I have an interest in econophysics and what people think of as "economics" is mostly bullshit.
David Ruelle put it best in 1991 when he summed up economics as "We don't currently have the tools to properly study this subject". 35 years later we only have slightly better tools.
Economist here. (Started as programmer, worked in finance, got Masters in Econ.) Econ is a big field. I think it knows a lot at the microeconomics level. There are impressive mathematical tools and economists have found “natural experiments” which test causality.
Macroeconomists don’t know much at all. We can’t even create artificial economies - the agent-based simulations have dozens of parameters and our tools are bad at studying those imperfect fake economies.
I’ve looked a bit into econophysics. They seem more on the path to getting somewhere. But it’s still a long road.
David Ruelle put it best in 1991 when he summed up economics as "We don't currently have the tools to properly study this subject". 35 years later we only have slightly better tools.