[MD] Chaos and Goldilocks

[ian glendinning]

Hi Case, DM, Robbie, Marsha, et al ...

Robbie didn't like the butterfly and hurricane metaphor. For that very
reason, I used the dribbling tap example with Marsha, because it's
more everyday "real".

Wolfram and his ANKOS claims are overblown, IMHO, but most
neo-Darwinists, (Dawkins and Dennet for example) use the "life"
automata to illustrate evolutionary processes - the evolution of
complexity and order from chaos and a few simple rules.

When DM says science is useless, I see these theories as setting the
limits to scientific predictability (causality even); not so much the
precision or accuracy, but limits to what can be predicted. (Simple
reductionist, objective causality is the stuff that is doomed, as he
says) What these additional sciences give us is a means of explaining
why that is, and what kinds of thing can be predicted - probability
patterns in the emergent levels, rather than the movements of
individuals (billiard balls, water drops, butterlflies wings, photons,
etc.)

I think Case is right, that just getting the general public to gain
some appreciation of probability (eg in market and weather
predictions) is a sign of success in these areas.

(BTW, have people seen the Wayne Booth paper on understanding subjects
where one is not actually an expert, as clearly, none of us is here ?
I'll dig out the link. Rhetoric and poetry beat logic.)

Ian
A butterfly flies through the forest rain
And turns the wind into a hurricane
A schoolboy yawns, sits back, and hits return
And round the word computers crash and burn.
(Certainty of Chance, Neil Hannon)

On 12/10/06, Case <Case at ispots.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
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