Re: Things Formulaic

Al wrote: 
As physicists only seem to be able to communicate in mathematical terms I
thought you might be interested in this equation?
N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL It's the Drake equation and possibly the most
discussed of recent times. Not one of the variables can be given a value.
Even N* is uncertain as the number of stars in our galaxy is an estimate.


  Apples.

I watched a TV program recently in which the progress of economists over the
last few decades was discussed. They use similar formulas and all have
failed, without exception.


  Oranges.

The question is, Why do they fail? The answer is 
that, contrary to scientific thought; there are some things in this world
that do not lend themselves to scientific dismemberment or repeatability.

No. _An_ (not the) answer is, they haven't included all the applicable variables, constants, and functions yet. They also assume that their constants are in fact constant, which assumption they do not examine carefully enough (what's worse, the constants interact with each other dynamically). Besides, some of the elements of economics (the people doing the spending/saving etc.) have individual and interactive behaviors that have not been modeled to an adequate degree. There is also the fact that particular economic models are often used because they're "politically correct", i.e. contrived to produce a desired result regardless of hard realities.

Why does the Drake equation "fail"? Partly because it extrapolates over large spatial and temporal scales from the behaviors of a known sample of one civilization observed over way too small a physical range and way too short a timescale.

This is an axiom. Until this is understood, science will continue to try to
dehumanise the rest of us.

You apparently believe that mathematics is somehow not a natural human way of looking at things, hence anyone who promotes its use is somehow "inhuman". I have to ask you, what do you think of when you think "mathematics"? Compare African Bushmen whose mathematics doesn't go beyond "one, two, many" because they don't need anything more complex, and American fourth-graders who can do long division but also need to be able to do so. Are the fourth-graders "less human" than the Bushmen?

Mathematics is used to quantize the elements of problems in order to make predictions about previously-unseen combinations of those elements; the more elements and possible combinations thereof you have to handle, the more complex the math you need. Just determining what kind of math is applicable to a particular problem is a whole separate branch of math itself.

You seem to have a serious bug up your ass about "higher mathematics" being a tool used to exclude those who don't understand any of it from being taken seriously when discussing subjects where it's applicable. Well, if you don't quantize in any finer detail that "none", "some", and "many", what sorts of predictions do you expect to get other than emotional ones?

The idea that only subjects that have been given
the OK by science are acceptable is narrow minded and dishonest. For
instance: The utterance that exceptional claims require exceptional evidence
is only used in reference to no-scientific paradigm ideas.


  That is a most exceptional claim. Exceptional evidence?

  Mark L. Fergerson
.

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