4 ms·
All stories are wrong but some are useful
- wombatmobile 6y ago“We see things not as they are, but as we are.” ― Anaïs Nin
- SolarisMIM 6y ago“What then is the truth of history, generally? A fable agreed upon.” -Napoleon Bonaparte
- whiddershins 6y agoUseful = correct. Or so some might say.
- naniwaduni 6y agowell they're not very useful then, are they.
- klyrs 6y agoNewtonian physics ain't "correct" but it's damned useful.
- smt88 6y agoAnalogies are, almost by definition, "incorrect". They're still very useful.
- PeterisP 6y agoIn the traditional map vs territory parlance, the perfectly correct map is an identical copy of the terrain - needless to say, that's not very useful for most use cases, and we prefer a model that's known to be incorrect in many aspects e.g. it's shrunk at 1:24000 scale and has various types of detail intentionally omitted, making it less correct but more useful for the intended purpose.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago"The universe is made of stories, not atoms" When I first came across this quote from the poem "The Speed of Darkness" by Muriel Rukeyser I thought it was all too typical glib and hand-wavy poetic license. I was a STEM person, I knew the world was made of atoms, not stories. But the years ticked by and eventually I realized that the atoms were just stories too. +1 for the poets.
- 5cents 6y agoReading the first lines of the poem, I get why you initially thought it was hand-wavy > Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis > Whoever despises the penis despises the cunt
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoEvery time I do a search to check on the name and authorship of the poem, I'm always amazed how such a deep and profound line (to me) can occur in the middle of what otherwise seems an at-best mediocre piece of poetry (for me).
- loughnane 6y agoI’ve more frequently heard this said about simulations
- asplake 6y agoThe headline is a play on George Box: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong