All well and good, .unless something in the environment develops a continuity of divergence
Phil Henshaw NY NY www.synapse9.com From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of George Duncan Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 11:23 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] models that bite back I agree with Orlando that there is no need for a conflict here. The Bayesian paradigm provides a unified framework for decision making that integrates a subjective interpretation of the past record and views of the future. Further it is a paradigm that in a principled way modifies current beliefs according to incoming data--Bayesian learning. In an important sense the Bayesian paradigm does resolve the controversy. George On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Orlando Leibovitz <[email protected]> wrote: Tom, Some of us look to both the patterns of the past and a subjective belief about the uncertain future when making decisions. And sometimes the way we interpret past patterns is as subjective as our anticipation of the future. Why set up a non existent conflict? O Tom Johnson wrote: A sidebar conversation regarding the "reality" of models 'The story that I have to tell is marked all the way through by a persistent tension between those who assert that the best decisions are based on quantification and numbers, determined by the patterns of the past, and those who base their decisions on more subjective degrees of belief about the uncertain future. This is a controversy that has never been resolved.' - FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO ''AGAINST THE GODS: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF RISK,'' BY PETER L. BERNSTEIN See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html?_r=1 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/magazine/04risk-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine> &ref=magazine -tj --
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