On Fri, 2007-08-17 at 03:59 +1000, John Elliot wrote: > All we can really "prove" is that we haven't got the means to make > proofs. Sounds like you and Nassim Nicholas Taleb - author of "The Black Swan" [1] & "Fooled by Randomness" [2] - would make fine bedfellows. In short, his argument (which I believe to be similar to yours) is that typical cognitive bias places too much importance on the information we can glean from mathematics, science and analysis. Essentially, he's taken Wigner's ideas on quasi-empiricism (as seen in "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences"), and translated it into "*nothing* is measurable, don't even try". Screw that. Your reaction to scientific extremism reminds me very much of the Western demonisation of Islamic culture. Kill 'em all, right? Cheers, -- Nathan de Vries [1] http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515 [2] http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/1587990717
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