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AllanfromWales1 t1_ivf54lg wrote

"The world is complex, but if we pretend it's simple we can make patterns.."

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FrankDrakman t1_ivfi5hq wrote

Not at all. As an engineer, I understand we're building models, based on our incomplete understanding. As we learn more, we refine our models, but they are always only models, and as such, necessarily simpler than the real world, because they are based on principles abstracted from the real world, and not the real world itself.

There's no 'pretending' involved. We know they are models, we know they are only approximations, and we also know the approximations are good enough to get the results we want. And with that, we built the society you see around us.

Why do you sneer at the process that has resulted in immense wealth and better lives for billions of people?

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JustAPerspective t1_ivfr760 wrote

Maybe all the cherry-picking & misinformation that gets churned out when non-ethical individuals start playing with that data. Or when inaccurate data is relied upon as factual rather than speculative.

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AllanfromWales1 t1_ivg0jlb wrote

> We know they are models, we know they are only approximations, and we also know the approximations are good enough to get the results we want.

As someone who works in an engineering discipline I think you are naive to assume that all engineers know this. Many I have dealt with simply follow algorithms and give little or no thought to what underlies them. I'd also suggest that if we had, if it were possible to have, more complex models the world would not be running headlong towards catrastrophe as we speak.

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visarga t1_ivir19q wrote

No, models are tools, it's how you wield them. What I noticed is that models tend to attract activist types that have an agenda to push, so they try to control it. Not just in AI, also in Economics and other fields.

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AllanfromWales1 t1_iviwmbq wrote

Every scientific paradigm is a model. We do not have direct access to underlying reality, we only have maps put together based on the observations we can make.

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iiioiia t1_ivkge94 wrote

> No

It seems like the two of you mostly agree, no?

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iiioiia t1_ivkfmyy wrote

> Why do you sneer at the process that has resulted in immense wealth and better lives for billions of people?

I am suspicious of anyone who speaks of their industry and every single practitioner within it as being purely rational, or essentially flawless. Of course, this "wasn't what you meant", but that's kind of my complaint.

Another aspect: presumably you're on Hacker News - I've observed people there "telling it how it is" for way over a decade, so I have a decent amount of exposure to how (a substantial sampling of) tech people think across a wide variety of ideas (including how thinking styles change depending on the topic), and how confident they can be in various beliefs (perceived as knowledge) they hold.

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FrankDrakman t1_ivmc8nh wrote

I've never heard of Hacker News.

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iiioiia t1_ivn12it wrote

Consider yourself lucky then! 😂

Actually j/k, you may like it.

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hereforthensfwstuff t1_ivf92b1 wrote

Right? We prefer to pray to the angry sky god. All this info is difficult.

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iiioiia t1_ivkghsq wrote

Most people seem to pray to The Science and The Democracy nowadays in my experience.

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hereforthensfwstuff t1_ivkskc1 wrote

It’s the best we can do, so far.

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iiioiia t1_ivkuvgo wrote

It is the best we have done, but is it the best we could have done?

And if we never ask ourselves such questions, and take them seriously, might it be possible that the best that we do do is always below what we could have done?

For some context: as a thought experiment, consider two streams of reality: the current one, versus one where the scientific method wasn't discovered, wasn't widely adopted, wasn't taken seriously, etc. Might there be a substantial difference between these two realities in the year 2022?

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