Related papers: Prediction in the Hypothesis-Rich Regime
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
According to quantum theory, randomness is a fundamental property of the universe yet classical physics is mostly deterministic. In this article I show that it is possible for deterministic systems to arise from random ones and discuss the…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of…
The standard assumptions that underlie many conceptual and quantitative frameworks do not hold for many complex physical, biological, and social systems. Complex systems science clarifies when and why such assumptions fail and provides…
Frequentist (classical) and the Bayesian approaches to the construction of confidence limits are compared. Various examples which illustrate specific problems are presented. The Likelihood Principle and the Stopping Rule Paradox are…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
Biology is data-rich, and it is equally rich in concepts and hypotheses. Part of trying to understand biological processes and systems is therefore to confront our ideas and hypotheses with data using statistical methods to determine the…
Modern physics is founded on two mainstays: mathematical modelling and empirical verification. These two assumptions are prerequisite for the objectivity of scientific discourse. Here we show, however, that they are contradictory, leading…
The study of complex systems has attracted widespread attention from researchers in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, and engineering. Prediction is one of the central issues in this field. Although most related studies have…
Science in the 21st century seems to be governed by novel approaches involving interdisciplinary work, systemic perspectives and complexity theory concepts. These new paradigms force us to leave aside our elder mechanistic approaches and…
Theoretical analysis proves that human survivability is dominated by an unusual physical, rather than biological, mechanism, which yields an exact law. The law agrees with all experimental data, but, contrary to existing theories, it is the…
One of the presuppositions of science since the times of Galileo, Newton, Laplace, and Descartes has been the predictability of the world. This idea has strongly influenced scientific and technological models. However, in recent decades,…
Motivated by the widespread adoption of large-scale A/B testing in industry, we propose a new experimentation framework for the setting where potential experiments are abundant (i.e., many hypotheses are available to test), and observations…
This paper presents a plausible reasoning system to illustrate some broad issues in knowledge representation: dualities between different reasoning forms, the difficulty of unifying complementary reasoning styles, and the approximate nature…
Biological systems are generally complicated and/or complex. In the former approach, one sets up a model with a large number of parameters to describe the system in detail. The latter approach focuses on understanding the universal aspects…
I reflect on some of the basic aspects of present day Beyond the Standard Model particle physics, focusing mostly on the issues of naturalness, in particular on the so-called hierarchy problem. To all of us, physics as natural science…
Bayesian probability theory is used as a framework to develop a formalism for the scientific method based on principles of inductive reasoning. The formalism allows for precise definitions of the key concepts in theories of physics and also…
The concept of random dynamical system is a comparatively recent development combining ideas and methods from the well developed areas of probability theory and dynamical systems. Due to our inaccurate knowledge of the particular physical…
The science of complexity is based on a new way of thinking that stands in sharp contrast to the philosophy underlying Newtonian science, which is based on reductionism, determinism, and objective knowledge. This paper reviews the…