places which seem like canonical examples of very-probably-messy-territory repeatedly turn out to not be so messy
May I ask for a few examples of this?
The claim definitely seems plausible to me, but I can’t help but think of examples like gravity or electromagnetism, where every theory to date has underestimated the messiness of the true concept. It’s possible that these aren’t really much evidence against the claim but rather indicative of a poor ontology:
People who expect a “clean” territory tend to be shocked by how “messy” the world looks when their original ontology/model inevitably turns out to not fit it very well.
However, it feels hard to differentiate (intuitively or formally) cases where our model is a poor fit from cases where the territory is truly messy. Without being able to confidently make this distinction, the claim that the territory itself isn’t messy seems a bit unfalsifiable. Any evidence of territories turning out to be messy could be chalked up to ill-fitting ontologies.
Hopefully, seeing more examples like the competitive markets for nails will help me better differentiate the two or, at the very least, help me build intuition for why less messy territories are more natural/common.
May I ask for a few examples of this?
The claim definitely seems plausible to me, but I can’t help but think of examples like gravity or electromagnetism, where every theory to date has underestimated the messiness of the true concept. It’s possible that these aren’t really much evidence against the claim but rather indicative of a poor ontology:
However, it feels hard to differentiate (intuitively or formally) cases where our model is a poor fit from cases where the territory is truly messy. Without being able to confidently make this distinction, the claim that the territory itself isn’t messy seems a bit unfalsifiable. Any evidence of territories turning out to be messy could be chalked up to ill-fitting ontologies.
Hopefully, seeing more examples like the competitive markets for nails will help me better differentiate the two or, at the very least, help me build intuition for why less messy territories are more natural/common.
Thank you!