Quotes on Models and Their Uses
For thinking about and highlighting the more fundamental aspects and broader considerations of science/engineering models
Quotes on Models and Their Uses
rationality is a method of dealing with uncertainty by devouring information and making simplifying assumptions about the outside world until you can convince yourself that you understand it
hinterlander • Tweet
Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day
“But there is only one history…all other beginnings and endings are arbitrary conventions, diffusing petty comfort or petty despair.”
“It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.”
Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there were remarkably few insights.
Stephen King • The Dark Tower I
If you read the book "Noise" from Kahneman et al. you will see that noise of decision (e.g. over different persons) can be reduced by skipping the weights and just adding up the scores -- Equal Weighting Model
To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.
(Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
models, despite their reputation for impartiality, reflect goals and ideology
Weapons of Math Destruction Quotes by Cathy O'Neil
For definitions are very dreadful things: they do the two things that most men, especially comfortable men, cannot endure. They fight; and they fight fair.
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day
“Explanations are for people who carry dull minds through dull lives”
“Why are idealists such ninnies?
Predicting world state 10 years out is difficult