The Problem with Economics is a Lack of Etymological Scholasticism

[Nihilist74]

I don't think the powers that be want economics to be less confusing. That is why they hire physicists and mathematicians to think of more complex ways to make more money.

[Kaleredar]

Somehow this guy tries to speak like an academic without actually knowing what being an academic is about. Like, one of the most crucial skills is being able to translate complicated terms into simple concepts so that the broader society can understand. This often also includes other academics at places such as conferences, because using complicated language is not helpful. Especially when the concepts themselves have fuzzyness by their very nature.

There is no need to go full on Latin / Greek when basic English does the same thing. Absolute precision is only really necessary within your smaller inner circles, and even then making up new terms to try and be even more precise is often more harmful than helpful.

The OP is basically bachelors degrees thinking what they think is academic vs the higher levels of education and professionalism knowing what is academic and appropriate.

I remember LegalEagle saying that Lawyers actually try and avoid fancy nomenclature in their arguments and during trial because you generally just lose the jury and look like a pompous ass.

In short, "Brevity is... wit."

[Kent088]

Interesting take, but completely wrong.

The problem isn't that there isn't a word for 'land' - but that ownership of land is a fuzzy concept (just the land or also the buildings on it? the right to build on it? and what about the mining rights for the land?); and all of those caveats have variations on them.

Giving them proper names doesn't help, since the problem of fuzziness is inherent in the domain - and thus you have conflicting definitions. Consider as a simple economic example the amount of money in a country. Depending on definition that is called M0, M1, M2, M3, M4, MB, M3+CD, etc (and those definitions vary between countries). And that doesn't help - central banks can target one of them, and the others will increase more.

None of those definitions are wrong, it's just that actual field is that messy.

That's similar in other fuzzy fields. A species in biology always have some fuzziness at the border (polar bears getting on with brown bears), and the names do change sometimes (as for lions) - or are just plain wrong (Ursus maritimus tyrannus and other alleged sub-species of polar bear).

I don't think the confused ideas on ownership of Land is what complicates finding a definition for what Land is; I mean, that's the point, find a definition that doesn't evoke an emotional response from someone's vernacular background that they can then use as a jumping off point for a new term or prescription.

I'm not well amazingly well-versed in Biology, but the relativity of species borders does not invalidate the whole fields system of classifications. This just seems like claiming a statistical trend doesn't matter because it has outliers. And I know most Biologists wouldn't disagree with this specific point.

On the use of Latin, well I wasn't aware it's becoming abandoned in some cases, but as evidenced by its continued prominence, I don't know if that's a trend out of academia or instead for cultural reasons.

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I remember LegalEagle saying that Lawyers actually try and avoid fancy nomenclature in their arguments and during trial because you generally just lose the jury and look like a pompous ass.

In short, "Brevity is... wit."

They do and should, but they employ very specific academic language...in an academic setting, where its assumed the people who are engaging have some sort of mutual understanding. I just assumed only people who cared for the topic of confusion in academic economics would engage.

[Endus]

I'm not well amazingly well-versed in Biology, but the relativity of species borders does not invalidate the whole fields system of classifications. This just seems like claiming a statistical trend doesn't matter because it has outliers. And I know most Biologists wouldn't disagree with this specific point.

Taxonomy is a very complicated field and there's a lot of active debate and major shifts in structure, particularly recently. But a core concept in biology is that there aren't any "borders" between species. It's all a fuzzy mess and nature flatly doesn't work that way. Inter-species breeding happens, and there's no way to determine where a particular species "starts" or "stops" in its evolutionary cycle; they largely just find a point where things were relatively stable for a while and slap a species name on it, but there isn't any "border" on either side of that, no firm concrete line between members of that species and any antecedent or descendant species.

On the use of Latin, well I wasn't aware it's becoming abandoned in some cases, but as evidenced by its continued prominence, I don't know if that's a trend out of academia or instead for cultural reasons.

