Steve Smith wrote at 04/12/2013 01:42 PM: >> The aphorism about models that maps directly to "the map is not the >> territory" is "all models are always wrong". > I guess I thought that *was* the *main* point of "all models are wrong, > some are useful"...
Maybe that was the _intention_. But the pragmatic result is modeling opportunism. "Yeah, sure my model's wrong. So what. It's useful in this context." Now if that were _actually_ the case, then I'd be OK with it. But what usually turns out is that it's not useful in that context. It's only useful by that person in that context (or whatever other context that person decides to exploit by vaguely mapping the previous context to the next context). In short, that aphorism "all models are wrong, some are useful" opened modeling up to snake oil salesmen. You can see this because most models do not lay out what use cases they address at all. They are almost always inextricably tied to the modeler, not the context. However, if you look at the modeling trajectory, the revision history, or the suite of models surrounding any one model, you can begin to grok the context, the use cases, independent of the modeler(s). I.e. no individual model is useful. Only model constellations are useful. -- =><= glen e. p. ropella I have gazed beyond today ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
