I don't think it's always so easy to measure as you're asserting; to really measure it, you have to have some idea of what the reality is, which is the whole pr

I don't think it's always so easy to measure as you're asserting; to really measure it, you have to have some idea of what the reality is, which is the whole problem in the first place. You can get some of the way there by approximating, but again, that's begging the question. The existence of unknowns absolutely does not support a case -against- formalism, agreed, but it does support a case against the absolute support of formalism. I agree that informal decision-making is just as bad (and often worse) but it has the quasi-benefit (I should really say, 'comforting effect') of a massive, historied infrastructure of ethics and judgement/punishment to make it look like it's fixing itself when a problem happens. Trying to avoid looking like I'm defending that system; it's mostly clear that it's pretty bad as well. And obviously all the different subsystems disagree as well, but they are somewhat accommodating of disagreement. So I'll agree half-way that I'm pulling a postmodern shuffle, but I don't want it to come off that I'm asserting that unknowns support my position. I'm trying to take the weaker position that the existence of unknowns makes it currently impossible to objectively pick one position over the other, and that extended defense of either will eventually reduce to dogmatism. EDIT: Something else that's been nagging at me.... There's a further category of unknown that is unlearnable by pure signal-based statistical modeling. A purely statistical approach to such things as ethical decision making, even in a world with more consumable data than our own currently, would still not be able to solve that problem. I'm not sure how many functions of society fall into that category. My hunch is that it's a lot of them. I don't have the math for that, though.