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A Meander: Prediction vs Prescription, Science, Engineering and the Meaning of Life
Purists love to talk about what is and is not a science. Clearly, for example, physics is a science, because it allows us to offer theories, and test them against data. And we learn from the results.
By way of contrast, economics or sociology or psychology are not sciences. Of course not! Those soft squishy subjects have no real predictive power after all, right?
Not so fast. Sure, physics will tell you, with impressive accuracy, what happens when a billiard ball hits another one. But if you replace the target billiard ball with a kitten, physics is not so helpful. And if we replace the kitten with a person, then physics has nothing at all useful to tell us.
On the other hand, some of those squishier subjects, albeit with large error bars, do have some predictive powers when it comes to people. When we scare people in a pandemic, we know some of the likely outcomes. We know how people tend to react to scarcity and plenty, how they change as a result of marriage or divorce. We don’t learn these things from physics, but we can learn them from the study of mankind through these softer “sciences.”
And aren’t people ultimately more interesting than billiard balls? After all, the physical world is at least partially deterministic. The more predictable the natural world is, the more boring it is. Billiard balls, writ large or small, are still inanimate forces acting on each other.
Of course, the physical world is not really deterministic, not all the way down or all the way up. And as we leave the realm of simple mechanics, we see that the parts wherein the “hard” sciences end up unable to give definitive answers at all, resembling distributive answers that look more like statistical spreads in sociology than Newtonian certainty. In other words, science stops telling us what will happen, and instead tells us what is more or less likely to happen!
Indeed, if you come right down to it, if “All Models are Wrong, but Some Models are Useful,” then there is another variation from the math-grounded physics down through chemistry to sociology: the error bars get larger. All answers to all predictive questions in every field end up offering a statistical range of answers. The difference between physics and sociology is found not in whether the operative models are predictive, but in how large the error bars are.
“Ah!” you might say. “But at least Science is falsifiable! That is what makes the difference!”
This sounds nice. But how falsifiable is physics, really? If 97 or 99% of the mass in your galactic model is not actually directly detectable at all but is instead measurable only by its assumed effects on other objects (see Matter: Dark), then where is the falsification?
Or take Climate Change. All the models have been wrong. None have been useful. Does that stop the Science Train from continuing to double-down on nonsense? Not so far.
There is no objective scientific discipline, free from human interference and biases. We might argue that this is because people are the practitioners of science. But we cannot be sure. After all, anything can be described in more than one way, so why should there be an “objective” way to describe a leaf? In a language not bounded by human models of physics and chemistry and biology and dendrology and even poetry, is there such a thing as a “leaf”? And if there is, does it even matter?
I would like to offer that the ideal scientific metric of “predictive authority” is itself a false goal since it can never be absolutely, 100%, no-wiggle-room-whatsoever- TRUE. We instead should be very happy with an engineering standard: Either it works, or it does not.
And one of the really cool things about engineering is that there is a natural constraint on wasted time: engineers have to, sooner or later, make something that someone else will pay for. That is the true measure of a “useful model.”
Creating new things is not scientific. Engineers care about what works, not what is True. Nor do engineers, unlike, say, mathematicians, often make things that are perfect, that can never be improved-upon. Instead, I offer that engineers are doing something much more open-ended and interesting: engineers always have to keep working and growing and improving. There is no “best for evermore” mousetrap or software program or packaging plant.
In engineering, there is a falsifiable check at all times: are people paying for your product? As any study of the history of technology shows, it is not simple to predict what will work – at least not in advance. This trend holds in absolutely every field, from the internal combustion motor to cooling technologies to software languages. Dozens of people built flying machines before the Wright Brothers, and even after Orville and Wilbur broke the barrier, the next iteration in aerospace engineering did not retain the Wright approach to controlling flight.