The use of Latin terminology is an archaic relic of 19th Century and earlier academia, when Latin was the lingua franca of academia. Today, that position's been taken by English. Latin isn't any more precise than English, and where Latin continues to be used, it's mostly out of tradition or, in cases like taxonomy, because so much work's already been done in Latin and has no English analogue that it's just easier to continue on rather than try and convert everything.

The use of Latin was always for cultural reasons. It started in ancient Rome because that's just what Romans spoke, shifted to Church Latin in the early to middle Medieval era when ecclesiastical libraries were the primary resources for academic study, to the Renaissance which unfairly condemned that era and similarly unfairly worshipped their fantasies about Roman civilization, and that got held over to today. That's it. Not any solid linguistic justifications, at all.

They do and should, but they employ very specific academic language...in an academic setting, where its assumed the people who are engaging have some sort of mutual understanding. I just assumed only people who cared for the topic of confusion in academic economics would engage.

Plenty of us have academic backgrounds and have presented at conferences and such. I know more Latin than most, and use it basically never, because it's not particularly useful in a lot of fields.

[Glorious Leader]

The problem with economics is that its a discipline wherein the patronage it receives necessarily corrupts the actual achievement.

[unfilteredJW]

Somehow this guy tries to speak like an academic without actually knowing what being an academic is about. Like, one of the most crucial skills is being able to translate complicated terms into simple concepts so that the broader society can understand. This often also includes other academics at places such as conferences, because using complicated language is not helpful. Especially when the concepts themselves have fuzzyness by their very nature.

There is no need to go full on Latin / Greek when basic English does the same thing. Absolute precision is only really necessary within your smaller inner circles, and even then making up new terms to try and be even more precise is often more harmful than helpful.

The OP is basically bachelors degrees thinking what they think is academic vs the higher levels of education and professionalism knowing what is academic and appropriate.

I'd bet a dollar this all can be traced back to some dude in a truck videoing himself ranting.

[Santti]

I'd bet a dollar this all can be traced back to some dude in a truck videoing himself ranting.

That sounds about right.

[Forogil]

I don't think the confused ideas on ownership of Land is what complicates finding a definition for what Land is; I mean, that's the point, find a definition that doesn't evoke an emotional response from someone's vernacular background that they can then use as a jumping off point for a new term or prescription.

My statements weren't about confused ideas on ownership of Land, but the practical differences in what 'Land' ownership actually imply.

I'm not well amazingly well-versed in Biology, but the relativity of species borders does not invalidate the whole fields system of classifications.

Exactly, the point was that "relativity of species" doesn't matter - if you study lions it doesn't matter if they are called Panthera leo or Felis leo; and if they are more closely related to Jaguar or Leopard, or that you can get hybrids with even more distant relatives.

[StillMcfuu]

I wish there were examples of issues the lack of precise language is causing within economics in the OP. Real examples.

On the use of Latin, its coincidental Latin became the mainstream "science language". Other than the large volumes of work copied from older civs the Roman's did, the biggest driving factor was the view that Rome was somehow the height of civilization and as the Roman empire/Byzantium, started to fall, it became almost an ode to the forgotten to use Latin as an academic. Put quite simple, they did it because it was cool. Coincidentally it is useful that dead languages don't evolve and there was a body of work already in Latin so bam, perfect universal language to keep the uneducated at arms length.

More OT: economics language is more to do with numbers and it is to the advantage of economists to muddle some definitions to potential identify a pattern in the data they work with.

[Ripster42]

3> Lastly, a lot of Latin terminology is literally just the thing, but in Latin. If you actually learn Latin, as a language (I studied medieval history, so I did), you can pick out medical terminology or the like super easy. Saying the pain is in your "biggest butt muscle" is literally as accurate as saying it's in your "gluteus maximus", which is just the Latin for "biggest butt muscle". Translating into another language doesn't make you smarter, especially if you don't actually use that language as a language.

The OP's suggestion would make learning more onerous, especially for marginalized communities, while providing no benefits.

It's always nice seeing people who actually have the ability to effectively convey your ideas better than you yourself did.

