Re: uncertainty

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Bruce McFarling wrote:
> On the one hand, for people confused by the difference between
> ontology (roughly, the study of what is real) and epistimology
> (the study of how we know what we know), the terms will be
> confusing.  On the other hand, someone who knows what the
> terms mean can work out the phrase without having to read
> the original source, to wit, ontological uncertainty means
> that the outcome itself is intrinsically uncertain, where
> epistimological uncertainty means that regardless of whether
> the outcome is uncertain, we are not capable of getting
> the information to know what the outcome is.

Exactly.
This missing capability includes our inability
to even divine an underlying probability
distribution in crucial cases.

> I like epistemological uncertainty, since it draws attention
> to the intrinsic limitations in information processing that
> the original neoclassical model simply ignored when it
> drew upon a model of forces acting upon entities, and applied
> it to people making decisions on the basis of information.

Nicely put.

Alan Isaac