Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

 perry@piermont.com ("Perry E. Metzger") writes:
>The "overall" approach isn't sufficient. If you have a mathematical
>model, at the very least you have to try plugging in historical data
>into the stated equations and see if it comes out with a reasonable
>match. Even that isn't always enough.

 And you'd rather complain about the absence of such testing rather
than do such tests yourself.

>> Robin has provided some references which may do this, but I suspect
>> that it would require significant effort to become familiar with the
>> relevant research.
>
>Frankly, the more I become familiar with "quantitative" social
>sciences, the more they resemble voodoo and the less they resembles
>science. The methods of science require that you state a hypothesis
>and try hard to falsify it -- not that you produce dense equations and
>note that "similar" equations have some general validity.
>
>The idea of people making extraordinary claims without so much as a
>solid experiment strikes me as pretty damn amazing.

 Disagreement over the appropriate methods of justifying a claim
is much less amazing than people who make extraordinary claims without
feeling any need to justify them. Did you not see my post on this subject:
http://mars2.caltech.edu/polymath/0640.html
or are you trying to convince me to put you in my killfile?

-- 
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Peter McCluskey          | Critmail (http://crit.org/critmail.html):
http://www.rahul.net/pcm | Accept nothing less to archive your mailing list