First off, the problem with LessWrong is not that they "think like economists", it's that they're Singularity cultists. (Also, the horrible evo-psych stuff.) If they were simply Freakonomics types, that would be so much better.
Look, to a certain extent "thinking like an economist" is a good thing. Ag's point about being able to see the likely (unintended) consequences of policy proposals is damn correct, and damn important. I "think like an economist" when I argue against suburban road extensions on the grounds that induced demand will make them fail on their own terms; I "think like an economist" when I reject the populist rhetoric regarding gentrification, and instead argue that the only durable solution to the affordability crisis in our coastal cities is to kick the NIMBYs to the curb and engage in massive infill and upzoning, to increase housing supply. Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean I am going against other less-quantifiable values– rather it is the opposite, my values and my understanding of the market forces at play bolster each other. The environmental and social arguments for directing infrastructure investment towards the more efficient, more sustainable core still holds; as regarding the "g-word" one must keep in mind that some of the
loudest and most effective voices against increased density are cranky old white people engaging in basically yet another xenophobic Yellow Peril, and my values are nothing if not welcoming and cosmopolitan.
Yes, if I had to discard my other values to hew to economic "utility" that would be an issue, and there are cases where I would be willing to incur some deadweight loss for more touchy-feely ends. To that extent, I agree. But economic thinking is compatible with all sorts of values; if people are using economics to justify anti-social modes of behavior then the problem is more likely with their prior values than their use of economic jargon, I think.
...
To get back to LessWrong and their singularity fetish... actually, though, that reminds me of the one way where "thinking like an economist" really is a Bad Thing. Namely, let's look at another thing ag said upthread, his restatement of the "in the long run we are all dead" saw. To be blunt: in general, economic thinking is pretty puerile and irresponsible when it comes to the "long run", when it comes to real resource shortages and environmental degradation. (Though not as openly puerile as thinking about the future in terms of a Rapture-esque singularity.
) There's this tendency to write it off as something for far-future generations to worry about, to sweep it all under the Solow residual rug. But that doesn't actually work, not because they're wrong about the sun swallowing us whole, but because a lot of those degradations and changes are a hell of a lot too close for comfort. It does the victims of the Holocene extinction event no comfort to hear that the Sun will swallow us in a billion years; it does our coastal cities no comfort to hear that Pangea will re-form when they could be inundated within if not
our lifetimes, the lifetimes of our kids and grandkids; it does our electric grid no comfort to hear that renewables will scale up to cover demand decades after we're scheduled to run out of oil.
It behooves the economics profession to start taking the "long run", and heterodox approaches like steady-state economics, a little more seriously.
