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Question 5

Lil Na'ia Alessa
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Lilian Na'ia Alessa
Yes, my Grandmother (T'te), my Mother and my Aunts. They were the model that married logic (in their case practicality) with intuition. What made them good is that "outlying data" were merely indicators of processes that were not yet known or understood (in their case, phenomena were little flags that suggested an unfamiliar process was at work but still existed as a process nonetheless).

They also cautioned me to remain humble, that accepting something unusual was a way to acknowledge that we (humans) could not approximate the Creator.

Translated for application in this forum's context: our scientific process is often forced to simplify and from this simplication draw conclusions that we extrapolate to broader scales and other processes without factoring in scaling issues (have I mentioned scale? :).

While this is mainly due to our very real need to simplify things in order to begin to understand them, it has created a culture of hubris where "understanding" relies too strongly on statistics and linear equations. In a holistic (i.e., complex) system, statistics become less important than emergent patterns.

We've not yet developed a great mathematical framework to capture the operationalization of complexity in the 'real' world (i.e., outside computer runs) and this is a need that is being gradually met. Still some way to go.

Matthew Sturm
I have seen some auto mechanics who were great at this. You told them a set of symptoms, maybe mimicked the sound the car was making, then they produced a diagnosis that proved right on. What made them (and scientists of the same ilk) good was the ability to not be confused by the details (suggesting the answer to number 2 might be a stronger No), but could grasp the system complexity.