Nobody brought up relativity as the issue; the fact remains that every theory is incomplete and a work in progress, and a few errors is not disproof especially for a statistical generalization. You would not apply this ultra-high standard of ‘the theory must explain every observation ever in the absence of any further data or modifications’ to anything else discussed on LW, and I do not understand why either you or army1987 think you are adding anything to this discussion about cities exhibiting better scaling than corporations.
You said that gravity has exceptions. I’m not quite sure what that’s supposed to mean, but the only interpretation I could think of for that statement is that our current best theory of gravity (namely, general relativity) fails to predict how gravity behaves in some cases. I did not mean to suggest that any theory must explain every observation correctly to be useful, nor did I mean to imply anything about how well cities and corporations scale. I was merely pointing out that you falsely asserted that you had given examples of exceptions to gravity, when you had in fact you had only given examples of exceptions to Newtonian gravity as it would operate in a solar system similar but not identical to ours.
Nobody brought up relativity as the issue; the fact remains that every theory is incomplete and a work in progress, and a few errors is not disproof especially for a statistical generalization. You would not apply this ultra-high standard of ‘the theory must explain every observation ever in the absence of any further data or modifications’ to anything else discussed on LW, and I do not understand why either you or army1987 think you are adding anything to this discussion about cities exhibiting better scaling than corporations.
You said that gravity has exceptions. I’m not quite sure what that’s supposed to mean, but the only interpretation I could think of for that statement is that our current best theory of gravity (namely, general relativity) fails to predict how gravity behaves in some cases. I did not mean to suggest that any theory must explain every observation correctly to be useful, nor did I mean to imply anything about how well cities and corporations scale. I was merely pointing out that you falsely asserted that you had given examples of exceptions to gravity, when you had in fact you had only given examples of exceptions to Newtonian gravity as it would operate in a solar system similar but not identical to ours.
I saw what sounded to me like an extraordinary claim (though it turns out I misunderstood you) so I went WTF.