Neoclassical economics treats its own past claims as disposable bygones

Evidence

Yet the strangest thing of all about this fracas was that much of it was forgotten almost as soon as the pixels faded. It was as if economists and their critics were no different from the protagonist of the Christopher Nolan film Memento: beset with massive memory loss, they forgot what they had just inscribed on their skin last week or last month, condemned to surprise themselves over and over. The contempt of neoclassical economists for the history of economic thought was notorious; but here it was, deployed in real time. One of the ten commandments of neoclassical theory is that bygones are bygones; neoclassical economists trusted that the attention spans of their patrons were so short and flighty that this principle would extend to anything they might have said about the crisis, and one another. And with hindsight, who’s to say they were wrong? — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 453

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to the reader’s interest in the thought collective’s survival mechanisms — the amnesia dynamic is how the NTC erases accountability for failed predictions. — connects to: Neoclassical economists are the zombies, not the neoliberals themselves; Neoclassical economics as a whole is a zombie tradition resistant to refutation — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 66; Contemporary orthodox economics lacks the consensus texts that define a stable discipline — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 68
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that a discipline’s methodological premise (bygones are bygones) is weaponized as a real-time defense against accountability for its own failed crisis predictions is genuinely novel and dense.