On the Sharp Rebuke: "If You Are Going to Dominate, At Least Calculate Properly"
When mainstream economics deals with its own home turf—finance, macroeconomics, and the stock market—its operations are jaw-droppingly sophisticated. Running supercomputers to plug in thousands of variables, economists fight tooth and nail to predict future metrics by deploying complex calculus equations and econometric models.
Yet, a peculiar anomaly occurs. The moment they take those sophisticated calculators and invade neighboring fields like family, crime, or art, their formulas become astonishingly pathetic. They flatly reduce the immense complexity of human life and emotion into a rudimentary level of addition and subtraction—a mere playground calculation of "costs" and "benefits."
The sharp rebuke, "If you are going to dominate the entire world with your calculators, at least calculate properly," pierces straight through the heart of economics. It is not that they lack the capacity to calculate deeply. Rather, a cowardly hidden motive compels them to aggressively oversimplify reality just to sustain their empire.
The Cheap Trick of Erasing Values That Cannot Be Quantified
For economics to pull off its signature "precise calculations," a non-negotiable prerequisite must be met: every single variable must be thoroughly converted into numbers (data), much like stock prices or interest rates.
However, the sublime joy a parent feels looking at their child, the deep trust between a married couple, or the moral guilt whispered by conscience when committing a crime—none of these can be converted into numbers by any computer on Earth.
At this crossroad, economics abandons academic honesty and opts for a highly convenient trick. Instead of striving to precisely factor in the immeasurable values of the human soul, it deletes them entirely, claiming that "values that cannot be quantified either do not exist or are irrelevant variables." Leaving behind only the most superficial, visible metrics like child-rearing expenses (money) or months of imprisonment (numbers), the resulting analysis inevitably turns out profoundly shallow and simplistic.
Deliberate Blindness to Preserve the Illusion of a Clear Answer
What would happen if economics, upon invading other domains, actually tried to execute a "truly sophisticated calculation" by incorporating all the intricate variables unique to those fields—such as social isolation, the human subconscious, cultural traditions, and emotional bonds? The equations would become so dizzyingly complex that the discipline would collapse under its own weight, failing to derive a single, tidy answer (equilibrium point).
The sole weapon that allows economics to swagger and speak down to neighboring disciplines is its aggressive simplicity: "You speak in convoluted terms, but we possess a crystal-clear answer called incentives!" The moment they acknowledge the inner complexities of human nature and attempt to calculate them precisely, the illusion of "clarity" shatters, and they forfeit their dominance. In other words, they deliberately shut their eyes and choose oversimplification purely to protect their academic authority.
To a Man with a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." This famous observation by psychologist Abraham Maslow serves as a flawless description of modern economists.
The only tool economists have brandished throughout their entire lives is the hammer of "cost-benefit analysis." Armed with that single tool, they have marched into entirely new gardens called family, crime, and psychology. In that garden, there are delicate flowers of emotion that must be carefully nurtured, and massive trees of history deeply rooted in the soil. Yet, lacking any other instruments, economists look at this beautiful ecosystem and carelessly smash it to pieces, hammering away with costs and benefits while declaring, "This is just another nail I can drive into the ground."
It is the pinnacle of arrogance and laziness—refusing to learn the sophisticated methodologies of other fields to handle reality properly, and instead forcibly distorting the world to fit the solitary tool shaped to their own hands.
Conclusion: Confess the Limitations of the Calculator
The reason they aggressively oversimplify the world when stepping into other disciplines is not due to a lack of capability; it is a desperate attempt to avoid exposing the fatal limitations of their own tools (equations). If they were to truly and precisely calculate human life, the discipline of economics itself would be unable to withstand the weight and would crumble.
They have forcibly pinned the world down to the level of their shallow calculators, stubbornly insisting, "This is science." They must halt the arrogance of trying to claim dominance over the entire world when they lack the courage to calculate it with genuine precision. Only when they lay down that lazy hammer—the one flattening the sublime realms of humanity that no number can ever measure—can we begin a genuine collaboration and mutual coexistence among the social sciences for the sake of real human beings.
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