IF IT’S THAT INEFFECTIVE, THEN WHY DO WE BET THE ECONOMY, AND OUR CIVILIZATION O

IF IT’S THAT INEFFECTIVE, THEN WHY DO WE BET THE ECONOMY, AND OUR CIVILIZATION ON IT?

(I’m not anti-math. I’m anti platonism. Which includes representing what corresponds to reality by necessity with that which correlates with reality. In particular the relationship between our economic data and the monopoly of the west on technology, while discovering a new continent.)

“Abbott explains that effective mathematics provides compact, idealized representations of the inherently noisy physical world.”

“Analytical mathematical expressions are a way making compact descriptions of our observations,” he told Phys.org. “As humans, we search for this ‘compression’ that math gives us because we have limited brain power. Maths is effective when it delivers simple, compact expressions that we can apply with regularity to many situations. It is ineffective when it fails to deliver that elegant compactness. It is that compactness that makes it useful/practical … if we can get that compression without sacrificing too much precision.

“I argue that there are many more cases where math is ineffective (non-compact) than when it is effective (compact). Math only has the illusion of being effective when we focus on the successful examples. But our successful examples perhaps only apply to a tiny portion of all the possible questions we could ask about the universe.”

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-09-mathematics-effective-world.html#jCp