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The Storm and the Butterfly

Are all models bound to fail?

Issue 49, 10th April 2016
| Philosopher, Green Party politician, Chair of Green House think-tank and co-editor of The New Wittgenstein
867 words
Read time: approx. 4 mins

In the 19th and 20th centuries, standard economic models assumed that people would act in a rational and predictable manner. These models are flawed, of course, for if modern psychology has taught us anything it is that we are massively complex beings who are ultimately in important respects not predictable, often not rational, and certainly often rational in ways that are judged irrational by ‘experts’. We are moreover (and this is less widely understood) not predictable not only in practice but also in principle: i.e. this is not a limitation that can be overcome. For if the human future could be predicted, it would then be deliberately altered. Therefore it cannot be predicted. Human creativity and novelty and our ability to respond to predictions means that our actions cannot possibly by reliably modelled, even in principle.

The same can be said to some extent of natural systems too. Many still consider these to be deterministic syste

Rupert Read
Issue 49, 10th April 2016

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Dzen_o 26 May 2016

"…We should learn to live in a world that we don’t understand, rather than harbouring dangerous ambitions for total explanation and mastery…", etc.

- the article above is next mainstream-philosophical attempt to solve the main epistemological problem – is or not the science adequate to the external [to humans, or, more correctly – to human’s consciousnesses] reality? And the solution is as always – the author chooses the answer “no”; though for such conclusion in the article there are no any reasonable grounds. As well if in the article could be the answer “yes”, it would be ungrounded equally, though.

In the reality the problem is that to solve such question is necessary before to understand – what are at least the notions/ phenomena “[human’s] Consciousness” and “External”, the letter for a consciousness include other consciousnesses and the notion/phenomenon “Matter”.

At that all notions above are Meta-mainstream- philosophical (and Meta- scientific) and so cannot be properly understandable/ defined in framework of recent sciences and the mainstream philosophy; that is possible only in the “The Information as Absolute” conception http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0173v3.pdf DOI 10.5281/zenodo.34958, where it is rigorously proven that all what exist in our Universe and outside is/are some informational patterns and systems of the patterns that are elements of absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set.

Our Universe, which consists of informational systems “Matter”, “Alive”, and “Consciousness” is only some sub-Set – when, of course, the systems above are some sub-Sets also.

The main difference of elements of the sub-Set “Consciousness”, i.e. of individual human’s consciousnesses from elements of Matter (material objects and systems of the objects) and living beings, is that the consciousnesses are capable to decode some informational bounds, messages, etc. that happen in the external by using material sensors (eyes, ears, tactile information, etc) data. And at that there is nothing surprising, if some consciousness decodes some bounds, for example – Nature laws – correctly.

I.e. in the reality there is no principal “epistemological problems”, all what is required from scientists is to make experiments and to interpret the experiments outcomes, including by creating scientific models and theories, objectively.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that any theory is adequate to the external – indeed, 99% of attempts to decode some bounds correctly go to baskets. However, this fact doesn’t differ principally from the fact when somebody attempts to understand – what some other somebody says and makes? And at that anything is possible – both adequate and non-adequate understandings. Though in relations between humans there are no principal problems at understanding each other – again, practically equally to cases when humans interact with Matter.

Cheers

PS. The paper “The Information as Absolute” was rejected by near ten mainstream-philosophical journals; possibly including because of that the idea that all/everything is some information seems on first sight as rather strange. But now this idea is rather widely recognized and, for example, New Scientist recently made the special issue with a slogan “Everything is made of information”.
https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/reality/?cmpid=EMP|NSNS|2016-1505-GLOBAL-maywk3|Reality&utm_medium=EMP&utm_source=NSNS&utm_campaign=MayWk3&utm_content=Reality&cmpid
However any article in the issue doesn’t content a reference on the “Information as Absolute” conception, though this fact was proven yet in 2007 …

semcpherson@vwc.edu 5 May 2016

I see this article as another attempt to persuade us that philosophy is relevant to science . Science don't need philosophy to tell it that models have problems; the scientific method is a conservative methodology and we know the flaws in our own work. Scientists are naturally conservative. Thats why we follow the scientific method. Philosophy has a role in public policy debates but it has no role in informing scientists on their methods.