From: Philip Jonkers (philosophimur@dygo.com)
Date: Fri 16 May 2003 - 13:14:50 GMT
Reed:
> I find memes in the mind to be a more intuitive
>way of thinking about memes. It's easier to explain to people. It's not
>TRUE. But then, no model is true.
In science, thinking in terms of black and white is usually not very
expedient. If you adopt the entire spectrum of grey colors a whole
magnificent world of tolerance and possibility opens up. Models of
even the simplest of systems are not true, that's why they are called
models to begin with. A model aims at capturing the essentials of the system it is supposed to describe. By the inherently sheer
complexity of the system and the inherently sheer lack of computing power and/or skillfulness on the part of the modeler, the model almost per se is but an approximation to the real system. The accuracy of
the approximation with respect to the real system at hand (TRUTH content, if you will) depends on the ingenuity and skillfulness of the modeler among other things.
So, to recap, indeed while no model really is true in the purely black
and white sense some models are more true than others if you
are willing to allow all those glorious shades of gray. The
trick, or art if you like, relevant in science is to find models
that give you maximum amounts of truth content (in the least amount
of effort).
Phil
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