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Mathematics has many daughters. Nearly all are beautiful. Physics & Chemistry are dutiful & visit home often. Life science is always away on some exotic research trip, hardly has time to write. Three of the girls live at home: Statistics, Computer Science ... & The Other One.
Statistics spent some time in a sanitarium, no one talks about it. She's doing better now, dotes on mother. Computer Science puts on a suit each day for her Big Important Job. But she still never moved out. 1/ #ideas
It really seems like only three women live at the house, but there is another.
Economics raids mother's closet (mathematics) and plays dress up stomping around in her most fancy and intimidating notation with none of her precision or grace.
It would be cute, but Economics is pushing 100, feral, and lives in the walls. 2/
Computer Science, the youngest daughter, has some disturbing, mostly repressed memories about playing with "the lady in the wall" when she was little. She shudders to think how she used to look up to the strange and often unkind creature.
But she also still loves her sister maybe more than anyone. Though being quite cold and detached in manner she has no idea how to help her.
Economics doesn't want to be helped. She doesn't want to get "better."
She wants to get WORSE. 3/3 #math
@futurebird
Computer Science eventually falls in love with Fine Arts. She was afraid to tell her mother at first, but mother was entirely supportive of the match. CS moved in with Fine Arts. It’s a happy relationship inside the walls, but people outside don’t understand. They keep shipping her with MBA down the street. She sees MBA all day at work, and they get things done, but there’s no romantic spark there. Only her close friends understand.
The first time Fine Arts came to the house for the holidays with Computer Science, Economics surprised her in the guest bathroom and bit her. She and Computer Science had to spend most of the holiday at the emergency room getting rabies and tetanus shots.
Computer Science finally opened up about her childhood and it made them a lot closer.
@futurebird @inthehands Awesome. I have a background in math, tho I've worked in software my adult life, now my kids are grown I'm getting a masters in .. maths. My wife had a PhD in physics (and mocks all the care my classes take to prove calculus true) but is an artist now, abstract expressionism with painting at the moment. Of all of them, I believe mathematics is the one with the most purely joyous experiences.
Pure mathematics is truly one of the fine arts and loves to play a lot.
Her favourite game is dress up as serious science.
@mina @jayalane @inthehands She & Computer Science are constantly squabbling over ‘who carries on mother’s legacy best.’ They are incredibly similar in temperament (often confused with each other as children.) Statistics has tried to enter the argument saying she too carrie’s on the legacy— but, her two younger sisters just laugh at her. Pure Mathematics is very fond of playing pranks. It can be a little exhausting putting up with her.
@futurebird eventually they’ll figure out that Computer Science has a split personality, one side almost the same as Pure Math, the other side they’ll say is like Applied Math but very disorganized because they won’t admit how much that side is like Economics but focused on building Rube Goldberg machines
@futurebird @mina @jayalane @inthehands
Statistics slips out at night to don a mask and become "Data Science", her alternate identity. For some reason a lot of people are fooled by this.
@passenger @futurebird @mina @jayalane @inthehands yup, she ain't no superhero . . .
@futurebird @inthehands this is amazing and we only wish we had anything to contribute to the canon
@futurebird @inthehands I’m hoping Computer Science and Fine Arts have two kids - Logic and Music. Logic loves her Grandma Math (Mama Math) and they share a deep connection. Music just loves to play.
@brianrepko @futurebird @inthehands
Music is logic.
Edit: They must be mirrored identical twins.
@GertyBz @brianrepko @futurebird @inthehands
That is a rather limited view on music? There are several brands of music theory, but none of them really gets the fact that music is also about emotions, communication, art, together creating something ...
@futurebird @inthehands CS and FA having their own brood in Computer Graphics and Music Technology.
@futurebird Economics is definitely the child of mathematics and social science who hates both of her parents and steals from both of their wardrobes.
She also steals from her sister, statistics. Mother doesn't always take Statistics seriously. Making her angry "Mom! She's been in my stuff again! There are greasy fingerprints everywhere!"
"We can wipe it down, it's going to be fine. You know your sister is ... different."
She also used to try to talk Computer Science into doing all sorts of nefarious malicious tricks when she was younger and more gullible but Computer Science has since stopped falling for it.
@futurebird One weekend economics broke through the wall into anthropology's room and threw all of anthropology's toys into the trash. She filled anthropology's toy box with the toys that she stole earlier from statistics, after first smashing them with a hammer.
