Ideologically, I am a supporter of econophysics and non-orthodox economic research in general.
However, I am wary of scientific works that are too swift and radical just for the sake of sounding cool. And there plenty such papers, blogs, magazine articles, etc. Take, for example, the talks of the economic paradigm being broken. These are often naif:
A) Things like non-linearity, non-ergodicity, spontaneous symmetry breaking, or “black swans” are common in physical systems too, not just finance. So why don’t bloggers and marginal thinkers of the world write posts saying that physics is broken? I think it’s because we all deal with economics and finance everyday, so as soon as we get a PhD (and sometimes even without one in economics) we feel entitled to speak up on the fundamentals. And the oi polloi (like me) will soon be excited.
We rarely do that with math or physics…
B) The world of economics is dominated by [dynamical systems] complexity, politics, etc. etc., and the paradigm that gained a half-dozen Nobels in Chicago (Rational Expectations Hypothesis, Efficient Market Hypothesis) is of course a bunch of bullshit and will be rewritten soon. 🙂 Yet, markets seemed to show tremendous efficiency when they anticipated, in 2008, a deep recession coming… Dear God, never let the facts get in the way of my opinions!
