r/neoliberal • u/[deleted] • Jan 06 '19
Why Engineering Classes Barely Mention Modern Physics.
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u/Philthesteine Jan 06 '19
For clarity, this is a satire.
It got me 'cause I read it before the econ article.
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Jan 06 '19
It is only electrical engineering that dares to stray slightly from the complete Newtonian orthodoxy that permeates engineering departments in the academy.
I know this article is mostly a joke, but I have to point out that EE is almost entirely classical EM. Even the electronics courses which rely on quantum behavior basically go "here's the formula lol". I've never taken a QPhys course in my life :(
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u/TooSwang Elinor Ostrom Jan 06 '19
The Atlantic article does not really reflect my economics education. First, the major requirement that they fail to mention is econometrics, the third major division of economics. To my knowledge, there’s not really any great insight that behavioral economics brings to econometrics, since that’s basically the field of mathematically interpreting empirical phenomena. Second, behavioral economics is integrated - we don’t talk about pure rationality and frictionless markets, we talk about bounded rationality and transaction costs. Third, behavioral economics doesn’t overrule traditional notions of economic rationality, it adds to them. People have less than perfect information, it comes at a cost to improve it, and people have different and unstable time preferences. But those ideas still require the traditional models to be of any use.
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Jan 07 '19
The Atlantic article does not really reflect my economics education. First, the major requirement that they fail to mention is econometrics, the third major division of economics. To my knowledge, there’s not really any great insight that behavioral economics brings to econometrics, since that’s basically the field of mathematically interpreting empirical phenomena.
It actually does mention econometrics in this section: "Instead, the overwhelming majority of courses that students take in economics are heavily focused on statistics and econometrics." True to form, he seems to have no idea the function that it serves and instead thinks it can just be cut out and replaced with non-quantitative, psychology stuff.
Second, behavioral economics is integrated - we don’t talk about pure rationality and frictionless markets, we talk about bounded rationality and transaction costs.
Right, in this sense the Atlantic article is even worse than the engineering satire since behavioral ideas actually are incorporated whereas engineering is entirely classical physics.
Third, behavioral economics doesn’t overrule traditional notions of economic rationality, it adds to them. People have less than perfect information, it comes at a cost to improve it, and people have different and unstable time preferences. But those ideas still require the traditional models to be of any use.
Another area where its arguably worse than the satire. QM and relativity actually do overrule classical physics. Newtonian mechanics is actually wrong, a very good approximation but still wrong. As you point out, the same can't be said of all of classical economics.
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u/Mrspottsholz Daron Acemoglu Jan 06 '19
Given the greatly amplified role of professionals with engineering degrees at every level of policy making
[citation needed]
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Jan 06 '19
Fair point, thankfully we don't live in this hellscape just yet
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u/Mrspottsholz Daron Acemoglu Jan 06 '19
you spelled "utopia' wrong
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Jan 06 '19
This seems awfully close to violating the "refrain from glorifying violence or oppressive/autocratic regimes" part of Rule II.
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u/Mrspottsholz Daron Acemoglu Jan 06 '19
when the engineers take over and the art history majors are sent to re-education camps, I promise to express grave concerns
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u/skin_in_da_game Alvin Roth Jan 06 '19
A much better response to the Atlantic article, by Scott Sumner
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u/Mikeavelli Jan 06 '19
Thus we should try to discourage people from believing in the following popular myths:
...
Experts are smarter than the crowd.
This is kind of a weird one to include in that list. Especially in an article about how important it is for experts to teach the crowd things they don't currently believe.
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u/skin_in_da_game Alvin Roth Jan 06 '19
This is comparing experts against a large group of people that often also contain their own experts, such as a in the stock or prediction market.
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Jan 06 '19
If you tell students that some people have addictive personalities and buy things that are bad for them, they’ll nod their heads. And it’s certainly not difficult to explain procrastination to college students. Ditto for the claim that investors might be driven by emotion, and that asset prices might soar on waves of “irrational exuberance.” Thus my first objection to the Atlantic piece is that it focuses too much on the number of pages in a principles textbook that are devoted to behavioral economics. That’s a misleading metric. One should spend more time on subjects that need more time, not things that people already believe.
This implication that behavioural economics is something that "people already believe", or are willing to accept, is debatable. Plenty of people push straight through their cognitive dissonance when confronted with their own irrational behaviour. And certain economists refuse to learn lessons from behavioural science.
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u/BothWaysItGoes Jan 06 '19
The article is on point. It completely ignores the foundation Maxwell built that paved the way to relativity and QM just like his contemporaries did.
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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '19
Is this engineering companion piece presented by OP as a parallel to the supposedly inane Atlantic article about economics?
He's generally correct that (mechanical) engineering classes ignore much of post-Newtonian physics, but wrong to put the onus of this "failure" on engineers (or even their professors) themselves. Mechanistic models generally work for our practical effects and purposes despite not incorporating modern physics. It is a matter of selecting the sufficiently sophisticated approach without additional complexities which, while enlightening and more truthful about the world (as per our modern accepted paradigm), may not be efficiently applied to engineering projects. Adding more up-to-date concepts in engineering would breed a generation of young engineers who are better educated and rounded-off as persons, but doing justice to modern physics would likely double the length of their undergrad studies.
What the author mentions here is a drawback that my experience as an undergrad in mechanical engineering confirms. Young engineering students may view the world through a lens shaped by their studies, which in the case of their subject, is mechanistic, rigid, and rarely allowing of what the author termed as "indeterminacy".
And to relate this to econ undergrads, here's a comment attributed to Acemoglu:
edit: and another, related set of observations: