Comments on: Drezner Aghast (Movie at 11) http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2003/04/10/drezner-aghast-movie-at-11/ Sociology and other distractions Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:33:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Eric http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2003/04/10/drezner-aghast-movie-at-11/comment-page-1/#comment-1031 Eric Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.kieranhealy.org/wordpress/?p=355#comment-1031 Kieran, Proud to report that I took no direct hits or bullet bites, and I guess I'm what you could call a fledgling political scientist. Then again, in general I prefer to call myself a (fledgling) political theorist or philosopher much more than a political "scientist" (blech!). IMHO, those rat choice people should really get over themselves, or do some serious thinking about the philosophy of the social sciences--any discipline in which the subjects can redefine themselves in response to the discipline's findings CANNOT be a "natural" science, dammit. (and yes, here, as ever, I find that my undergrad training in analytic philosophy as opposed to poli sci helped very much with the logic. Yay for being forced to prove modal logic theorems, even those that other people have already discovered...) Kieran,

Proud to report that I took no direct hits or bullet bites, and I guess I’m what you could call a fledgling political scientist.

Then again, in general I prefer to call myself a (fledgling) political theorist or philosopher much more than a political “scientist” (blech!). IMHO, those rat choice people should really get over themselves, or do some serious thinking about the philosophy of the social sciences—any discipline in which the subjects can redefine themselves in response to the discipline’s findings CANNOT be a “natural” science, dammit.

(and yes, here, as ever, I find that my undergrad training in analytic philosophy as opposed to poli sci helped very much with the logic. Yay for being forced to prove modal logic theorems, even those that other people have already discovered…)

]]> By: Neel Krishnaswami http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2003/04/10/drezner-aghast-movie-at-11/comment-page-1/#comment-1032 Neel Krishnaswami Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.kieranhealy.org/wordpress/?p=355#comment-1032 I read Machine Dreams, and was surprised by angry the tone of the book was. Mirowski struck me as a furious person, who basically wishes game theory would fall into the sea and get replaced with cybernetics and computer science. What makes this funny is that one of the hottest sub-sub-disciplines of computer science right now is adding microeconomics and game theory to the arsenal of models currently in use. For example, noncoperative game theory is a wonderful tool for modelling security systems, because you can directly model the assumption that the other side is acting in its own interest without building in overly restrictive assumptions about the behavior of the other party. So if the Nash equilibrium of your protocol is secure, then the system is secure. There is a moral here, I'm sure. Perhaps it is that the true measure of a scientist is his or her willingness to let practicality trump principle -- to cheerfully abandon long-held philosophical positions in order to make use of convenient new mathematical tools. I read Machine Dreams, and was surprised by angry the tone of the book was. Mirowski struck me as a furious person, who basically wishes game theory would fall into the sea and get replaced with cybernetics and computer science. What makes this funny is that one of the hottest sub-sub-disciplines of computer science right now is adding microeconomics and game theory to the arsenal of models currently in use. For example, noncoperative game theory is a wonderful tool for modelling security systems, because you can directly model the assumption that the other side is acting in its own interest without building in overly restrictive assumptions about the behavior of the other party. So if the Nash equilibrium of your protocol is secure, then the system is secure.

There is a moral here, I’m sure. Perhaps it is that the true measure of a scientist is his or her willingness to let practicality trump principle—to cheerfully abandon long-held philosophical positions in order to make use of convenient new mathematical tools.

]]> By: Neel Krishnaswami http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2003/04/10/drezner-aghast-movie-at-11/comment-page-1/#comment-1033 Neel Krishnaswami Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.kieranhealy.org/wordpress/?p=355#comment-1033 On rereading, I think that last paragraph is much more hostile than I meant -- I come close to accusing Mirowski of not being a scientist, and that's both inaccurate and unkind. MD is a good book, and I learned a lot from it. I think the willingness to choose mathematical convenience over philosophical integrity is one of the reasons the sciences work as well as they do, which is ironic and funny. The despite the fact that the philosophical difference between ethology and information economics are pretty big, and yet for years ethologists and economists have busily appropriated each others' models for search. Models of price-searching are used to build models of animal foraging, and vice-versa. On rereading, I think that last paragraph is much more hostile than I meant—I come close to accusing Mirowski of not being a scientist, and that’s both inaccurate and unkind. MD is a good book, and I learned a lot from it.

I think the willingness to choose mathematical convenience over philosophical integrity is one of the reasons the sciences work as well as they do, which is ironic and funny. The despite the fact that the philosophical difference between ethology and information economics are pretty big, and yet for years ethologists and economists have busily appropriated each others’ models for search. Models of price-searching are used to build models of animal foraging, and vice-versa.

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