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  1. Last 7 days
  2. Feb 2024
    1. Zwei neue Studien aufgrund einer genaueren Modellierung der Zusammenhänge von Erhitzung und Niederschlagen: Es lässt sich besser voraussagen, wie höhere Temperaturen die Bildung von Wolkenclustern in den Tropen und damit Starkregenereignisse fördern. Außerdem lässt sich erfassen, wie durch die Verbrennung von fossilen Brennstoffen festgesetzten Aerosole bisher die Niederschlagsmenge in den USA reduziert und damit einen Effekt der globalen Erhitzung verdeckt haben.

      https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000208852/klimawandel-sorgt-fuer-staerkeren-regen

      Bold

      Studie: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj6801

      Studie: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45504-8

    1. Eine Empfehlung des Zusammenschlusses nationaler Akademien der Wissenschaften und eine zusammenfassende Studie zum globalen Plastiksystem empfehlen die Reduktion des Verbrauchs um 50% und eine Reihe weiterer Schritte wie das fast vollständige Recycling von Plastik und die Produktion aus Biomaterialien. Anlass sind die Verhandlungen zum internationalen Plastikabkommen. Plastikproduktion und Verbrauch führen schon jetzt – abgesehen von zahlreichen anderen negativen Folgen – zu Emissionen von ca einer Gigatonne CO2 im Jahr. Ohne drastische Änderungen wird sich diese Menge vervielfachen. https://www.derstandard.de/story/3000000205422/wissenschaft-fordert-radikale-abkehr-von-herkoemmlicher-plastikproduktion

      Studie: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06939-z.epdf?sharing_token=-UPbgMcUGHbtK4Uscd0XZdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MMo2Wo13ejTIFhNPD522LiogzEIVWxfHy01bK9MbFLdv59qFdQ73NDNguF2Bf0icTMUsLgWI2hE3OyG7VDGuf_3LODlHS0WEkABpLs5LAtVCiW0_JyVU7n_UL0EP7LiRS0q6s0fIpcIjaEfVFyDe4cez-4KdfAAphy-2weBUevmIZv9sURtFCEk7-LtaOTCmM%3D&tracking_referrer=www.derstandard.de

  3. Jan 2024
    1. Zusammenfassender Artikel über Studien zu Klimafolgen in der Antarktis und zu dafür relevanten Ereignissen. 2023 sind Entwicklungen sichtbar geworden, die erst für wesentlich später in diesem Jahrhundert erwartet worden waren. Der enorme und möglicherweise dauerhafte Verlust an Merreis ist dafür genauso relevant wie die zunehmende Instabilität des westantarktischen und möglicherweise inzwischen auch des ostantarktischen Eisschilds. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/31/red-alert-in-antarctica-the-year-rapid-dramatic-change-hit-climate-scientists-like-a-punch-in-the-guts

    1. four different types of initiators of new community projectsbased in neighbourhoods:local government,governmental organisations,non-governmental organisations or activists andexisting communities.
      • for: types of initiators of community projects, SONEC - initiators of community projects, question - frameworks for community projects, suggestion - collaboration with My Climate Risk, suggestion - collaboration with U of Hawaii, suggestion - collaboration with ICICLE, suggestion - collaboration with earth commission, suggestion - collaboration with DEAL

      • question: frameworks for community projects

        • If our interest is to attempt to create a global collective action campaign to address our existential polycrisis, which includes the climate crisis, then how do we mobilize at the community level in a meaningful way?

        • I suggest that this must be a cosmolocal effort. Why? Knowledge sharing across all the communities will accelerate the transition of any participating local community.