Engineering consists of betting on the future, using all the tools we have to hand. Those tools include the tools of the harder sciences, but they also require substantial teams comprised of a vast range of human talent. A new drug requires not just biologists, but lab techs and quality teams, lobbyists, regulatory experts, marketing… and all the support staff to support them as well as all the tools used in drug development, tests, approvals, production, and distribution. The result is companies that themselves resemble biological entities, possessing staggering capabilities, but at the cost (and even as a result) of complex and unpredictable systems and teams and individuals.
Predictive powers … your mileage will vary. On the other hand, I am personally entranced by prescriptive powers: the ability to create and shape and carve the future based on what we decide we want it to be.
There is, for example, no denying that without Elon Musk, electric cars would not be where they are now (and this is from a guy who thinks that electric cars will never compete, on a utilitarian valuation, with internal combustion-engined cars). Musk applied his vision and sold it to people. Nobody predicted Elon Musk.
Similarly, Steve Jobs (and other great visionaries) took this one step further: he did not give people what they needed. He TOLD people what they needed, and created entirely new markets for things that people now cannot live without – but somehow had functioned perfectly well without in the past. Coupled with a great engineering company, Jobs showed that his prescriptive vision could alter the course of human history. That is impressive.
Ultimately, it is the popularization of tools that enables maximal human prescriptive powers. Edison invented the phonograph, but he thought the purpose of a phonograph was to record last wills and testaments! It was everyone else who pioneered so many other uses for analog storage systems.
From a societal level down to the individual person, visionaries create everything from new drugs and software to personalized curtains. The modern age, with our unprecedented wealth and access to tools and the knowledge of how to use them, opens the gates of heaven for every person who dares look upward.
For me, the archetypal prescriptive tool is the Torah. The text does not tell us what the natural world is, or how to use an abacus. There are no predictive tools in the Torah. But as a prescriptive document, it forms the basis of Western Civilization. The Torah tells us how we can grow, how we are to build productive and constructive and beautiful relationships with each other, and with our Creator. It tells us to be holy, and then explains what holiness means.
If we think of our underlying religious presuppositions as guidance for our lives (e.g. Do we think our lives should have meaning and purpose? Can we seek to understand what that purpose can be?), then we can work to ask ourselves those questions and make something of ourselves. Not because the world (and certainly not humanity) is predictable, but because we each have the opportunity to help shape the future. And the sooner we all recognize and embrace this way of seeing the world, the better our tomorrow’s look.
Published in General
I’m sure there’s significance in the question if we just look long and deeply enough.
Now actually I do normally have to write down an argument in order to think it clearly. If it has more than 2 premises.
And sometimes I may write down an argument I had only an inkling of. That, I suppose, is one situation in which I write to figure out what I’m thinking.
So I have written to figure out something I’m already thinking–if I had to guess, probably about 5 to 10 times. Only one time that I can remember for sure.
I have to talk it in order to find the words which clarify or chrystalize my thoughts.
For me, there is no sharp line. When I write, I start with a thought – but when I read it, I see opportunities to revise, streamline, expand, etc. For me, writing is the exercise through which my thoughts are disciplined and must find their form.
When I write on Torah, many times I had thoughts that, upon review of the written work, were not that interesting after all – and indeed are sometimes dead wrong. It is one reason why I am addicted to writing; it is the way in which I grow intellectually.
Indeed, the other key advantage is that when I write, others can argue with me. That challenges what I thought I knew, and improves the quality of my thought immensely. Ricochet has helped improve me as a thinker and as a writer because of this fantastic feedback network of people who see things differently than I do.
But if you do think of them when writing, that’s still an issue with your thinking. That’s different than
arguingdiscussing your thoughts with someone else for a different perspective.Now, if you want to say that writing your thoughts so that others can read them, is what gets the discussion going, fine. But that’s still not the same as needing to write your thoughts so that YOU understand them.
Except, the physical laws are being complied with even if you aren’t aware of them.
And smoke enough pot?
I might have to think more to decide what words to use to explain it to someone else, but never to myself.
Amen. Amen.
That’s quite true of you. I’ve noticed the improvement over the last couple of years. (I’m pretty sure it’s worked for me as well.)
