On: Technically, Earth Does Not Orbit Around the Sun (2014)

[azernik]

> Because what value can you get out of "everything gravitates around everything else"?

Expensive numerical simulations!

[narnianal → azernik]

Simulations with numbers are also models. You can make them indefinitely more complex and still have a model that is only an approximation of reality.

[wdewind → narnianal]

> In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

[earenndil → narnianal]

I would say, rather, that models are not approximations of reality, but descriptions of it.

[partomniscient → earenndil]

Just like the maps are not the territory, but like maps, models/descriptions can become out of date.

[shaftway → earenndil]

How about predictions?

[earenndil → shaftway]

Nope. You can use them to make predictions, but they are not in themselves predictions.

[groestl → azernik]

Or semi-esotheric bestsellers!