The Menu is not The Meal. Fallacies inherent in Modeling

[silent thunder]

A reminder of the inherent limitations of modeling in scientific and social analysis, or human perception... and that the map is not the meal no matter how much we conflate or project it to be so, in this recent article on phys.org

 

Naive Realism it seems, in spite of being one of the longest refuted, continues to remain one of the most persistent perspectives around.

 

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Questions such as what's happening to our climate, which direction the markets will move and where trust comes from, appear to be so complex they seem unanswerable.

 

One way to get our heads round these questions is to make a model. “Modelling is really important to allow scientists and engineers to be able to understand what's going on and then hopefully predict what's going to happen in the future,” says Roy Kalawsky, Professor of Systems Engineering at Loughborough University. But when it comes to models there a few things to be wary of.

 

The Three Fallacies

Models are made with simplifications and assumptions about the real world. Some aspects are discounted as insignificant while others make it in. “[The model] can never be the real thing because there are things you haven't taken into account in the modelling process that could have a tiny but still important impact later on,” says Roy.   And this leads to our first fallacy: the fallacy of missing what's important.

 

The second fallacy is about understanding who's going to use your model: the fallacy of interpretation. “Understanding who's going to use it is very important," says Roy. A model of a bridge for a structural engineer is going to be different from a model for a council worker looking at traffic flow.

 

The final fallacy is about testing.

“One of biggest challenges I feel in the modelling process is being able to validate and verify the model you've created," says Roy, "The modelling process doesn't finish when you've made the model, because you've got to compare the outputs from the model or what you observe in the model against what you can see in the real world. If it doesn’t comply then you have to try and understand why that is so you go back and refine the model."

Assumption, projection, interpretation... "Welcome to the desert... of the real"  Morpheus says to Neo upon revealing the nature of simulation, simulacra and the appearance of reality in the movie The Matrix.  The entire storyline of the films relied heavily upon the Parable by Borges and its expanded exploration by Bouillard in Simulacra and Simulation.

 

Regarding Borges fable in which the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly, tree for tree, insect for insect.  A potent revelation in that short short story.

 

How to address the inherent fallacies in the models used for the study and projection analysis of complex structures of human interaction and natural phenomena?  Seems another open question without a pat answer.

 

Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard was required reading for the cast of The Matrix series.  A brief excerpt from opening pages.

 

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Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the doubvle, the mirror, or the concept.  Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance.  It si the the generation by models of a real without origin or reality:  a hyperreal.   The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it.  It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory, and inf one must return to teh fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map.  It is the real, and not the map, whose vetiges persiste here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours.  The desert of the real itself.

 

How to proceed to investigate complex scenarios when modeling is fraught with such projection and assumption.

Edited May 2, 2019 by silent thunder
fix author's name spelling

[silent thunder]

synchronicity... the very next piece I begin reading after posting this...

 

The following is the first line that sets the tone for a translation of the Nei Ye shared by ZYD in another thread.

 

"The most dangerous delusion of all is that there is only one reality."

 

- Paul Watzlawick How Real is Real? Confusion. Disinformation. Communication (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), p. xi.

Edited May 1, 2019 by silent thunder

[rideforever]

If my identity-existing is the first and last fact of my life; what sense does it make to construct a "science" where this is ignored?
If we dig ores out of the ground and make microscopes to look at other things on the ground, what exactly are we doing?
Ignoring what is most obvious?
Is the whole thing just rubbish?
Why are we even excited about such things?
How far can we run away from and downplay the first and last most obvious part of our life.

[Nungali]

" a microscope is a tube for eliminating your view of the rest of the universe "   -  someone .