Platonization
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
Classification into simple groups so we can summarize and deal with “things-that-are-alike” rather than isolated incidents or objects. Presumably Plato did this to impose some sort of order on an already complex universe. We continue to follow that tradition because without classification and summarization, we would not be able to find “rules” of behavior.
But classification and finding rules of behavior, works in places where the normal bell-curve random distribution applies. In some areas, the standard distribution with standard deviations, don’t work. Not only in circumstances with asymmetric outcomes (turn left, you merely continue to be lost - turn right, you run off the cliff and fall 200 feet to a pile of rocks) do the “normal” distribution fail, but in particular the “black swan” event, which doesn’t even fit into a distribution, will cause massive consequences.