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Originally Posted by wufwugy
The basketball bouncing on Mars is a fitting analogy. Physicists have great reason to believe that what they know about science is different past the event horizon, but they do not have reason to believe that what they know about gravity on Mars is different than current theory (at least not by more than very tiny differences).
No. Physicists have no reason whatsoever to think physics is different on the other side of an event horizon. We have no evidence or data on those locations. Every other place we have gathered data, though, physics is the same. So there's an established pattern of same-ness in physics which is independent of location. So, according to your reasoning w.r.t. minimum wage, we have reason to believe physics should be the same. We can guess, but we can't - in good faith - assert those guesses as physical laws.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
It's essential to determining causality. Physicists deal with the same thing. When experimenting, all else must be unchanged even though the physical world is complex. If this isn't the case, confounding variables arise.
In physics, we have the luxury of "perfect" control groups in our experiments. When we say, "all else is unchanged" we mean, "look right there where we have the identical setup as here, but over there we do NOT do the thing we do over here. Observe the difference? It does that every time, in a rigorously predictable way." Sometimes that rigorous predictability involves probability distributions, and that's a bit odd to say it was a rigorous prediction, but it truly is. When we define the probability distribution we expect, then show it resolve after many repeated, identical experiments, that's a rigorous prediction.
You cannot do that in economics, and therefore your propensity to compare economic laws to physical laws is, again, false equivalence. The nature of physical law is not the same as the nature of economic law.
... and what bothers me is that it doesn't bother you that you see an equivalence between these very different things.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
This is a reason why econometric tools are pretty bad at finding effects of minimum wages in the real world.
If you think they're bad, then why do you cite them as a reason to believe what you believe about minimum wage?
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I don't assert that. In the real world we could see quantity demanded of labor increase after a minimum wage is instituted even while increasing the price of labor decreases the quantity demanded of labor, but it would be because of other variables that changed with the minimum wage.
You just said, "if what I said will happen doesn't happen, I'm still right about what I said, but the thing I stipulated wouldn't change - which is the foundation of my argument - wasn't controlled." Which is fine, but you cannot possibly expect to control that OR expect it to hold on its own without an active control. These together strip any meaning from your arguement.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I'll admit the style probably is not persuasive (I was drinking some whiskey), but the statements are correct.
I thought something was up.
... and no, they're not, as I have illustrated.
That's like me saying, "If QM is wrong then atoms don't exist." It's nonsense. The atoms in the periodic table exist regardless of any ideas in humans' heads. Just as economies will exist even if it is shown that the current understanding is garbage.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
We can and have. The law is empirical.
No, you can't. No, you haven't. Show me your metric for human emotions and I'll show you a sheet of culturally biased assertions that only apply in microcosms.
That's not what "specific prediction" means.
That's not what "law" means in physics, but maybe what law means in a legal sense.
The economic rules are soft, the predictions vague. Calling them laws is a bastardized use of the word, even in the legal sense.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
My understanding of how scientists came to determine the law has no bearing on whether or not I am allowed to explain what it means.
WTF? Pull your head into this space, man. I'd never, ever, in a bazillionplex years assert what you're allowed to do.
JKDS can do that. He enjoys thinking about morals and civil codes.
I'm not telling you you shouldn't say the things. I'm saying that claiming to someone else's expertise without your own observations and research to back it up is the opposite of science.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
The laws are probably wrong in very small ways. If they're wrong enough that price of labor increases, when all else is held constant, would increase the quantity demanded of labor, then things would look very different than they currently do. Nonsensically different and there would be no economy. It would be as nonsensical as if physicists were wrong enough about gravity that mass actually repels.
This paragraph is designed to convince me to agree with you, but not compel me to agree with you.
The goal of science is to not let any arguments like this sway what you understand.
The fact that you put these ideas out in the same thought as your reference to physics seems to indicate that you conflate the soft guides in your field which are glorified by calling them "laws" with other ideas which are called "laws." The specificity of predictions that can be achieved in other scientific fields is far and away more precise than any of the soft sciences.
Conflating the weight of various scientific laws as identical is the real nonsense, here.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Yes they apply to everything that involves a decision. As the cost of doing something regarding your baby increases, the desired amount that you want to do that things decreases, on average and all else kept equal.
I can't wait until you have kids.
The point is... there are exceptions to what you just said, but you said it as thought its unequivocal, and that's why your credibility is pretty low on economics. I'm meeting more economists at work and the conversations are very different. They are ready to identify the complications with the rigid assertions you use.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
That page contradicts itself a dozen times, but is more of a history of defining economics. Is your point to show me that even the definition of economics is not a rigidly true statement?
'Cause that's what I took away from that link.
Originally Posted by wufwugy
It certainly is society bargaining on the behalf of others. Bargaining badly.
More echo-chamber talk.
You have yet to convince me that you have an informed position on this topic.
I still do not agree with your assertion that having a minimum wage has a negative affect on productivity.
***
whew... there went an hour of my time...
I can't keep this up.
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