        • This means that we cannot rely on citizens living in small communities to construct an effective coordination framework for rapid de-escalation of the polycrisis. The capacity does not exist within small communities to build such a complex system. The system can be more effectively built before the collective action campaign is started by a virtual community of experts and ready for trial with pilot communities.
        • To meet this enormous challenge, it cannot be done in an adhoc way. At this point in time, many people in many communities all around the globe know of the existential crisis we face, but if we look at the annual carbon emissions, none of the existing community efforts has made a difference in their continuing escalation.
        • The knowledge required to synchronize millions of communities to have a unified wartime-scale collective action mobilization to reach decarbonization goals that the mainstream approach has not even made a dent in will be a complex problem.
        • In other words, what is proposed is a partnership.
        • Since we are faced with global commons problems that pose existential threats if not mitigated in 5 to 8 years, the scope of the problem is enormous.
        • Super wicked problems require unprecedented levels of collaboration at every level.
        • The downscaling of global planetary boundaries and doughnut economics seems the most logical way to think global, act local.
        • Building such a collaboration system requires expert knowledge. Once built, however, it requires testing in pilot communities. This is where a partnership can take place

        • 2024, Jan. 1 Adder

          • My Climate Risk Regional Hubs
            • time 29:46 of https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Funfccc.int%2Fevent%2Flater-is-too-late-tipping-the-balance-from-negative-to-positive&group=world
            • https://www.wcrp-climate.org/mcr-hubs
            • Suggestion:
              • SRG has long entertained a collaborative open science project for grassroots polycrisis / climate crisis education - to measure and validate latest climate departure dates
              • This would make climate change far more salient to the average person because of the observable trends in disruption of local economic activity connected to the local ecology due to climate impacts
              • This would be a synergistic project between SRG, LCE, SoNeC, My Climate Risk hubs, ICICLE and U of Hawaii
              • Our community frameworks need to go BEYOND simply adaptation though, which is what "My Climate Risk" focuses exclusively on. We need to also engage equally in climate mitigation.
        • reference
        • I coedited this volume on examples of existing cosmolocal projects
  4. Dec 2023
    1. They don't want their intimate convic-tions turned over and examined, and itis unfortunate that the emphasis put

      upon minor differences by men of science and belief in their strenuous search for the completest truth and the exactest expression sometimes gives color to this sort of misunderstanding.

      This emphasis on minor differences is exactly what many anti-science critics have done. See examples with respect to evolution and climate science denial.

    2. It is science and not men of sciencethat we want to enlighten and animateour politics and rule the world.
    3. Can scientific knowledge and specializedthought be brought into more effectiverelation to general affairs?
    4. Na-ture, from being specialist, has becomeworld-conscious, so that now it is almosthaunted week by week by the question:"What are we to do, before it is too late,to make what we know and our way ofthinking effective in world affairs?"
      • for: science and religion, flat earth misconception, DH, Deep Humanity - science and religion - historical relationship

      • summary

        • Dutch historian Jochem Boodt explains how fake news isn't something new, but as old as the history books!
        • Science and religion were not antagonist in early Western history, as is believed today. This was fake news fabricated in a fascinating way.
        • He uses the example of the common misconception that before Columbus, people thought the earth was flat.
    1. even religious people would openly tell 00:08:19 you that all the gods in the world are fictional stories invented by humans except one not my God my God is is true but Zeus and Shiva and whatever other 00:08:33 gods other people have they are fictions invented by humans and um I think that again the scientific consensus is is is just the same view with an addition of 00:08:46 one additional God my God is also like Zeus and and and like Jupiter and like Thor and like all these others it is also a fictional story created by humans
      • for: narratives - science and religion, stories - science and religion, symbolosphere, meaningverse, multi-meaningverse

      • comment

        • Harari is saying that both science and the diversity of religions are both telling a story. Both are fictional in the deeper sense that they are all stories and stories are all created by humans in the symbolosphere
        • Science, or religion, cannot be found merely in the books that write about them, no matter how many libraries or harddrives of 1s and 0s they take up
        • How do we know this? Easy. If an ant or butterfly or sunflower is exposed to a physical book or pdf on on ANY scientific subject, or ANY religious topic, will it understand it? No, of course not. Only a human fully conditioned into the symbolosphere will be able to interact with that physical or informational object and get something meaningful out of it. That is because we have all learned to co-participate in a collective meaningverse.
  5. Oct 2023
    1. Water immobilization is a cool thing! The simplest way to accomplish it is by freezing. But can you think of how water might be immobilized (so to speak) at temperatures above freezing, say at 50°F (10°C)? Think Jell-O and a new process that mimics caviar and you have two methods that nearly stop water in its tracks.

