EricC -
I think your points, especially about the limits of models, are spot
on. The "utility" caveat in the "models" assertion *does* capture what
makes a "model right as a model", what makes a model "right" in your
sense is it's utility.
The extra level of indirection explicated in your observation that we
are not (only) modeling the artifact but the designer/maker of the
artifact is also useful.
As I am wont to do, I have a couple of my own anecdotal experiences to
share:
1. I muck around with (repair or modify) most everything I use in my
life. It is a habit that serves me well sometimes but not
always... I *implicitly* have a model of what these artifacts were
designed to do, though sometimes I discover I'm simply "using them
wrong" when I think they are malfunctioning or are "poorly
designed". I rarely *personally* try to figure out what the
designer was intending explicitly (read the manual, research the
product domain literature? bah!) but when I *do*, I bump up against
the limits we are discussing regularly. Even when it is documented
explicitly what is intended, I am left with puzzles posed *by* the
artifact and it's functioning at my hand. Since a lot of the tech
I muck with is vintage (right now, a 1979 Homelite chainsaw) there
is a lot of practice/lore available on the internet up to and
including other owners of the same/similar model with oodles more
experience than I have. I have yet to encounter someone who
actually designed 2 stroke engines of that vintage, but a lot of the
old timers who were in the business of selling/repairing them IN
1979 have good insights.
2. I have been mucking around in the literature of pre/a-historic human
cultures of late. The archaelogical/anthropologicl literature is
*fraught* with "wrong" and "sometimes useful" models of these humans
and with yet another level of indirection, "cultures" based on the
artifacts that survived these millenia.
To support your basic point: "but we can try!", We DO try and while it
is limited in the limit, it is not entirely fruitless. My myriad
home(stead) systems work (to some degree) as designed or re-designed
under my mucking hamfists, and I believe that up to herky-jerky
progress, we DO approach a higher and higher fidelity understanding of
long-dead people and cultures. In particular, my interest has been in
the *differences* between the other near-modern hominids (e.g.
Neanderthal/Devosinian) apparent long-term stability compared to Homo
Sapien's ability to modify our environment leading to a very abrupt and
brief spike (the Anthropocene) in the geological record which will
someday (if there is anyone to inspect it).
- Steve
Hmm..... not sure where to go with Glen & Steve's responses.....
"we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact."
Well.... but we can attempt to... with the same limitations as
attempts to understand anything else. Like, if all we do is go around
slinging Descarte-styled "Yeah, but are you SURE!" after literally
every statement anyone ever makes, that might be a good hobby, but it
doesn't really get you anywhere. We can certainly use systematic ways
to probe the systems based on various hypotheses, and thereby increase
our confidence.... just like trying to figure out anything else in the
world.
"All models are wrong (though some may be useful)."
That's just a weird linguistic game, right? A model is a model, not
the thing being modeled. True enough, and worth reminding people of
every so often. But that doesn't mean it is "wrong" as a model. A
model is RIGHT if it accurately captures the INTENDED aspects of the
target phenomenon... because that's what being a good model entails.
So, we COULD, potentially, accurately know a builder's intentions
after sufficient examination of an artifact or set of artifacts. Also,
we could be wrong. And our internal model of the builder isn't
actually the builder, but that doesn't necessarily mean our model is
wrong, as a model.
On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 11:21 AM Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
EricC/Glen -
I'm glad we agree. I made the same points here:
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090981.html
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090983.html
To reiterate, we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the
artifact.
We can't mind read (even our own).
To go even further, we can't even do a *complete* job of characterizing
the aspects of a thing, the aspects of environments, or the relations between
them.
All models are wrong (though some may be useful).
Parallax is needed across all scales and in both directions. Polyphenism
is parallax on the thing. Robustness is parallax on the environment. And
counterfactuals are parallax on their coupling.
All systems (existing within the same light-cone) are "nearly
decomposable" ?
Herb Simon Sez: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1909285
One of the attractive qualities of modal realism is that it addresses both
consistency (through concrete possible worlds) and completeness (through
counterpart theory) in positing and testing various models. The problem becomes
one of discovering which world you inhabit *from the data*, not from whatever
abstracted models you may prefer.
Lewis's Modal Realism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism> is a new one on me,
but very interesting framing. Only skimming the Wikipedia
Article on the topic leaves me with only enough information to be
dangerous... so I am refraining from rattling on about all of my
reactions to it's implications (for me) and in particular some of
the objections listed there to his theory. From this thin
introduction I think I find Yagasawa's extension of possible
worlds being distributed on a modal dimension rather than isolated
space-time structures (yet) more compelling/useful?
And what would Candide
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman> have to say about this?
On 12/1/21 6:35 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
Me -> We've imputed in all cases. Certainly we can assume artificial
systems were designed for a purpose, but we still don't know what that purpose is
without imputing a model onto that system. And, in both cases, we could proceed to
experiment with the system, in order to test the predictions of the imputed model
and increase our confidence that we have imputed correctly. The ability to do
these things does not distinguish between the two types of system. There are long
and respected scientific traditions using experimental methods to gain confidence
in our understanding of why certain systems were favored by natural selection,
i.e., to determine the manner in which they help the organism better fit its
environment.
Me -> Well.... it might be reification in some sense, but that term usually
implies inaccuracy, which we cannot know in this case without experimentation.
Even with a system we designed ourselves, where we might have a lot of insight
into why we designed the system the way we did, we certainly don't have perfect
knowledge. All we have there is a model of our own behavior to impute off of. Once
again, this doesn't clearly differentiate the two situations. In all of these
situations it is a mistake to uncritically reify our initial intuitions about the
system's purpose.
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