I'm old enough to have experienced major paradigm shifts in many areas. And so I wonder, which theoretical models make predictions most in line with future events?
Macroeconomic models?
- Keynesian stuff we were taught and then retaught ourselves was way off because it tended to understate the importance of money.
- Monetary models have let us down somewhat because they often missed the importance of expectations.
- Rational expectations models were a big bust because they ignored the time costs of search and adjustment.
Climate Change Models?
- In the 1970s, it was global cooling we were concerned with.
- In the 1990s, it was global warming. The forecasting models for both have both been wildly inaccurate.
Nutrition Models?
- Remember how fat was bad and carbs were ok?
- Remember how maybe unsaturated fats were ok, but certainly saturated fats were not?
- And the most recent evidence is that there is no identifiable connection between saturated fats and premature death rates.
Astronomy Models?
- Geocentric models
- Solar models
- Milky Way
- Black Holes
- Big Bang
- Dark Matter and Energy (we have lots of black boxes in the social sciences, too)
And for each model, there have been people who claim "It's settled science!"
What's worse, throughout history the proponents of the settled science have persecuted and prosecuted the questioners, the skeptics. And it is still happening. From George Will:
Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science. ...
“The debate is settled,” says Obama. “Climate change is a fact.” Indeed. The epithet “climate change deniers,” obviously coined to stigmatize skeptics as akin to Holocaust deniers, is designed to obscure something obvious: Of course the climate is changing; it never is not changing — neither before nor after theMedieval Warm Period (end of the 9th century to the 13th century) and the Little Ice Age (1640s to 1690s), neither of which was caused by fossil fuels. ...
The leader of the attorneys general, New York’s Eric Schneiderman, dismisses those who disagree with him as “morally vacant.” His moral content is apparent in his campaign to ban fantasy sports gambling because it competes with the gambling (state lottery, casinos, off-track betting) that enriches his government.
And of course, it's all for own good.