Well, speaking of models being wrong, check this out:

*The reason the East Anglia data matter is that computer models have been
erected upon them, which have been incorporated into governmental and U.N.
reports, which in turn have become the basis for actual and proposed
government policies. So all this amounts to a prelude: the important
questions domestically are whether the Senate approves the cap and trade
bill next year and what happens with the EPA's efforts to regulate carbon
dioxide. Internationally, the question centers on the fate of the Copenhagen
summit.
*

This is from the recent CBS news article about the growing "Climategate"
fiasco:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/02/taking_liberties/entry5860171.shtml?tag=cbsnewsTwoColLowerPromoArea;morenews

In the spirit of full disclosure: the data that all of my models use is
always *impeccably* verifiable (as are all of the bugs in the code).

--Doug

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 11:05 AM, glen e. p. ropella <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Quoting Nicholas Thompson circa 09-12-02 09:48 AM:
> > All models are wrong; models are designed to be wrong.  They couldnt
> possibly do any good if they weren;t wrong.
> >
> > It's just that some models are wronger than others.
>
> Oh, the situation is a lot worse than that.  It's not that some models
> are more wrong than others.  It's that models are rhetorical devices.
> When you meet a person who really _believes_ her own rhetoric to the
> extent that they are convicted, committed, and unwaveringly confident in
> their own rhetoric ... well, then you KNOW you've got a certifiable
> WACKO on your hands.  Following their consulting would be like following
> Jim Jones to Guyana ... like following Marshall Applewhite to Rancho
> Santa Fe.
>
> At least with your run-of-the-mill televangelist, you get the sense that
> they're just hucksters trying to get others to believe rhetoric they,
> themselves, don't believe.  I'll take a snake-oil salesman over a True
> Believer any day!
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com
>
>
>
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Reply via email to