4 hours ago
https://iai.tv/articles/reality-cannot-b..._auid=2020
INTRO: For centuries, scientists and philosophers—from Leibniz to today’s AI visionaries—have dreamed of mathematizing reality, fully describing the world in equations that a machine can compute. But this is a dangerous illusion, argue mathematician and biochemist Jobst Landgrebe and philosopher Barry Smith, whose work on scientific modelling has been utilized by institutions like the US military and the National Institutes of Health, making him one of the world’s most highly cited philosophers.
Natural systems like the climate and the human brain, they contend, can never be fully captured by models, because they are fundamentally irregular and unpredictable. True progress depends on flexible heuristics, which allow us to intervene in reality without needing an exhaustive description of it. (MORE - details)
INTRO: For centuries, scientists and philosophers—from Leibniz to today’s AI visionaries—have dreamed of mathematizing reality, fully describing the world in equations that a machine can compute. But this is a dangerous illusion, argue mathematician and biochemist Jobst Landgrebe and philosopher Barry Smith, whose work on scientific modelling has been utilized by institutions like the US military and the National Institutes of Health, making him one of the world’s most highly cited philosophers.
Natural systems like the climate and the human brain, they contend, can never be fully captured by models, because they are fundamentally irregular and unpredictable. True progress depends on flexible heuristics, which allow us to intervene in reality without needing an exhaustive description of it. (MORE - details)