From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Wed May 22 2002 - 19:51:09 MDT
[kharin 5]
I suspect it's less a matter of noise per se, and more a matter of memetic replication.
[rhinoceros 5]
Yes, but there is memetic noise too. Thousands of "almost right" theories about everything, and discussions full of elusive tricky language about these theories. I guess no harm would be done if I posted one more some time -- but no good either.
[kharin 5]
Elegance is rather less of a consideration then predictability (since that is probably the only accurate way to determine the accuracy of social models), since Fukuyama's end of history is, by definition, unproveable. The same might be said of Desai's revsion of Marx to the point where communism will triumph after global capitalism has permeated each and even society (which is about as verifiable as the prospect of the messiah returning). That said, it does raise the issue of how you would establish predictability for this system?
[rhinoceros 5]
Of course, I do not aspire to do "end-of-the-world" type predictions. I am just trying to sort out the laws of motion of society so that I can understand what is going on today and possibly tomorrow. An "inelegant" theory would be a theory full of exeptions and ad hoc rules.
Even if I cannot make predictions specific enough to be of any use, I have to keep trying, instead of making ad hoc decisions for everything that is going on around us.
[kharin 5]
As for Laplace, I was rather under the impression that Godel and Heisenberg had undermined the demon concept, though I could easily be mistaken on that point.
[rhinoceros 5]
Sure they did. I was just explaining why I used the term causality instead of determinism.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25497>
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