RE: What is "useful"; what is "survival"

From: Richard Brodie (richard@brodietech.com)
Date: Fri Jun 02 2000 - 02:12:08 BST

  • Next message: Richard Brodie: "RE: Cui bono, Chuck?" 

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From: "Richard Brodie" <richard@brodietech.com>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: What is "useful"; what is "survival"
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 18:12:08 -0700
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    Chuck wrote:

    <<Wrong. My theory is Darwinian. (If it still isn't clear by now, I can't
    make it
    any more clear) I have already posted how Darwinian theory can be
    falsified -
    and it so far hasn't in the last 150 years. The way to falsify this
    particular
    set of facts is to find a society now or in the past where reputation plays
    the
    key role in the establishment of trust associated with a geographically
    mobile
    population.>>

    This is off topic, but I think Ebay fits that description very well.

    <<Question: where do you get your information on the nature of science? Did
    Microsoft provide any courses on the subject while you were there?>>

    I worked rather than studied while I was at Microsoft. The only course I
    ever took there was on the Component Object Model, but we did have a large
    number of copies of Polya's book "How To Solve It" in the company library.
    As a kid I was always a science nerd and voraciously read Asimov's
    nonfiction, Scientific American, and many, many puzzle books (especially by
    Martin Gardner). I don't think understanding the nature of science is so
    much about information as intelligence. Like evolution, it's a highly
    abstract concept about concepts and most people are more comfortable with
    concretes, or at best concepts about concretes.

    [RB]
    > The only way to know what is scientifically valid is
    > to successfully predict the future.

    <<Really? On what level? If you mean specific events, of course not; if you
    mean
    the general form of the future will still conform to Darwininian laws, it
    does.>>

    Really! A valid physics will predict where a steel ball will land when
    propelled with a certain velocity! A valid genetics will predict the
    statistical distribution of a trait in offspring! Theories for understanding
    the past, while they may be intellectually satisfying, are not
    scientifically valuable unless they predict future results. As you quite
    perceptively pointed out in a previous post, those "future results" could
    actually be as-yet-undiscovered facts about the past.

    Richard Brodie richard@brodietech.com
    http://www.memecentral.com/rbrodie.htm

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