3 ms·
Totally agree. It's not a solved question. That my point - things aren't black and white. Reductionist thinking is enticing but dysfunctional.
by afandian 10y ago
Totally agree. It's not a solved question. That my point - things aren't black and white. Reductionist thinking is enticing but dysfunctional.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago> Reductionist thinking is enticing but dysfunctional. Unless the word "reductionism" means something else than I think it means, I don't really see the issue. There's no problem with reducing a complex system to its simpler parts in order to understand it - that's basically how all human understanding works. The problem only starts when someone takes a small subset of the simpler parts and hyperfocuses on them, throwing out the rest.
- afandian 10y agoI'm working to this[0] definition: > The practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. I mean simplifying complicated to the point where they seem appealing and then asserting that there is no complexity. [0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reductionism https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reductionism
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThanks for the clarification. I agree with you within the scope of the definition you're working with.
- guitarbill 10y agoI think of it as more like quantisation, where information/detail is lost for the sake of simplicity. So after a reduction your mental model/data might not have the required fidelity to make useful conclusions.