disciplines of their profession to help refine many problems that have bedeviled traditional mainstream economics...."
@New Economic Thinking, can you please polish up on your grammar? It is unbecoming of the standards you seek to uphold.
To hear George Soros's name being used in a positive light is kind of surreal, not gonna lie.
It seems that some mathematicians claim to produce a mathematical model which can predict the future of economic behaviour by sometimes irrational humans. And yet, physicists will say that this is absolutely impossible because of the uncertainty principle. Economists refer to this uncertainty principle as 'external influences' to the economic model. In effect, it means that no mathematical model can ever be more than an educated guess. So far, all mathematical models have subsequently proven to be hopelessly incorrect. It seems that the physicists have it!
Death will come Amen
Some hedge funds would disagree with that especially let’s say the renaissance fund who has never had a losing year, with all trades being executed by their algorithm, which only proves the point that economics can be model accurately... doesn’t mean it’s perfect yet either (bc secret it’s not, but it’s damn close...)
I'm missing the connection between differential calculus and either linear programming or stochastic processes. Here Eric comes across as a name-dropping poser. (Somethings he says here are profound - but not this part)
Why do you need the connection? Maybe you need to leap past stochastic processes (as although our data comes in discrete chunks, the underlying reality is continuous) and go to differential geometry?
Do the the ideas voiced here start to explain how our economic system has not collapsed in the wake of the virus? And who exactly is Eric Weinstein as a possible broker for Power?
Weinstein, like Einstein, Steiner, not Wiener* Why on earth don't you know this? Go back to school!
I cannot bear to watch the rest of this, now
How does not taking any classes in ANY field have “it’s advantages and disadvantages “ ? This man is supposed to be an intellectual and he thinks some information is better off not learned ? 🤔🤔🤔🤔
Baf Lange the basic answer is that taking classes only teaches you what other people know. If you want to create a new solution to the problem then you need a unique and new perspective. The kind of perspective that comes from a novel approach. You can't have a novel approach with the same tools and thinking that other people use.
Geoffrey Stokes I can’t agree that there is such thing as having “too much information “. Anyone is always better off having more information than less period
Baf Lange, not it its the wrong information, obviously
It's not that he thinks some is better off not learn it's that we only have a certain amount of time in our lives to develop skill sets. He spent his time being a mathematician and a physicist. This gives him a perspective on economics than those who have studied just economics. In problem solving it can be exceptionally useful to have an outside perspective.
There is such a thing as too much information and knowledge on a subject. If you know too much about something you will stop being creative about the subject because your quantity of knowledge will repress your experimental thinking as being wrong before that thinking can be properly explored.
Interesting guy, but not as clever as he thinks he is. He complains about lack to openness in academic but does not think twice in trashing people he does not like, for instance Murray of the bell theory intelligence.
How do you know how clever he thinks he is? lol
That's because the Bell Curve in know to be bullshit, and based on flakey science.
Ask Eric Weinstein about Frank DiMeglio.
Wrong group of folks to bring about sustainable economic models. Math has unnecessarily complicated what should be a grass-roots fix.
He's the king of Jew think. Thanks, man let's all progress. Into the progressive utopia. Year zero isn't far away.
Chicago scholl economics, anything else is a joke.
"ive never taken a class in economics" it shows
what do you mean? What errors did you spot?
Man chooses to focus his mind or to evade focusing. The mind is the cause of economic value, acc/to Ayn Rand (What Is Capitalism?, 1965?) Math (except ordinal math) and physics says nothing about it, according to Mises (Human Action, 1949). This is science prostituted for economic statism. Entrepreneurs use their minds to innovate. The state, backed up by scientific prostitutes who dont know how to produce and trade, is not a substitute for mans independent mind. Market prices, as Mises proved in 1920, are the only objective guide to production for a market. In the 1930s, Hayek proved that each individual producer in the market has the concrete economic knowledge that he needs for his life as judged by his own mind. Central planning, guided by traditional mysticism, socialist mysticism or pseudo-scientific mysticism, has been a poverty-creating and poverty-sustaining failure for 500K years. Capitalism is the alternative, as it has proven for 200? years.
So people->market prices->production->Communism is the best because of peace because of teamwork? I got it thanks bro 👍👀
@@kn0wahhCommunism is political direction, not market direction, of production. I didnt say, imply or even suggest your claim.
Ah someone who has read Hayek as well as Mises and Rand. If only there were more of us.
@@johnped37 See “Economic Theory And Conceptions Of Value: Rand And Austrians Versus The Mainstream” by Robert Tarr (in _Foundations Of A Free Society_, Salmieri and Mayhew, 2019) for an essay that integrates the history of economics in a very understandable and important way. Austrians are really objective as Rand understands that despite thinking that they are subjective.
Ive just ordered _Knowledge And Power: An Information Theory Of Capitalism_ by George Gilder. See Amazon reviews. Whatever his flaws, he likes dynamic, not static, equilibrium and entrepreneurs and innovation, not govt and established markets. This seems like Mises’ changing potential equilibrium that never actualizes.
It seems a good companion to _Entrepreneur_ by Hebert and Link, a history of the concept.
@@kn0wahh Your contradiction is noted. Communism has no market prices and no market, only govt demands enforced by a gun. Your nihlist hatred of mans independent focused mind is noted.
Does anybody actually take Eric Weinstein seriously when he is discussing economics? He knows absolutely nothing about price theory or marginal utility and theory of interest. He cited the theory of reflexivity as if it is something new but Marxian dialectics is exactly that theory. It is simply put A causes B and B causes A. It is simply a definitional description of how causes operate in an open system vs a closed system. Reflexivity does not make any attempt to map out price theory, theory of money and credit, business cycle theory, or employment and interest.
So this guy has never taken a class in economics......There is lies the problem. Economics is the study of human behavior. Its impossible to use maths to predict human behavior because we can be irrational.
Doesn’t mean we can’t model it mathematically, and many modern hedge funds would completely disagree as their models do account for such things and are making hand over fist money all day every day.... get with the times....
@@metatron5199 yeah ou can try and model model it mathematically which is why models rarely are able to predict the economy any further out than 6 months. IF maths could predict the economic future then every economic disaster and recession every ten years on average could of been avoided. Yet here we are.
These Jews look so weird. It's creepy.
Pathetic nazi moron, you leave the same comments under every video
After anti-Semites spit on their own independent mind, people who respect their minds look weird.