Dark Energy: Makes about as Much Sense as Macroeconomics

From the Washington Post,

"Even nothing, even empty space, weighs something, and because in our universe we've got a lot of nothing, it has a major effect on our evolution and causes space itself to accelerate," said David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University.

What remains unclear is what dark energy is, exactly.

Nothing weighs something? What is this, a love song? Magic? Voodoo? Inferential science? Ontological epistomology? Whatever it is, it sounds a lot like macroeconomics to me.

Comments

[John Seater]

Macroeconomics is nothing but dynamic general equilibrium. In my experience, both the dynamic part and the general equilibrium part are too difficult for most microeconomists, which is one reason they chose their specialty of static partial equilibrium. As one of my friends at a top economics department likes to say, macroeconomists are twice as smart as microeconomists because to do macro you have to know standard micro and then quite a bit more.

[Phil Miller]

That's quite strong comment, considering what a mess contemporary macroeconomics is.

[Nick Rowe]

Macro has always been in a mess. That's because it's harder! And it's what makes it more interesting!

There's an element of truth in what John Sester (? sorry, can't read your name easily on my screen) says though: for example, most (all?) macroeconomists can teach basic micro comfortably, but many microeconomists are scared to teach basic macro (OK John (Palmer), with a few exceptions!)