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What is a model anyways? There are so many answers to say you that. The models are almost the same models, but at a different abstraction away from the original experienced in reality.
this is extremely long and repetitive. "the sciences" is very broad. in biology there are established methods for establishing causality (i.e. Koch's postulates, etc), and even then conclusions are generally qualified. not sure about the other fields, but I wish they had more concrete and recent examples of what they are talking about. this was painful to even skim. also for some reason i cant click on anyting on the…
;).
Looking at the paper, the core message is 'that even scientists harbor the illusion of understanding more than they actually do'. In reality, science operates much like a mental model. The paper argues that just because a model predicts future values more accurately, it doesn't mean the model explains the actual causal structure. Yet, the fact that outcomes fall within the predicted range reinforces the illusion that…
accurate prediction is not better understanding
Less "accurate" model can lead to better prediction
A better understanding encodes more info about how much more it can be improved, when compared to a less good understanding
Explained by this wonderful series
What is a model anyways? There are so many answers to say you that. The models are almost the same models, but at a different abstraction away from the original experienced in reality.
The math in science isn't provable, objective, or self-consistent, and mathematicians who look at physics regularly have "Wait a minute..." moments.
But scientific math is a useful toolbox of techniques that create useful metaphors where the maps and the experiences coincide, to a useful extent.
Science is really a process of inventing and trying out metaphor maps and keeping the ones that match experience.
Reality itself is likely unknowable, because our experience of it is too limited to provide enough information to get down to the bedrock mechanisms.
So we have these intermediate models that get some way there, but clearly have gaps and edges where the parts don't fit together.
Everything starts at human-scale and works outwards.
See also Frank Keil’s “illusion of explanatory depth.”
* magic not as “unreal,” but in the classical conception of a living magic world where mental intentions can manifest physical realities
Looking at the paper, the core message is 'that even scientists harbor the illusion of understanding more than they actually do'. In reality, science operates much like a mental model. The paper argues that just because a model predicts future values more accurately, it doesn't mean the model explains the actual causal structure. Yet, the fact that outcomes fall within the predicted range reinforces the illusion that…
More accurate theories are important once your requirements are so extreme that without them your prediction is off.
Understanding is about knowing these mental models at the different levels, how they connect to each other and where these models have weird gaps and/or disconnects. Since is and always has been about understanding the best current explaination of the things we observe. Whether it is exactly as you say, or some more elaborate hidden structure is beneath it, is not something you can tell apart, unless you run into the actual limitations of your model.
If you want to land on the moon, you use science, even if it doesn't know everything down to the last particle.
Looking at the paper, the core message is 'that even scientists harbor the illusion of understanding more than they actually do'. In reality, science operates much like a mental model. The paper argues that just because a model predicts future values more accurately, it doesn't mean the model explains the actual causal structure. Yet, the fact that outcomes fall within the predicted range reinforces the illusion that…
Yes, but isn't since exactly about those models? If you want to calculate how much that steel truss is going to bend when loaded, you need basic mechanics. Sure you could go deeper and think about what actually happens to the metallic structure on an atomic level, you could think about the whole thing in relativistic terms, etc. But this is not going to give you a better bridge. More accurate theories are important o…