It took anthropology a while to notice (she was taking a long walk and arguing with herself at the time, as she did most weekends). When she found out she tried to throw things at economics, who scurried away into the walls.
@floatybirb @futurebird
Sadly quite accurate.
@OskarImKeller @floatybirb @futurebird
I think we're about halfway to having the basic outline of a movie.
I'd watch that movie! 
@futurebird @floatybirb and justifies most of their actions by saying “but biological sciences does it all the time” while missing the point that ‘survival of the fittest’ is a catchphrase and not a social justification for atrocities.
From a very early age, Mother sensed that something was.. different. Her daughter Economics was forever pondering the nature of scarcity, getting increasingly desperate by the challenges of adapting numbers - a medium of no limits, be it in length or division - to model scarce resources. Mother saw her madness persist through all attempts to convince her of the futility of her chosen task. And really, what other medium would fit?
@futurebird love this! signed, someone with degrees in math & CS.
@va2lam @futurebird
I love this too! <3 :D
Signed,
A career instrumental musician who achieved zero maths skills beyond
A (+ - x ÷) B = C
(Ms)
Same here, with the math and (mathematical) computer science background.
...
I say Computer Science *pretends* to be really *mathy*, with the suit and the "Going off to the Big Important Mathy Job Now!" thing. But really, she's always sneaking off with her brother, The Craftsman, who builds furniture. That's what most of the customers really want, anyway.
I think you are missing an important plot twist. Economics isn't related to math at all.
Econ is actually the daughter of Philosophy. It's only fairly recently that she fell in love with the elegant, not-so-simple simplicity of Physics and began believing human nature can be boiled down into equations.
That is when Economics lost it, called herself "Neo-Classical", broke into the house of Mathmatics, terrorized her daughters, and gas-lit everyone into believing she was related.
@FantasticalEconomics @futurebird The most fun thing I learned about economics was that the proof of free markets maximizing welfare assumes rational actors with independent utility functions. If humans aren't rational and also care about relative status, it's faith-based, not math.
Don't forget about the assumptions of perfect information and perfect competition!
The whole notion of free market efficiency is so back-asswards it's prominence today can only be explained by the fact that conservative think-tanks spend an awful lot of money pushing its myths.
Which comes down to powerful entities (assumed away by perfect competition) bamboozling the gullible (assumed away by perfect information) to perpetuate the profits of the powerful.
@FantasticalEconomics @dr2chase @futurebird Don't forget the infinite cost-free transactions. It's my favorite part!
@dr2chase @FantasticalEconomics @futurebird Which is why Psychology resists being paternity-tested: it doesn't want to be on the hook to Math for Economics' child support payments.
@FantasticalEconomics @futurebird Economics is one of what I call the "Dark Arts"... the other being Marketing.
I studied both at University for my Bachelor of Applied Economics with a double major in Natural Resources & Marketing 
Naively & rather stubbornly I thought I could use Economics & Marketing to help people correctly value Natural Resources like... drinkable water, breathable air... alas, apparently since those things are "free"...
...they have no value to society...
I got into environmental economics for much the same reason and the Dark Arts metaphor really resonates with me.
It's tough, but I think we are making improvements. Very small, very marginal, improvements to get people to realize the value of the natural world. But it's something.
I can see how/why you got fed up with it though :/
@FantasticalEconomics @futurebird I think my stepping off point was when, in the final year of my degree, I wanted to focus more on the value of water & a senior lecturer said, "NZ doesn't have a water problem." 
I was a very keen kayaker & direct observation of fresh water pollution was inescapable & people were already arguing over whether "their" aquifer was or wasn't "connected" to somebody else's aquifer... bear in mind none of those people actually OWN those aquifers 
& it struck me that being idealistic wasn't going to make any difference at all... so... I chose to get involved in hands on riparian projects... However, I made a strategic error with that too... because projects on public land... it is a hiding to nothing... vandalism, politics... so, then I just bought my own riparian boundary & here I am... halfway through a long term project trying to demonstrate in a tangible way the ideas I think are win-win...
I am pretty tired 
the place looks fantastic, the ideas work... but... it takes ongoing effort to keep it stable as a project...
@FantasticalEconomics @juliasnz @futurebird Capitalist environmental economics as a response to ecocidal planetary crises is like responding to chattel slavery by marginally increasing the price of (some) slaves. It misses the fundamental nature of the issue.
@FantasticalEconomics @futurebird
I called both Marketing & Economics "arts" for a specific reason... certain pieces of information are included but other pieces of information that generally doesn't support what the "idea" being proposed are conveniently left out...
