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Re: [ProgSoc] Drying up, hands or money



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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