Limits of Science
From A.T. -- Re: "Human beings, unlike the roll of a fair die, are governed by freedom of choice"
The instant an economist or politician tells a person he must or must not do something (take dope, for example), that person will tend to want to test why. The instant you communicate a notion for how to predict the sum result of groups of interacting random decisions, that notion will simply become part of the factoring in each agent's decision making process. Soros is right that new bubbles are never ending. The very process of observing predictions changes the results (sort of like giving hot stock tips). This is why there is no such thing as perfect transparency in the communication of anything that is not trivial. How can we be perfectly transparent when we don't even perfectly understand ourselves?
This is why social sciences cannot ever compete with the hard sciences in the areas of testability and replicability. For that matter, this is also why the hard sciences go off the deep end when they try to dip into deriving ought from is or morality from nature. We need to think more about how to sustain our games without becoming so invested in proving the final solution that we destroy ourselves in frustration. Both our wisdom and our religion need to accord more respect for each individual's conscious free will. Scientists of replicability need to appreciate their limits when it comes to hubristic prescriptions for morality that accord too little respect for a fundamental, unpredictable aspect of consciousness. Science needs to grow up and apprehend its limits. Until then, we are more in the grip of confidence men who deal in self fulfilling prophecies or delusions.
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From A.T. -
Re: "Lawyers would have us believe that when they look at the law, they are looking through a telescope at some fundamental truth about the universe."
Well, apart from utopians, I don’t know many lawyers (or salesmen, for that matter) who pretend their practice constitutes science as opposed to skill. Instead, they try to select juries they think they can sell products to. During the sales pitch, they may in varying ways try to recondition the jury or alter the product. It’s a feedback process, not a process of reasoning to scientific truth from infallible axioms. There is no perfect set of detailed laws for men of free will. To try overzealously to impose such an Obamian feat or lawyer’s paradise is tyranny leading to hell. Though it may make for good Country and Western music. A lawyer without a Country and Western heart is a soul without a compass.
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