And yet you still refuse, or at any rate fail, to clarify your thoughts on our oldest conversation topic: Do you only think the soul is the image of G-d, has a potential connection to G-d, can have G-d in it, and may properly be called “divine” in some lesser sense of the term? Do you only think these things–on which I’ve agreed at every turn? Or do you also think that the soul is itself a part of G-d or an extension of G-d?
That is a statement of faith.
Eh? I’m pretty sure 2+2=4 even if someone never took math.
Make a bonfire of the leaves and dance in the embers.
Well, I think things inchoately but see them as a whole. Speaking them or writing them helps me clarify my thinking.
That is also true of me. (But clarifying what I’m thinking and finding out what I’m thinking are still not–or not always–the same thing.)
Indeed.
But who says we cannot have faith in a fact?
What exactly do you think faith is?
Just don’t throw any Qs into a privet bush.
Okay, you’ve got me stumped here.
Hmm well I don’t think some kind of academic discussion on the question is of any value, at least not to me. But I might point out that if you allow people – maybe even encourage people – to think they can or should have faith in facts, they might then start to believe that anything they might happen to have faith in, is also – therefore – a fact.
And I think we have far too much of that already.
Frequently I argue on-line, in which case I am writing things so that others can read them.
At the end of Book 2 of HGTTG, around the time the Golgafrinchans are burning the forests to devalue their leaf currency, Ford (or was it Arthur?) throws a Scrabble Q into a privet bush. Someone dies as a result.
I have faith in car brakes. They have never in nearly fifty years failed to stop my car. That doesn’t mean that they won’t fail one day, but that would be a rarity with new variables that I haven’t calculated yet. I have pressed by brakes approximately 56,160,000 times, and they haven’t failed yet.
Well just to start with, I’m certain they aren’t the SAME brakes.
Anyway, that “brakes usually stop a car” is not really a fact.
You are using a word without knowing the first thing it means. The solution need not be academic. You may simply consult the first definition in the dictionary and be done with the matter.
Nonsense. What people have faith in is what they believe is true–i.e., what they already believe is a fact.
Of course, “faith” and “fact” do not mean the same thing. I stand by the dictionary. Faith is trust or confidence, and a fact is something which exists.
Not all objects of trust are reliable, not everything in which people are confident is a real thing; some of them are imagined, and many are at any rate misunderstood.
But there remains some overlap of this sort: A person may and should trust in the facts, and a proposition in which one believes by faith is by definition a proposition which one takes to be factual.
See, that’s the exact sort of academic discussion that I would maintain has no real value. And I think you just showed that I was correct.
I was sitting at a stop light in L.A. once, when the bus to my right started to back up. It took a moment to realize that he wasn’t backing up; I was inching forward into the intersection. The master cylinder had developed a leak. A few months ago, a brake line rusted through and the brakes became very mushy almost immediately. In both cases, I got to a repair shop right away.
Citing the dictionary when one’s conversation partner uses words incorrectly is a useless academic discussion?
I do not refuse. You and I do not understand each other on this point. Somehow we fail to communicate.
Yes, I think the soul is on loan from G-d Himself. Each human soul is a sliver of the divine, temporarily residing in each mortal coil. When we die, that sliver returns to its source.
So am I to assume that you are pretty sure you do understand your own ideas at least on this point?
Sure.
No.
One reason I don’t understand you–and suspect that you do not understand your own words, whether or not you’ve figured out your own ideas yet–is that this is precisely what you occasionally deny. We contain “only a potential channel to G-d,” you say (# 27 here), which contradicts your claim here that we contain a literal piece of G-d. (Or is your extremely vague phrase “sliver of the divine” supposed to mean something else?)
(Please let me know if you’d prefer I shut up about this for now and on this thread!)
How about this? I think it’s BS too, really, but it sounds sufficiently “deep.”
You talking to me?
If you think the dictionary is BS, what is that to me?
But I sure do like a Babylon 5 reference!