      I learned that science and cooking is always connected. Even if we don't think about it in every day life like when water evaporates or freezes it is chemistry. But what I found most interesting that I learned is how water immobilization works, or to put it more simply the science behind Jell-O. When you add gelatin to water it traps the water molecules in place which creates the sort of liquid and solid hybrid we find with Jell-O.

  6. Sep 2023
    1. I understand some people that if they say 00:07:47 "no, no, this is a science thing, "it's not for us, that's the province of God, we shouldn't go there." I can hear that view, but I really don't think it's what I see in scripture. What I see in scripture is, c'mon, I wanna to show it to you. I want to reveal myself to you. I don't see science as challenging my faith. In fact, I see it as affirming my faith.
      • for: science and religion, Newton - religion, science and religion - Bob Inglis, CHD
    1. religious ideas contend that a non-physical Consciousness called God was in a good mood at one point so he and it usually is a he created 01:27:18 physicality the material world around us thank you so in those viewpoints Frameworks you're not allowed to ask who or what created God because the answer will be well he 01:27:35 just is and always was so have faith my child and stop asking questions like that [Music] religion or Mythos of materialism philosophy you are not allowed to ask 01:27:46 what created physical energy if you do the answer will be the big bang just happened it was this energy in a point that just was and always will be so have faith my child and don't ask questions 01:28:00 that can't be answered
      • for: adjacency: adjacency - monotheistic religions and maerialism
      • adjacency between
        • monotheistic religion
        • materialist / physicalist scientific theories
      • adjacency statement:
        • Good observation of an adjacency, although not all religions hold those views, and even in those religions, those are those views are held by less critical thinkers.
          • In the more contemplative branches of major world religions, there is a lot of deep, critical thinking that is not so naive.
  7. Aug 2023
    1. Whole humans and more than human. Sustainability and systems are a window into the spiritual for many because it’s about wholes.So not a pillar. Rather a deeper level of understanding.
    1. While our modern world cringes at any mention of spirituality, it is not the enemy of science. It speaks volumes that many of the greatest minds of history, including Einstein, Tesla, Da Vinci, Plato and Pythagorus were as interested in the spiritual world as they were in the material sciences.
    2. Is spirituality the missing pillar of sustainability?
      • for: spirituality and science, spirituality and sustainability, spirituality - missing link, Isaac Newton
      • title: Is spirituality the missing pillar of sustainability?
      • author: Tom Greenwood
      • date: Aug. 24, 2023
    1. When I wrote my treatise about our system I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.
      • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
      • quote
          • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
      • quote
        • When I wrote my treatise about our system
        • I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity;
        • and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose..
      • author: Isaac Newton
      • reference
        • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.
      • author: Isaac Newton
      • reference
    2. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all. . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being. . . . He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present.
      • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
      • quote
        • This Being governs all things,
          • not as the soul of the world,
          • but as Lord over all.
        • . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect
        • . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a
          • living,
          • intelligent, and
          • powerful Being.
        • . . . He is not
          • eternity and
          • infinity, -but
          • eternal and
          • infinite;
        • he is not
          • duration or
          • space,
        • but he
          • endures and
          • is present.
      • author: Isaac Newton
      • reference
        • Isaac Newton, Principia, ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002), 426–27.
    3. Does it not appear from phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space . . . sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly.
      • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
      • quote
        • Does it not appear from phenomena
        • that there is a Being
          • incorporeal,
          • living,
          • intelligent,
          • omnipresent,
        • who in infinite space
        • sees the things themselves intimately, and
        • thoroughly perceives them, and
        • comprehends them wholly.
      • author: Isaac Newton
      • reference
        • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.
    4. Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? . . . Was the eye contrived without skill in optics? And the ear without knowledge of sounds?
      • for: quote, quote - Isaac Newton, quote - spirituality and science, quote - science and religion, quote - spirituality - science, quote - religion - science
      • quote
        • Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain?
        • And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world?
        • Was the eye contrived without skill in optics?
        • And the ear without knowledge of sounds?
      • author: Isaac Newton
      • reference
        • Isaac Newton, Opticks, 4th ed. (London: William Innys, 1730), 344; spelling and punctuation modernized.
    5. A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion
      • for: spirituality and science, spirituality - science, science and religion, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion
      • title: A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion
      • author: Steven E. Jones
      • source:
      • comment
        • Newton was a serious theological scholar who was driven to use science to validate his conception of God
        • Newton's scientific work is therefore a testament to the union between the deepest, common aspiration and motivations for science and religion, that is universal wonder of being
    1. Thanks Sascha for an excellent primer on the internal machinations of our favorite machines beyond the usual focus on the storage/memory and indexing portions of the process.

