My two favorite statisticians back in grad school, Jaynes and David Wolpert, both had declarations of independence from infinity, deeming finite sets adequate for human purposes, and extensions to infinity (and beyond!) as an exercise left to the interested reader.
I see this trend all the time. A claim that “mathematics proves” something in the real world, couple with lots of equations, but a complete dismissal of questions like “And where have you shown that your mathematics accurately models the world?” If I had more energy and talent, I’d write a poem—Sylvester’s got a Slide Rule.
My two favorite statisticians back in grad school, Jaynes and David Wolpert, both had declarations of independence from infinity, deeming finite sets adequate for human purposes, and extensions to infinity (and beyond!) as an exercise left to the interested reader.
I see this trend all the time. A claim that “mathematics proves” something in the real world, couple with lots of equations, but a complete dismissal of questions like “And where have you shown that your mathematics accurately models the world?” If I had more energy and talent, I’d write a poem—Sylvester’s got a Slide Rule.