[MD] Chaos and Goldilocks

[Case]

DM: I think this point of view if fully adopted is a fantasy and delusion.
I think science's ability to deliver on the reductionist programme is far
from a clear success, so 'stunningly effective' is just an opinion and can
be argued against see John Horgan's The End of Science for example.
And what use is any god's eye view when quantum theory could turn
out,under some interpretations, to mean the genuine indeterminacy of all
systems.

[Case]
Ouchie. I think the last 100 years argues completely in the opposite
direction. We have accomplish so much in science and medicine that our
ancestors would call use all wizards. In his introduction to a Brief History
of Time Hawkings talked about all of the predictions of the end of physics
at the end of the 1800's. Don't hold your breath. Whatever, is going on at
the quantum level is essentially irrelevant to us. All that uncertainty
cancels out at our level and becomes static enough for this world to exist
just find thank you. We might find all sorts of nifty applications for it at
some point but I really don't think the sky is falling.

DM: Approximate is good, and snooker is pretty predictable,
but outside of such an artificial set up the 'potential' outcomes in most
open systems are vast and on a knife edge, such that quantum
fluctuations means that there is no way to determine outcome for
any observer. Science is useless here, check out the whether forecast
for example. I think we overstate the power of science due to what
in can achieve by artificial., i.e, technological progress. Larger scale 
control, it is pretty useless, just look at social problems and world
problems.

[Case]
Yes, but the fact that some much extraneous stuff cancels out and we still
achieve a fairly high level of predictability seem significant to me. I
would say the social lag you mention is occurring mostly because of the rate
of change being forced on us not by any specific set of changes. I also
think you should be more concerned about how the knowledge we have gained
through the study of the social sciences is being applied as technology. I
thought Gladwell's accounts of research in advertising marketing and
politics was fascinating but at the same time horrifying. 

Weather forecasting is a good example. It is a purely probabilistic
assessment of what might happen. Weather prediction is much better than it
was 40 years ago and these days the fact that they can give a forecast in
probabilistic terms and the general public understands it, is actually a
hopeful sign in my view.