      Said another way, a zettelkasten is part of a formal logic machine/process. Or alternately, as Markus Krajewski aptly demonstrates in Paper Machines (MIT Press, 2011), they are early analog storage devices in which the thinking and logic operations are done cerebrally (by way of direct analogy to brain and hand:manually) and subsequently noted down which thereby makes them computers.

      Just as mathematicians try to break down and define discrete primitives or building blocks upon which they can then perform operations to come up with new results, one tries to find and develop the most interesting "atomic notes" from various sources which they can place into their zettelkasten in hopes of operating on them (usually by juxtaposition, negation, union, etc.) to derive, find, and prove new insights. If done well, these newly discovered ideas can be put back into the machine as inputs to create additional newer and more complex outputs continuously. While the complexity of Lie Algebras is glorious and seems magical, it obviously helps to first understand the base level logic before one builds up to it. The same holds true of zettelkasten.

      Now if I could only get the printf portion to work the way I want...

  8. Feb 2023
      • title = What can cognitive science bring to art and museums?

      • Comment = Maurice Benayoun has applied cognitive science, VR and AR too many at installations throughout his life.

    1. to guide you through this 00:06:24 model very quickly was first published in 2004 it's a lot cited in the field of empirical aesthetics it tries to explain how we process artworks by claiming that there are perceptual analyzers followed by 00:06:38 implicit memory integrations or familiarity aspects then explicit classifications where the perceiver in his perception perceives the style or the content 00:06:51 and then followed by later stages that we called cognitive mastering
      • Cognitive science model of what happens in the brain of a perceiver of art
      • The model was first published in 2004 it's cited often in the field of empirical aesthetics
      • it tries to explain how we process artworks by claiming that:
        • there are perceptual analyzers followed by
        • implicit memory integrations or familiarity aspects then
        • explicit classifications where the perceiver in his perception perceives the style or the content
        • followed by later stages that we called cognitive mastering
    2. cognitive scientists can also provide museums and artists with a specific understanding of how the interaction between artworks and viewers can operate 00:02:34 so to discuss potential applications of cognitive sciences to museums and art
      • cognitive science can provide museums and artists with a specific understanding
      • of how the interaction between artworks and viewers can operate
      • this meeting explores potential applications of cognitive sciences to museums and art
  9. Nov 2022
    1. Weaver distinguishes ‘three levels of communication problems’, beginning with the technical problem (A), which is concerned with the f idelity of symbol transmission and thus the level where Shannon’s mathematical def inition and measure of information are situated. But Weaver then also postulates a semantic problem (B) that refers to the transmission of meaning and an ef fectiveness problem (C) that asks

      Three levels of communication problems: technical problem, semantic problem, and effectiveness problem. (Shannon and Weaver. 1964. A Mathematical Theory of Communication)

  10. Sep 2022
  11. Aug 2022
  12. Jul 2022
    1. This perspective has been called an “emblematic worldview”; it is clearly visible in the iconography ofmedieval and Renaissance art, for example. Plants and animals are not merely specimens, as in modernscience; they represent a huge raft of associated things and ideas.