I'm not well amazingly well-versed in Biology, but the relativity of species borders does not invalidate the whole fields system of classifications. This just seems like claiming a statistical trend doesn't matter because it has outliers. And I know most Biologists wouldn't disagree with this specific point.

This is incredibly obvious. Taxonomy, the 'whole fields system of classifications', is not remotely definitive, changes all the time, and there are even memes about 'the whole fields system of classifications' using non-latin names. BTW, there's an on going war (it's in the mopping up stages of the war) in the 'whole fields system of classifications' where it's all moving towards cladistics, because the old way of doing things was wrong, stupid, and was based more on feels than reals. And I know most biologists would agree that phylogeny is only a rough guide, that a lot of the old latin terms are outdated because we've done genetic analysis and realized a lot of the relationships we thought existed actually don't, and also that the exactness and stagnation in language you're seeking prevents you from evaluating an ever changing universe.

[Forogil]

This is incredibly obvious. Taxonomy, the 'whole fields system of classifications', is not remotely definitive, changes all the time, and there are even memes about 'the whole fields system of classifications' using non-latin names. BTW, there's an on going war (it's in the mopping up stages of the war) in the 'whole fields system of classifications' where it's all moving towards cladistics, because the old way of doing things was wrong, stupid, and was based more on feels than reals.

Fun tin-foil hat fact:

It seems that 'clade' (as in cladistics) was coined by Julian Huxley in 1957, he also "invented" the metal hat as a shield against villains (in a story), and was the brother of the "Brave New World" author Aldous Huxley.

However, the lack of the term 'clade' before that time didn't prevent people from studying 'cladistics' before the terms were invented.

[Ripster42]

However, the lack of the term 'clade' before that time didn't prevent people from studying 'cladistics' before the terms were invented.

Before we could do genetic analysis, there was a lot of garbage work being done. Convergent evolution basically told all those fogeys to fuck off. The fact that pachyderms existed as a classification that included hippos, elephants, and rhinos really brings that into focus (and shines relief on OPs ignorance). That's basically the 'war' I was talking about. A bunch of people got really attached to using ossified language, even when it stopped fitting the reality that biology is full of fuzzy edges.

[Forogil]

Before we could do genetic analysis, there was a lot of garbage work being done. Convergent evolution basically told all those fogeys to fuck off.

True, the genetic analysis (as in analyzing the genetic sequences) came later; and that is still ongoing.

However, Huxley coined 'clade' and 'modern synthesis' when people realized that evolution was actually based on genes even if the genes themselves could neither be read nor decoded at that time.

[Poopymonster]

I had a cromulent for breakfast.

This makes me very gruntled.

[Iain]

I don't think the powers that be want economics to be less confusing. That is why they hire physicists and mathematicians to think of more complex ways to make more money.

That's mainly because it's incredibly hard to find people who understand calculus. But indeed, I don't think many people would like the concept of fractional reserve banking if they understood at which targets it was being directed.

[DarkAmbient]

That would be an ecumenical matter.

[PC2]

@Kent088, you're specializing in economics? That's cool. My friend keeps telling me to learn about the Austrian School of Economics so I'm going to look into it eventually.

Personally I try to stay away from debates based on language itself, etymology, and word essentialism. Usually I can understand what the other person means even if there is problems with language and word choices. I think human beings aren't even really capable of utilizing language perfectly, in a way that can't cause some confusion and misinterpretation.

[Elegiac]

My friend keeps telling me to learn about the Austrian school of economics

Did "your friend" also tell you that said school is a bunch of largely debunked horseshit that has no mainstream acceptance?

[PC2]

Did "your friend" also tell you that said school is a bunch of largely debunked horseshit that has no mainstream acceptance?

He was clear about it being heterodox. Why do you have an issue with it?

[Elegiac]

He was clear about it being heterodox. Why do you have an issue with it?

Because you routinely espouse economic opinions on this forum that are perfectly in line with 'heterodoxy' (re: debunked bullshit). Rofl.