Chris Anderson is wrong about the end of models. Models predict and extend. Even given complete historical and current data, there is nothing predictive about it. In science as in finance, past performance is no guarantee of future results, and just as a crowd behaves differently from a group of individuals, two sub-critical lumps of uranium behave differently separately than they do joined together. Even if you take complete information about what happened yesterday and today and try to extrapolate tomorrow, you are using a model: you are assuming that tomorrow will look something like yesterday and today.
Just as a recent Harvard study showed Chris Anderson was wrong about the long tail, he is wrong about correlation and models. However, popular culture will increasingly democratize knowledge -- the more people believe something, the more relevant that belief will be. Even if it is wrong. This is why Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim radical Black Christian.
Ed Finn
· 1 year ago
Pete,
I agree with you that Anderson is wrong and the era of models is certainly not over (just beginning, actually). The point you make about Obama is really in Anderson's favor: with so much information out there, many people have given up hope of reliable, objective truths and just put faith in facts the Google way--based on the number of times people repeat them. Maybe that's always how we did it, and there are just more voices out there now.
Actually, I think your comment touches on a separate problem. Science will do fine, and the masses of data will be analyzed and understood by an ever-more sophisticated apparatus of statistical tools and algorithms. The trouble is, the math necessary to cope with this brave new world is not being taught to enough of the people who need to understand it. I can't tell you how many times as a journalist I saw blatant misrepresentations or misunderstandings of correlation and causality. As the data and the science get more complicated, the Average Joe and even the Average Joe Journalist is falling behind.
All Comments
Just as a recent Harvard study showed Chris Anderson was wrong about the long tail, he is wrong about correlation and models. However, popular culture will increasingly democratize knowledge -- the more people believe something, the more relevant that belief will be. Even if it is wrong. This is why Barack Obama is a crypto-Muslim radical Black Christian.
I agree with you that Anderson is wrong and the era of models is certainly not over (just beginning, actually). The point you make about Obama is really in Anderson's favor: with so much information out there, many people have given up hope of reliable, objective truths and just put faith in facts the Google way--based on the number of times people repeat them. Maybe that's always how we did it, and there are just more voices out there now.
Actually, I think your comment touches on a separate problem. Science will do fine, and the masses of data will be analyzed and understood by an ever-more sophisticated apparatus of statistical tools and algorithms. The trouble is, the math necessary to cope with this brave new world is not being taught to enough of the people who need to understand it. I can't tell you how many times as a journalist I saw blatant misrepresentations or misunderstandings of correlation and causality. As the data and the science get more complicated, the Average Joe and even the Average Joe Journalist is falling behind.
Thanks for your input!
Ed