This is crap. For one I find the authors background highly dubious to be writing on economics, philosophy and religion? Yes both are very concrete sciences. /sarcasm

Next he says no economists predicted the Great Recession but then references Krugman. Krugman did predict it, he even republished his book predicting it, with a new foreword pretty much saying "I told you so." As well, economic theory did help us in the fallout from the crash. I can't say how my jaw dropped when he alleged it didn't.

The issue of economic accuracy isn't the math, it's that people treat it like a belief system instead of a science. Economics should not have politics involved, the science itself has no room for it. Tangentially, I blame religion for this tainting of the science's perception but that's a whole long other conversation. This same problem has affected the "hard sciences" throughout time and still does to date (i.e. Racism and bigotry in biology are still present).

Mathematics in economics is highly underrated by those who don't understand it or think for some reason it's malicious. Why? Because they don't understand how feeling and math can go hand and hand. People believe quantifying things is some sort of evil, but is it? Why? If you take enough economics you realize by and large the units people get so hung up on are nearly irrelevant compared to the relationship between them. Those relationships are economic models. Can models can be simplistic-- sure, but the assumptions are there for you on paper listed clear as day (normally).

The "rational man" isn't something people take seriously as a reflection of the world in Econ (at least sane educated people don't)-- it's merely a starting point which gives us traction to move forward and see how the real world measures against it. It's not permanent, it's not looked at as real, but it's merely somewhere to get some leverage to move forward.

Economics actually helped me understand a great deal of high level mathematics because I was able to "feel" it by looking at economic models. Something I couldn't do from pure math. The ability to talk about the world around us in mathematics is an advantage not a hinderance. Being able to then describe my world using math has a been a very great advanatage for me in life and one I would not underrate.

Finally, the author gives no hard examples of its failure but merely quotes some random people to support his claim. There is no real analysis here. The Li he refers to is a shit comparison. He shows no math or statistics and expects his point to be taken seriously. Why? Are the two even comparable? I mean c'mon. It's just the ramblings of someone who doesn't like not being taken seriously academically or is paid less.

Economics is hard and it's probably always gonna be that way, taking away the math isn't going to make it easier it's gonna make it even more bullshitty. Ignoring the math will leave gaping holes in your ability to understand and think critically about it.

People assume economists haven't figured out how to do things properly. They're wrong. What really has happened is politics and money have shit all over the science and made it difficult for outsiders to find those answers. One of the reasons I'm pro socialism is because that's what the science shows works. The sciences shows how having a gold standard is idiocy and only bothers the ignorant. Libertarians, republicans, and gold bugs hate me for saying that but it's true.

I'm tired of ranting and economics on HN is literally worse than Twitter because people think they're educated on the subject so I'll stop right now.