      Medieval culture had imbued its perspective of the natural world with a variety of emblematic associations. Plants and animals were not simply specimens or organisms in the world but were emblematic representations of ideas which were also associated with them.

      example: peacock / pride

      Did this perspective draw from some of the older possibly pagan forms of orality and mnemonics? Or were the potential associations simply natural ones which (re-?)grew either historically or as the result of the use of the art of memory from antiquity?

  13. Apr 2022
  14. Mar 2022
    1. The stars also give meaning to our existence. The sky is a canvasof sparkling dots that we connect to form familiar patterns, to whichwe assign narratives about their formation and meaning. Across thesky, ancestors, heroic figures, animals, landscapes and fantasticbeasts tell stories of the human experience. They speak of braveryand deceit, war and peace, sex and violence, punishment andreward. It is fascinating to find striking similarities in stories about thestars across vastly different cultures, with even more similarities in theways they are utilised.

      Are these graphic and memorable stories strikingly similar because of the underlying packages of orality and memory used in these cultures?

      This is one of my primary motivations for reading this text.

    2. Indigenous sciences are highly interconnected, while Westernscience tends to be divided into different categories by discipline, witheach diverging into ever smaller focus areas.

      Indigenous sciences are highly interconnected while Western sciences tend to be highly sub-divided into ever smaller specializations.


      Are Indigenous sciences naturally interconnected or do they form that way because of the associative memory underlying the cultural orality by which they are formed and transmitted? (I would suspect so, but don't yet have the experience to say definitively. Evidence for this should be collected.)

    1. But crucially, he believes the pool at the center of the complex may have also served as a surface to observe and map the stars. The water surface would have mirrored the sky, as water does – none other than Leonardo da Vinci pointed out the attributes of inert standing water when studying the night sky. For one thing, the stars were adored by the Phoenicians, whether as gods or deceased ancestors; and the position of the constellations was of keen interest to the sailors among them for navigation purposes, Nigro points out.

      Lorenzo Nigro indicates that the "kothon" of Motya in southern Sicily was a pool of Baal whose surface may have been used to observe and map the stars. He also indicates that the Phoenicians adored the stars potentially as gods or deceased ancestors. This is an example of a potentially false assumption often seen in archaeology of Western practitioners misconstruing Indigenous practices based on modern ideas of religion and culture.

      I might posit that this sort of practice is more akin to that of the science of Indigenous peoples who used oral and mnemonic methods in combination with remembering their histories and ancestors.

      Cross reference this with coming reading in The First Astronomers (to come) which may treat this in more depth.


      Leonardo da Vinci documented the attributes of standing water for studying the night sky.

      Where was this and what did it actually entail?

  15. Feb 2022
    1. 9/8g Hinter der Zettelkastentechnik steht dieErfahrung: Ohne zu schreiben kann mannicht denken – jedenfalls nicht in anspruchsvollen,selektiven Zugriff aufs Gedächtnis voraussehendenZusammenhängen. Das heißt auch: ohne Differenzen einzukerben,kann man nicht denken.

      Google translation:

      9/8g The Zettelkasten technique is based on experience: You can't think without writing—at least not in contexts that require selective access to memory.

      That also means: you can't think without notching differences.

      There's something interesting about the translation here of "notching" occurring on an index card about ideas which can be linked to the early computer science version of edge-notched cards. Could this have been a subtle and tangential reference to just this sort of computing?

      The idea isn't new to me, but in the last phrase Luhmann tangentially highlights the value of the zettelkasten for more easily and directly comparing and contrasting the ideas on two different cards which might be either linked or juxtaposed.


