Re: Modeling question...

On Oct 24, 10:28 pm, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
> Walter Mitty wrote:
> > "David BL" <davi..._at_iinet.net.au> wrote in message
> >news:de0dc1e9-1953-49d9-ae84-00cab59d1195_at_z6g2000pre.googlegroups.com...
> >> Ok, I’ll bite…
>
> >> No doubt any data can be made to “fit” into the relational model.
> >> The more important question is whether it happens /naturally/. The
>
> > I don't understand the word "naturally" in this context. Isn't all modeling
> > artificial, rather than natural?
>
> I'm with you even though we think of the activities involved as being
> natural to us. The RM is an artifice, so are models in general. So is
> FOL (even with its trap lingo like "Exists"). I doubt if mathematics is
> any more natural than a data model as it produces some conclusions that
> nobody can actually visualize. The consequences of relational closure
> are one small example. The reason I think this is important is that it
> means there ought to be nothing to prevent us devising even more useful
> artifices, even if most of us, including me, don't possess the insight
> to do that.
>
> Being part of nature, we are hardly in a position to duplicate it. Our
> only advantage is the artifice wherein we can drop the natural aspects
> that are inconvenient or irrelevant, as we see it, to some purpose.
> We've been practising this since the Stone Age.
>
> It bugs me when people pretend that we have re-produced anything but our
> own mental creations, I think that is the first step down the mystic
> slope. But reason and rationality too can get out of control, as modern
> history shows. Does that sound odd coming from an atheist?

Would you say Max Tegmark is on the mystic slope?

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0646v2.pdf Received on Tue Oct 28 2008 - 02:49:51 CET