|
|
|
|
|
|
by yummyfajitas
3815 days ago
|
|
|
A theory is a machine for making testable predictions (i.e., positive claims that are a reason for rejecting the theory should they fail to be true). You go to great effort to NOT make any testable predictions. My point is that if your one testable prediction of slow change is true, then using the past to predict the future will be highly accurate. By "accurate", I mean that if the predictor says group X will have a 40% default rate, the empirical default rate of group X will be close to 40%. (I'm assuming a good model is built, etc.) Once in a blue moon (the rapid changes) this will fail, then everyone can re-adjust their models and go back to using the slow change assumption. This is strictly a positive (i.e., value-free) claim about the world. It's based on your positive belief. As for your dynamical systems verbiage, feel free to state a testable prediction. |
|
|
How do you figure? I don't make testable predictions when I don't have the tools to make them. I will just point out that 1. perfectly predictive models could be completely wrong in a dynamical system with feedback, and 2. that human society has been known to be such a system.
> This is strictly a positive (i.e., value-free) claim about the world. It's based on your positive belief.
You are absolutely right. Not only have I said the exact same thing, but I even went a step further and showed how making that prediction could be right even ad infinitum. That does not, however, mean that there isn't another correct prediction and that the choice between the two isn't ideological. Systems can (and do) have more than one stable state. I will say this again: your predictions both predict the outcome and determine it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874683).
I can give you an example that may make the point clearer: if society insisted that humans can't fly, it would have been correct for a very long time. If it had insisted that pursuing such goals is wasteful, it would have been correct to this day. This isn't mere speculation. In 1485, the sultan of the Ottoman empire forbade the printing of Arabic books (because the Arabic script is holy). That decision helped turn Arab society from the most advanced in the West in the middle ages, to a rather underdeveloped one.
> As for your dynamical systems verbiage, feel free to state a testable prediction.
That I've shown your math to be wrong does not mean that I have a better formula. I don't. I don't know how to predict society's behavior with any useful accuracy, but I do know to spot the errors in your predictions. This is made easy by two facts: 1/ that identical predictions could have been made in various periods throughout history and they would have been wrong then, and 2/ that your biases are so strong and that you so insist in remaining blind to their existence and keep making the same wrong assumptions over and over.
I am truly sorry: we don't yet know how to mathematically model society well. That, however, does not mean that we can't study it and make some useful qualitative observations. When I studied non-linear differential equations (only ODEs, though), I was dismayed that the same could be said on much simpler models than human society, but there you have it.
But if you insist on something, here you go: if society decides to continue to bet 1, the result will be 1 until unforeseen forces change it; if, however, society decides to bet -1, the result will rather quickly converge to -1.