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0 pointsnimithryn4y ago0 comments

> This is why you never, ever take anyone seriously who thinks of society like a model.

I’ve never understood these critiques. If you want to study society, what’s the alternative? No matter what, you have to make a model of some kind. Yeah, some models are simplistic, but maybe they can capture the high order bits of the phenomenon they are modeling, and at least you are committing to an idea you can codify, find fault with, and improve. The alternative (never making models) seems to be a type of intellectual nihilism.

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nverno4y ago

> some models are simplistic

Every model is simplistic, otherwise it's not a model, but reality. Societal models (I've never heard of a remotely reasonable one, aside from psychohistory) have the unique problem where they influence the people they are supposed to model. If your business is societal models, planned obsolescence is part of the deal.

nimish4y ago

"All models are wrong, but some are useful"

A lot of so-called experts don't quite grasp the former and don't care about the latter. They cannot be relied upon for actual decision making, since the low level details are what's hard!

nimithrynOP4y ago

Then what do you rely on for decision making? Gut instinct? That’s a model too, albeit unformalized.

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