[om-list] Limits of Prediction in the Natural and Social Sciences

[Luke Call]

Mark,
This is a most enjoyable read, and the kind of thing that motivates OM 
for me. It would be great to be able to build models for things like on 
the fly, especially if there is a modelling environment with shared data 
like the web, where sharing and growth increases its usefulness 
exponentially (or something like that). Then being able to run 
simulations with the model.

Anyway, if I/we don't get OM done in a reasonable time maybe something 
like this will come along. There are a variety of tools out there for 
building trees of thoughts, or testing logical statements, but none seem 
to have it all...

Thanks for posting all this interesting stuff.

Mark Butler wrote:
> ....
> 
> Current econometric models assume social stability and rational behavior 
> - no major wars, no cultural decline, no moral collapse.  But a brief 
> examination of history abundantly demonstrates that moral considerations 
> are primary in the rise and fall of both enterprises and civilizations.  
> Rational behavior is a key assumption of the Black-Scholes equation for 
> the market price of futures - under adverse conditions, however, market 
> participants do not behave rationally (famously bankrupting the 
> centuries old Barings Bank during the Asian currency crisis a few years 
> back).
> 
> But might we make much better predictions if we thought of people as 
> imperfect moral agents, disregarding moral, prudential, and legal 
> constraints on their behavior in proportion to the weakness of 
> character, rather than assuming rational self interest and perfect 
> obedience to law?    
 > ....