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Gillitrut  Reading from the golden book under bright red stars  1yr ago (link.springer.com)   Edited 1yr ago   1391 thread views

Pay no attention to the Model Behind the Curtain!

link.springer.com

Many widely used models amount to an elaborate means of making up numbers—but once a number has been produced, it tends to be taken seriously and its source (the model) is rarely examined carefully. Many widely used models have little connection to the real-world phenomena they purport to explain. Common steps in modeling to support policy decisions, such as putting disparate things on the same scale, may conflict with reality. Not all costs and benefits can be put on the same scale, not all uncertainties can be expressed as probabilities, and not all model parameters measure what they purport to measure. These ideas are illustrated with examples from seismology, wind-turbine bird deaths, soccer penalty cards, gender bias in academia, and climate policy.

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Based on the abstract, this paper looks interesting, but do you have a bit more of a summary as to why it's in its own thread?

It seems like the kind of technical paper that people here would be interested in. It didn't seem particularly Culture War relevant so it didn't seem like the right fit for the megathread.

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