      Link to:

      • Graeber and Wengrow ideas of storytelling
      • Shield of Achilles and ekphrasis thesis

      • https://hypothes.is/a/I-VY-HyfEeyjIC_pm7NF7Q With the further context of the full quote including "with selective access to memory" Luhmann seemed to at least to make space (if not give a tacit nod?) to oral traditions which had methods for access to memories in ways that modern literates don't typically give any credit at all. Johannes F.K .Schmidt certainly didn't and actively erased it in Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.

  16. Jan 2022
  17. Dec 2021
  18. Nov 2021
    1. I think the reason that all the spiritual traditions have got this concept of "we are all connected inside of it" is because the societies that actually deeply adopt this idea are the ones that over time deepen their level of consideration, deepen their level of expression, deepen their level of understanding for each other. 00:16:40 This is the reason that this idea pops up over and over at the core of spiritual traditions. And I hope through this talk you see that the reason that it appears at the core of science is it's actually something that is just literally true of the physical universe at every single level of organization and every single manifestation of matter, energy, and life.

      This is a good alignment showing that at the deepest level, the fundamental aspiration and values of science and religion are the same: interconnectedness.

  19. Sep 2021
  20. Jul 2021
  21. May 2021
    1. Franceschini, C., Musetti, A., Zenesini, C., Palagini, L., Pelosi, A., Quattropani, M. C., Lenzo, V., Freda, M. F., Lemmo, D., Vegni, E., Borghi, L., Saita, E., Cattivelli, R., De Gennaro, L., Plazzi, G., Riemann, D., & Castelnuovo, G. (2020). Poor quality of sleep and its consequences on mental health during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ah6j3

    1. Adjiwanou, V., Alam, N., Alkema, L., Asiki, G., Bawah, A., Béguy, D., Cetorelli, V., Dube, A., Feehan, D., Fisker, A. B., Gage, A., Garcia, J., Gerland, P., Guillot, M., Gupta, A., Haider, M. M., Helleringer, S., Jasseh, M., Kabudula, C., … You, D. (2020). Measuring excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in low- and lower-middle income countries: The need for mobile phone surveys [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/4bu3q

  22. Apr 2021
  23. Mar 2021
  24. Feb 2021
  25. Jan 2021
  26. Jul 2020
  27. Jun 2020
  28. May 2020
  29. Jul 2019
  30. Jan 2019
    1. This is the meaning of the “Day of Resurrection,” spoken of in all the scriptures, and announced unto all people. Reflect, can a more precious, a mightier, and more glorious day than this be conceived, so that man should willingly forego its grace, and deprive himself of its bounties, which like unto vernal showers are raining from the heaven of mercy upon all mankind?

      I think this meaning is that "Resurrection" is the return of a Manifestation in another human frame. And this is stated to be clearly more glorious than the literal interpretations of past scripture.

      Why is it clearly more glorious?

      1. Everyone has access. And it leads to empowerment.
      2. It allows us to keep science, which is pretty awesome.
      3. It doesn't allow us to just wait for the rapture - see point 1 about empowerment.
      4. It allows us to see all religions as united in spirit.
      5. Related to point 3 and 4, it allows us to unite with non-religious people.
      6. All of this without "doing violence to the facts".
    1. A comment at the bottom by Barbara H Partee, another panelist alongside Chomsky:

      I'd like to see inclusion of a version of the interpretation problem that reflects my own work as a working formal semanticist and is not inherently more probabilistic than the formal 'generation task' (which, by the way, has very little in common with the real-world sentence production task, a task that is probably just as probabilistic as the real-world interpretation task).

    2. There is a notion of success ... which I think is novel in the history of science. It interprets success as approximating unanalyzed data.

      This article makes a solid argument for why statistical and probabilistic models are useful, not only for prediction, but also for understanding. Perhaps this is a key point that Noam misses, but the quote narrows the definition to models that approximate "unanalyzed data".

      However, it seems clear from this article that the successes of ML models have gone beyond approximating unanalyzed data.

