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> The fallacy of using history to predict the future, with math. You say that as if we have anything aside from the past that we can use to make predictions.
by andrewstuart2 11y ago
> The fallacy of using history to predict the future, with math.
You say that as if we have anything aside from the past that we can use to make predictions.
- cookingrobot 11y agoYou can look at the mechanics of the thing you're studying and make predictions based on what's possible. Like if you were watching the development of the space program you could make a prediction about when we'd get to the moon, without just looking at the historical top speed of airplanes we'd built before.
- murbard2 11y agoYes but that's still using the past. All we have to work with, in order to formulate scientific theories, are correlations and patterns detected at some point in the past. Of course, some correlations and patterns are much stronger than others, and we can be more confident in the predictions they yield. So really the fallacy is about using too weak a model to predict the future.
- quinndupont 11y agoYeah, we don't really (other than, perhaps, physical experiments as cookingrobot's reply suggests). I think such investigations are fun, but also presuppose a very misguided concept of the human and sociality.