I think this is unambiguous evidence for the mathematical aesthetic heuristic, over the heuristic of support by existing physical theories. But in general we should expect that any good heuristic is occasionally going to outperform other good heuristics. Before you have an account of which heuristic to apply when, the best you can do is model this as a stochastic process with multiple imperfect predictors.
Along those lines, it’s worth noting that the germ theory of disease prior to epidemiology is not mathematically elegant at all, since it adds a new causal factor on top of ones that we already had extremely good arguments and evidence for (environmental and behavioral causes).
By contrast, it was not luck that Newton was persuasive, because he gave a mathematically elegant account that simultaneously provided an alternative model of physics to explain not only astronomical data, but much other empirical data.
When it comes to the germ theory of disease it’s worth noting that it isn’t that good at predicting when people will get a cold.
It doesn’t help you to predict that a person who’s outside in the cold is more likely to get a cold. It doesn’t help you to predict that people will more likely to get a cold in winter. It doesn’t help you to predict that a person who’s vitamin D3 deficient is more likely to get a cold.
You would expect bacteria to have a harder time when it’s cold outside.
If you on the other hand assume that there’s a life force that gets stronger or weaker that makes you more of less suspectible to disease you can find new ways to reason about those phenomena.
We could build a mathematical model that measures what kind of action correlate with changes in the life force and how changes in the life force correlate with events such as getting a cold.
As a result of the germ theory of disease children who are good at math enjoy their physics classes with nice mathematical models and the biology classes don’t include formula for calculating the life force.
Quite obviously germs are a causal factor, but I think the way the germ theory of disease tries to monopolise the discussion of disease it caused also a lot of harm. Maybe this post should let us become more skeptical of the strong version of the germ theory.
I think this is unambiguous evidence for the mathematical aesthetic heuristic, over the heuristic of support by existing physical theories. But in general we should expect that any good heuristic is occasionally going to outperform other good heuristics. Before you have an account of which heuristic to apply when, the best you can do is model this as a stochastic process with multiple imperfect predictors.
Along those lines, it’s worth noting that the germ theory of disease prior to epidemiology is not mathematically elegant at all, since it adds a new causal factor on top of ones that we already had extremely good arguments and evidence for (environmental and behavioral causes).
By contrast, it was not luck that Newton was persuasive, because he gave a mathematically elegant account that simultaneously provided an alternative model of physics to explain not only astronomical data, but much other empirical data.
When it comes to the germ theory of disease it’s worth noting that it isn’t that good at predicting when people will get a cold.
It doesn’t help you to predict that a person who’s outside in the cold is more likely to get a cold. It doesn’t help you to predict that people will more likely to get a cold in winter. It doesn’t help you to predict that a person who’s vitamin D3 deficient is more likely to get a cold.
You would expect bacteria to have a harder time when it’s cold outside.
If you on the other hand assume that there’s a life force that gets stronger or weaker that makes you more of less suspectible to disease you can find new ways to reason about those phenomena.
We could build a mathematical model that measures what kind of action correlate with changes in the life force and how changes in the life force correlate with events such as getting a cold.
As a result of the germ theory of disease children who are good at math enjoy their physics classes with nice mathematical models and the biology classes don’t include formula for calculating the life force.
Quite obviously germs are a causal factor, but I think the way the germ theory of disease tries to monopolise the discussion of disease it caused also a lot of harm. Maybe this post should let us become more skeptical of the strong version of the germ theory.