Author: Fernando Villegas
Date: 10:09:24 07/16/00
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Hi Dann: Generally speaking I agree with your statements, but maybe I would add that a dosis of fussy logic or whatever the name you give to it should be neccesary in this issue, as in fact it is neccesary even in hard sciences. In these you very rarely get into a new idea of theory just following strictly the canon of scientific method. Things are not that way. I do not know of any important theory in chemics of physics that resulted from a kind of aristotelic sillogism or mathematical demostration. This last comes in the end, long after the intuitive idea has appeared in the mind of the reseacher. Einstein did not discover relativity making numbers in a sheet of paper, but mixing in his mind all kind of vague ideas, including Kant formulation about space and time. Only after he had his flash of understanding he looked for a wway to put that in maths. The same room for some fussyness you can get in the methods of proof. Statistics is far to be an inequivocal system of demostration. It handles some maths, but before the maths comes to the scene you must define concepts and the kind of things to be measured and so you have room for getting all kind of conclusions. I know it very well as much my professional training in sociology dealt with a huge amount of statistic, the main math tool of that half-science. In even the most precise formulation lurks some degree of vagueness and mistery; in fact that is the ground for further progress. A creative scientist just catch that misterious area to develop a more complete, exhaustive theory. So, in this case of GM strenght, we are not going to solve the issue just the day we gather lot of information for statistic analysis. At most we will be nearer to solve it. Remember that, also, reality changes. Suppose programs gets current GM today, but then tomorrow these GM climb to another higher level because what they learn from computers...and nevertheless you will say programs are GM because you already have your numbers. OK, all this is tricky, changing and that's the reason is entertainning. Probably this last thing is the only one for certain. Fernando
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