Conveniently... the problem & "solution" are presented as "logical conclusions" supported by "evidence"... 
Which of course is ridiculous because any economic or Marketing idea is actually a carefully curated idea to sell or justify an action...
I called them "Dark Arts" because of how deceptively their techniques are used which... once you have studied them become very blatant & frankly... discouraging.
That doesn't mean that a smart person can't use Marketing or Economic Analysis to highlight the deceptions 
& demonstrate that the conclusions are NOT logical. But they are going to have to twice as smart to cope with the without losing their ... calm 
@FantasticalEconomics @futurebird
OR! try on this for size:
Economics is a changeling, swapped at birth by fairies who kidnapped an entire branch of mathematics we don't even know about into the fae realm.
@FantasticalEconomics @futurebird
Deep in the walls, Economics keeps a shrine to Physics. She loves her. She hates her. Physics moves with a kind of aloof austerity, and while she's not as fetted as she once was, people move aside when she comes into the room.
Economics' shrine to her has posters of these galas in her secret room. The tables in front of them are festooned with flowers. The posters themselves are riddled with stab marks.
@MichaelTBacon @FantasticalEconomics
Physics, who is often oblivious & not great at reading people, has absolutely no idea about any of this & would probably be paralyzed with confusion & horror if she ever found out.
She is not as aware as her other sisters of just how far gone “little Ekkie” is— still thinking of her younger sister as the impertinent & rude, but not yet totally dislikable child she was long ago. “little Ekkie is fine, she’ll grow out of it”
@futurebird @MichaelTBacon @FantasticalEconomics [laughs in Political Science]
“Physics? I think we played around with Bayesian statistics together for a bit, but she was just a fling.”
[Economics, seething quietly]
@futurebird Stop making me like economics. She is not that much of a boss cmon now.
@futurebird Chemistry is always the one wiring money to Life Science when she finds herself stuck somewhere without a way home. In return Life Science sends some amazing photographs and post cards when she remembers.
@futurebird my mentor in college, Dr. Grihapati Mitra, Head of the Chemistry Department, called Mathematics “the Queen science” — so your tale resonates well
@futurebird
I feel bad for Economics. I think, deep down, she knows the rational actor model is flawed. Can you imagine suspecting your entire worldview is based on a flawed model? It's enough to make someone try to force the world into their model instead of vice versa.
She seems to do better when she's with Psychology. When she's around Politics, she's just impossible.
I can't riff the poetry, but it rings true. In a market, supply and demand are seen as positive and negative charges that always find each other through the circuitry, no matter how complex, inevitably reaching balance.
But economics ignores power, which is more like gravity. It has no opposite charge, and once it accumulates a little, it accumulates a lot, going runaway like an expanding black hole.
And money in small amounts has charge, but in large amounts is entirely mass.
@futurebird Little Eccie keeps muttering about “The Invisible Hand”, saying it “Comes for us all in the end.”
Somehow wherever she goes she leaves behind a trail of damage and dysfunction. Nobody ever seems to notice her doing it, but everything just gets a little worse and a little more broken when she’s around.
@futurebird When anyone tries to question her behaviour, she goes quiet and then looks directly back at them. As soon as they catch her eye she holds their gaze, a cold fire in her eyes, her face lighting up with unhinged joy. “It’s so beautiful. It’s so perfect. It’s so fundamental. It cannot be contained or defied. The market fixes everything. The market is all!”
@futurebird
This is so true and so lovely.
@futurebird
All the daughters have fooled around some and there are a lot of their offspring out there designing bridges, airplanes, buildings, rockets etc. using skills from their moms and aunties. unfortunately some are greedy and reckless
Computer science has been spending too much time with economics. Economics hasn't been a good influence. Even though she is an adopted daughter of philosophy, she has a low wisdom score. She forgets about the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical fundamentals. If she remembered those, she wouldn't be such a train wreck shouting outrageous claims that oversimplify and misuse things her sisters told her. She is very charismatic, so is in charge and is passing out koolaid cups...
Computer science, spending too much time with economics, thinks it created a better brain, but this brain is just an over hyped p hacker. CS learned charisma from economics and has everyone thinking this fake brain is going to replace humans. In reality, it is almost useless because you have to be an expert in the subject you are trying to use it for to know whether or not you can trust it, defeating the purpose. CS is pouring the Kool aid into the cups econ gave us.
@futurebird This is the best description of economics I've ever seen.
@futurebird fill the board with calculus