I view economists are more like physicists working with spherical cows, and often happy to continue to do so. So that means we should expect lots of specific blind spots, and for them to be easy to identify, and for them to be readily acknowledged by many economists. Under this model, economists are also not particularly concerned with the practical implications of the simplifications they make. Hence they would readily acknowledge many specific limitations of their models. Another way of putting it: this is more of a blind spot for economics, not economists.
I’ll also get back to this point about measurement… there’s a huge space between “nature has intrinsic value” and “we can measure the extrinsic value of nature”. I think the most reasonable position is: - Nature has some intrinsic value, because there are conscious beings in it (with a bonus because we don’t understand consciousness well enough to be confident that we aren’t under-counting). - Nature has hard to quantify, long-term extrinsic value (in expectation), and we shouldn’t imagine that we’ll be able to quantify it appropriately any time soon. - We should still try to quantify it sometimes, in order to use quantitative decision-making / decision-support tools. But we should maintain awareness of the limitations of these efforts.
I view economists are more like physicists working with spherical cows, and often happy to continue to do so. So that means we should expect lots of specific blind spots, and for them to be easy to identify, and for them to be readily acknowledged by many economists. Under this model, economists are also not particularly concerned with the practical implications of the simplifications they make. Hence they would readily acknowledge many specific limitations of their models. Another way of putting it: this is more of a blind spot for economics, not economists.
I’ll also get back to this point about measurement… there’s a huge space between “nature has intrinsic value” and “we can measure the extrinsic value of nature”. I think the most reasonable position is:
- Nature has some intrinsic value, because there are conscious beings in it (with a bonus because we don’t understand consciousness well enough to be confident that we aren’t under-counting).
- Nature has hard to quantify, long-term extrinsic value (in expectation), and we shouldn’t imagine that we’ll be able to quantify it appropriately any time soon.
- We should still try to quantify it sometimes, in order to use quantitative decision-making / decision-support tools. But we should maintain awareness of the limitations of these efforts.