Re: the use of a special term like "artifact" or "explanandum", I agree completely. "Model" is as good as any.
Re: the usefulness of obtuse models - I did give a description of how obtuse (indeed, totally opaque) models can be useful for science. It's possible you didn't receive that post. So, here is the archive: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/description-explanation-metaphor-model-tp7594030p7594294.html It's arguable how large N must be for this to work well. But with progress in big data, generative AI, proof assistants, automatic programming, HoTT, etc., I think we're getting pretty close to shutting down any critics of the method. My own work requires only N=3: 1) the referents (i.e. validation data observed from it/them), 2) the reference model (usually an equation-based phenomena-only model), and 3) a finer-grained component-based model relying on both unit and systemic V&V. None of these are totally opaque, because we rely solely on open source stacks. (Though you could say none of us understands processors, cache, memory, transistors, etc.) But the *method* we're using prescribes that we *treat* them as opaque and rely solely on observations of each [†]. So, any validation/falsification we do can be reduced to data validation. [†] I'm a broken record curmudgeon to my colleagues who keep treating verification data as if it were validation data. Pffft. FWIW, they also keep trying to use Matlab instead of Octave or R ... Grrr. On 1/17/20 5:28 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > I mean... assuming I know what you mean by "obtuse"... which I'm not sure > of... an "obtuse model" could be useful for many, many things... but the more > obtuse it is, the less one can science with it... [...] -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
