That seems a bit of a dichotomous view on a complex web of interconnected "realities" and "abstractions", and I'm not sure if "real" is a great term for an opposite of an abstraction, which is also real in a lot of ways.
Otherwise you are getting _very_ close to the N/S dichotomy in Jungian psychology and the Myers-Briggs type model :D and the growth idea there is transcendence of the dichotomy, bringing strengths of both ends forward, rather than regressing to the one-sided way.
The difference between abstraction and reality is all the little details that get excluded from abstractions. Consider, people cooking at home are creating real value that doesn’t get captured in GDP, which means maximizing GDP may is not maximizing the actual economy.
The difference is not so critical when people are starving, but the difference continues to grow until maximizing GDP starts harming the economy.
Maximizing GDP doesn’t need to be the primary goal to as you say guide policies. There are plenty of policies aimed to increase economic growth as measured by GDP.
Economists however are on all sides of this issue, it isn’t some monolithic field where everyone agrees on even basic ideas.
What economists are on the side that GDP is a perfect measure that precisely captures the increase in well-being? I have never heard of one. If you look at the IMF website you will find a nuanced explanation of what GDP is and is not. For example, it states that
> It is also important to understand what GDP cannot tell us. GDP is not a measure of the overall standard of living or well-being of a country. Although changes in the output of goods and services per person (GDP per capita) are often used as a measure of whether the average citizen in a country is better or worse off, it does not capture things that may be deemed important to general well-being.
Tirades that when economists calculate GDP the human society is serving "abstractions" or the devil over the "real" and God is just fearmongering.
Again your taking things to unreasonable extremes, plenty of economists think GDP is good enough to be useful. Which means it’s informing their decisions or it wouldn’t be useful.
You can’t say measure X is useful, and it’s flaws are well known therefore it’s flaws are irrelevant. If it’s useful then it’s flaws are part of any decision made using it.
>plenty of economists think GDP is good enough to be useful. Which means it’s informing their decisions or it wouldn’t be useful
Yeah, that's precisely my point. It's informing their decisions.
>You can’t say measure X is useful, and it’s flaws are well known therefore it’s flaws are irrelevant. If it’s useful then it’s flaws are part of any decision made using it.
Measure X is useful, its flaws are well known therefore people who use it account for its flaws during the decision making process.
Within the context of a Model. Models that don’t capture the very large scale effects are useless and therefore not worth talking about. What’s left is models that used to capture large scale effects and all the smaller effects that where never captured by the model.
This sounds more like an argument for systems design. You can easily build models and meta-models that help navigate various scopes. For example the concept of the long tail is by definition a widely-scoped way of gaining leverage in a situation where smaller details are important.
Traffic control systems, computer hardware design...these all incorporate the same combinations of depth and breadth of thinking. I think it's wise to keep an open mind and ask whether it's really necessary to exclude a given model or entire set of them.
It’s not a question of excluding the model, it’s a question of the feedback loop where the model is used to both inform your decisions and validate they where correct.
Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"
> it’s a question of the feedback loop where the model is used to both inform your decisions and validate they where correct.
Who exactly are we criticizing for doing this? Seems a bit like a straw man argument tbh. I'm not even sure how that relates to the more general concept raised above, of a single model of reality being reliable.
Direct observation exists alongside models. You may not be able to correctly interpret that observation, but it is still a form of knowledge.
This is true even if what’s being observed is by a simulated entity, the observation exists outside of it’s internal models and is indirectly related to things in the underlying reality. Ie, physical states of various bits of physical RAM.
None of these philosophers old works need to be given any weight and working with you to decipher your personal beliefs is not my problem.
The abstractions of physics and biology provide the evidence necessary given the context.
Perhaps sit and ruminate as you wish. Those dead men have no capture of my perception. Paulo Freire said we have no obligation to import the jargon and implied behavior of our captors; I won’t submit to Christian rule; why rich mens dollars? The political capture of our economic behavior is a cudgel I’m tired of being bashed with, and the measurable effects are where I’ll put my effort.
If you prefer to equivocate them away with deference to endless semantic recitation, that’s fine, because I know that means you won’t be in the “real” way. You’ll be here proselytizing others just how none of the effort is going how it should.
Otherwise you are getting _very_ close to the N/S dichotomy in Jungian psychology and the Myers-Briggs type model :D and the growth idea there is transcendence of the dichotomy, bringing strengths of both ends forward, rather than regressing to the one-sided way.