Silicon Models
There was a time when this was how science was done, wrote Jon Turney: “Find a plausible theory for how some bits of the world behave, make predictions, test them experimentally.” But now? “All the action is in silicon — not in the world, or even the lab.” ‘Silicon’ as in algorithms, data mining and computer simulations. Kevin Kelly noticed this trend in his 2008 article where he pointed out that Google Translate uses “zillions of datapoints which in aggregate link "this to that" from one language to another”. What does that technique for understanding, he wondered? “If you can learn how to spell without knowing anything about the rules or grammar of spelling, and if you can learn how to translate languages without having any theory or concepts about grammar of the languages you are translating, then what else can you learn without having a theory?” George Box famously said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Box’s comment became all the more