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Stephen Bond had that great article (well, lousy on the AI side) about "Positivist Programming", and how the philosophical education of scientists is often so p
by RodericDay 12y ago
Stephen Bond had that great article (well, lousy on the AI side) about "Positivist Programming", and how the philosophical education of scientists is often so poor they're unknowing logical positivists.
The whole achievement of post-positivism and falsifiability seems to be lost on people who seem to think "some math" == "rigor". String theory at least seems like a harmless example, I'm more worried about the public perception of economics.
- pfortuny 12y agoYes, economics is the most hyped pseudo-science and just because it "is mathematics, man! so it cannot be wrong...". Like Varoufakis claiming he uses "Game Theory...". Wilmott has a great example of the uselessness of mathematics in the real world when it comes to things that cannot be properly modeled: "when a magician says he is going to guess the card that the person from the audience chose, what is the probability that he guesses right?" Wrong model (or too simplistic) => absurd/uninformative conclusions. But "they use cohomology, so they cannot be wrong".