As a child I could never work out what a + b = c meant. I mean what should a and b and c *be*? Of course the answer is that they have any number of possible values. That's the power of equations. But when you are trying to fit equations to reality, it can be a problem:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=finance-why-economic-models-are-always-wrong Even if you have a perfect economic model with perfect data, calibrating the model doesn't have a single answer. So even in a perfect world, economic models can and will give incorrect answers. Bear in mind that both the financialized, high-frequency-trading, casino capitalism side of the economy and the government-management-of-the-economy side are based on ever more complex models. And I think there's a more general problem that this illustrates. Presumably it's not just economics but philosophy, politics, theology, aesthetics, any kind of quantitative model of reality will suffer from this problem. Which is a scary thought. - Rob. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
