http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/elizabeth-kolbert-dissects-and-destroys-superfreakonomics/ alternative views, news & information—online, video and print Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:09:25 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.disinfo.com/2009/11/elizabeth-kolbert-dissects-and-destroys-superfreakonomics/comment-page-1/#comment-1888 Peter Max Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:03:31 +0000 http://www.disinfo.com/?p=14233#comment-1888 The only academic field that's free of self-important specialist "qualified" interpretation is mathematics (including statistics). The only objective truths are those that can be mathematically delimited. Everything else is speculation and interpretation. The "truth value" that can be assigned to a statement is limited to what experts believe to be true and that can only be a linguistic consensus. Eventually this consensus will be available via search engines which assign a truth value to any statement based on statistical analysis. There is far more opinion-based science that's expressed as fact than there is statistical analysis presented as definitive knowledge. Hard science long ago rejected "sociology" but public relation firms regularly use statistical models to predict or even manipulate outcomes of mass-social events such as elections. For instance: how many times and at what time of day should ads be run to create a statistically verifiable change in public opinion? The only academic field that's free of self-important specialist “qualified” interpretation is mathematics (including statistics). The only objective truths are those that can be mathematically delimited. Everything else is speculation and interpretation. The “truth value” that can be assigned to a statement is limited to what experts believe to be true and that can only be a linguistic consensus. Eventually this consensus will be available via search engines which assign a truth value to any statement based on statistical analysis. There is far more opinion-based science that's expressed as fact than there is statistical analysis presented as definitive knowledge. Hard science long ago rejected “sociology” but public relation firms regularly use statistical models to predict or even manipulate outcomes of mass-social events such as elections. For instance: how many times and at what time of day should ads be run to create a statistically verifiable change in public opinion?

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