    3. But O'Reilly realizes that it doesn't matter what his detractors think of his astronomical ignorance, because his supporters think he has gotten exactly to the key issue: why? He doesn't care how the tides work, tell him why they work. Why is the moon at the right distance to provide a gentle tide, and exert a stabilizing effect on earth's axis of rotation, thus protecting life here? Why does gravity work the way it does? Why does anything at all exist rather than not exist? O'Reilly is correct that these questions can only be addressed by mythmaking, religion or philosophy, not by science.

      Scientific insight isn't the same as metaphysical questions, in spite of having the same question word. Asking, "Why do epidemics have a peak?" is not the same as asking "Why does life exist?". Actually, that second question can be interested in two different ways, one metaphysically and one physically. The latter interpretation means that "why" is looking for a material cause. So even simple and approximate models can have generalizing value, such as the Schelling Segregation model. There is difference between models to predict and models to explain, and both have value. As later mentioned in this document, theory and data are two feet and both are needed for each other.

    4. This page discusses different types of models

      • statistical models
      • probabilistic models
      • trained models

      and explores the interaction between prediction and insight.

    5. Chomsky (1991) shows that he is happy with a Mystical answer, although he shifts vocabulary from "soul" to "biological endowment."

      Wasn't one of Chomsky's ideas that humans are uniquely suited to language? The counter-perspective espoused here appears to be that language emerges, and that humans are only distinguished by the magnitude of their capacity for language; other species probably have proto-language, and there is likely a smooth transition from one to the other. In fact, there isn't a "one" nor an "other" in a true qualitative sense.

      So what if we discover something about the human that appears to be required for our language? Does this, then, lead us to knowledge of how human language is qualitatively different from other languages?

      Can probabilistic models account for qualitative differences? If a very low, but not 0, probability is assigned to a given event that we know is impossible from our theory-based view, that doesn't make our probabilistic model useless. "All models are wrong, some are useful." But it seems that it does carry with it an assumption that there are no real categories, that categories change according to the needs, and are only useful in describing things. But the underlying nature of reality is of a continuum.

  31. jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk
    1. To Guide Data Collection

      This seems to be, essentially, that models are useful for prediction, but prediction of unknowns in the data instead of prediction of future system dynamics.

    2. Without models, in other words, it is not always clear what data to collect!

      Or how to interpret that data in the light of complex systems.

    3. Plate tectonics surely explains earthquakes, but does not permit us to predict the time and place of their occurrence.

      But how do you tell the value of an explanation? Should it not empower you to some new action or ability? It could be that the explanation is somewhat of a by-product of other prediction-making theories (like how plate tectonics relies on thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and rock mechanics, which do make predictions).

      It might also make predictions itself, such as that volcanoes not on clear plate boundaries might be somehow different (distribution of occurrence over time, correlation with earthquakes, content of magma, size of eruption...), or that understanding the explanation for lightning allows prediction that a grounded metal pole above the house might protect the house from lightning strikes. This might be a different kind of prediction, though, since it isn't predicting future dynamics. Knowing how epidemics works doesn't necessarily allow prediction of total infected counts or length of infection, but it does allow prediction of minimum vaccination rates to avert outbreaks.

      Nonetheless, a theory as a tool to explain, with very poor predictive ability, can still be useful, though less valuable than one that also makes testable predictions.

      But in general, it seems like data -> theory is the explanation. Theory -> data is the prediction. The strength of the prediction depends on the strength of the theory.

    1. Theseunderstandings of spatial technologies build on les-sons from science and technology studies (STS)research that describes the processes by which dataand technologies come to assume and reify social andpower relations, worldviews, and epistemologies(Feenberg1999; Pinch and Bijker1987; Wajcman1991; Winner1985)

      Good summation of Bijker's and Winner's STS work

  32. May 2017
  33. Apr 2016
    1. . I consider that my job, as a philosopher, is to activate the possible, and not to describe the probable, that is, to think situations with and through their unknowns when I can feel them

      The job of a philosopher is to "activate the possible, not describe the probable."