@Meaningness https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/09/wait-so-how-much-of-the-ocean-is-fished-again/569782/?utm_source=feed … puts me in mind of the discussion about ontology and measurement and is an interesting practical example. "What percentage of ocean is fished?" is very like "what is the mass of a cloud?" in that the answer varies wildly based on definition
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Replying to @Meaningness @DRMacIver
Relevant Feynman quote:pic.twitter.com/mPb2fHchf3
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Replying to @Meaningness
So I've been thinking about this a bit more and despite making the same point myself I don't think I like this argument because it feels too much like pedantry. The claim is true but not actually very useful for practical reasoning
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Replying to @DRMacIver
Well, not in the case of the mass of a chair! But the general point that your formal model will never fully reflect reality is important. In physics, you can usually get a hard numerical error bound, but in most other sciences that’s not possible, so other approaches are needed.
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Replying to @Meaningness
I think the point doesn't matter for the mass of chairs in the sense that it's dwarfed by measurement error - there may be ontologically distinct notions of chair mass but they're all (within tolerance) numerically equal so it doesn't matter
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Yes; in the case of a cloud, or many biological systems, the ontological slop might easily be >10% though, and much greater than measurement error. Using a hard object like a chair as an example shows this is pervasive, although not always a problem in practice.
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