Higgs Boson: Bad For Economics?

Quick question: will the discovery of the Higgs Boson, announced this week, end up being bad for economics?

Think about it.

Economics has suffered enough at the hands of mathematical adepts who praise elegance over reality and prefer the idealism of their models to the down and dirty stuff of actual economies. Not that math is necessarily bad, mind you, it should remain a tool though and not become the reason-for-being that it has. To all intents and purposes orthodox economics has become an exercise in applied math far from its roots as political economy.

So.

The discovery of the Higgs boson seems to me to be a bad thing. As in BAD THING.

It sets up the prospect of a whole bunch of gifted nerdy math types looking for a new home within which to flaunt their skills. With particle physics now at a decisive, and potentially closing, point, the likelihood of gaining the praise of your peers for your math virtuosity is diminished there. So more than a few souls might venture afield, with some landing in economics. After all, as I mentioned, economics has become a subset of math and is thus fertile territory for such folk.

Not that I ought to detract in any way from the awesome triumph that the discovery represents. Peter Higgs postulated the existence of the particle that now bears his name 50 years ago. Finding it was a long, intense and frustrating struggle. But find it they did. Good for them. Breathtaking science. Real science.

Unlike economics which is pseudo science and mistakes clever reasoning for discovery, and whose central achievements are made only with the aid of nonsensical, absurd, and utterly unreal assumptions.

The discoveries of physics illuminate deepest reality. The discoveries of economics obfuscate even the shallowest reality.

Oh well. I’m still a little worried about that Higgs boson thing though. We’re sated with math. We need less, not more.