Many widely used models amount to an elaborate means of making up numbers—but once a number has been produced, it tends to be taken seriously and its source (the model) is rarely examined carefully. Many widely used models have little connection to the real-world phenomena they purport to explain. Common steps in modeling to support policy decisions, such as putting disparate things on the same scale, may conflict with reality. Not all costs and benefits can be put on the same scale, not all uncertainties can be expressed as probabilities, and not all model parameters measure what they purport to measure. These ideas are illustrated with examples from seismology, wind-turbine bird deaths, soccer penalty cards, gender bias in academia, and climate policy.
Gillitrut Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1yr ago
(link.springer.com)
Edited 1yr ago
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Pay no attention to the Model Behind the Curtain!
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Then I don’t understand what you meant in saying that the environment and culture will turn out to be non-comparable given what the paper says. What would it even mean to not be able to examine them for similarities and differences? On your definition, it is just trivially true that everything is comparable.
The axiom of choice is a central part of set theory, which is used to axiomatize all the rest of mathematics. I see no basis for thinking it should be irrelevant to any particular part of mathematics, unless that part is entirely constructive, which statistics in general is not.
I was reacting to the claims that you made in response to the paper, not the paper alone.
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