Comments on: Will Google Kill Science? http://www.openculture.com/2008/07/will_google_kill_science.html The best free cultural & educational media on the web Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:44:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Ed Finn http://www.openculture.com/2008/07/will_google_kill_science.html#comment-3055 Ed Finn Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:40:20 +0000 http://www.oculture.com/?p=1124#comment-3055 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. Thanks for your input! Ed 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.

Thanks for your input!
Ed

]]> By: Pete http://www.openculture.com/2008/07/will_google_kill_science.html#comment-3054 Pete Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:28:51 +0000 http://www.oculture.com/?p=1124#comment-3054 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. 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.

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