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Sigh. Him again. Yes, he's unfortunately worth reading, for the drama and stimulation and calling attention to things that are known but not always fully appr

Sigh. Him again. Yes, he's unfortunately worth reading, for the drama and stimulation and calling attention to things that are known but not always fully appreciated. But I wish he wasn't worth reading. His hero Mandelbrot on the other hand? A real scholar with radical ideas, not a provocateur. The important ideas in his book are well known by thinkers, if not all practitioners, in the fields he criticizes. But, oh, the insults! And so much of what he says is "Such and such models have flaws! Throw them away and do nothing at all until you have perfect models!" That's not terribly useful if you are, say, running an insurance firm. Or doing science. Anyway, here's the issue of American Statistician duly taking him to task on the technicalities, though unfortunately without the bombast and mud-slinging. http://pubs.amstat.org/toc/tas/61/3 http://pubs.amstat.org/toc/tas/61/3 Also could somebody explain to me why hacker types like to name-check Popper but never Kuhn? Is it because the Star Trek TNG episode with the Binars actually got it right?

moss 17y ago
Regarding name-checking of Popper vs. Kuhn: Kuhn and Popper both make interesting observations about the development of science. However, Popper's observations are more directly applicable to the task of actually doing science. He gives a useful framework for developing and testing theories, where Kuhn's work has more to say about how theories become widely accepted. So Popper appeals to the pragmatism of most hackers. Kuhn is also, sadly, very popular with crackpots. Almost any fringe scientist will eagerly explain to you that his ideas represent "a new paradigm", and that those who doubt him are simply trapped in old ways of thinking. So a desire to avoid guilt by association probably also plays into it. That's my take on it anyway. (I know it's kind of a tangent, but it seemed like an interesting thing to think through).

moss 17y ago

Regarding name-checking of Popper vs. Kuhn: Kuhn and Popper both make interesting observations about the development of science. However, Popper's observations are more directly applicable to the task of actually doing science. He gives a useful framework for developing and testing theories, where Kuhn's work has more to say about how theories become widely accepted. So Popper appeals to the pragmatism of most hackers. Kuhn is also, sadly, very popular with crackpots. Almost any fringe scientist will eagerly explain to you that his ideas represent "a new paradigm", and that those who doubt him are simply trapped in old ways of thinking. So a desire to avoid guilt by association probably also plays into it. That's my take on it anyway. (I know it's kind of a tangent, but it seemed like an interesting thing to think through).