On Complexity

December 17, 2022 timothywstanley@me.com

Yet in making questions of human desire strictly identical to numbers, Bhattacharya, like von Neumann, has forgotten a basic truth about the relationship of logic to the complexity of life... Every mathematical rendering of objects that are not purely mathematical is a simplification, an 'as if,' and that 'as if' should always come with a caution. When you produce or encounter such a logical simplification, do not forget to ask: How 'sufficiently like' is the similitude to the object of study? And how do I decide whether the difference is for good or ill? A great deal hinges on the answers to those questions, not least when the simplification on offer is of the human psyche... We need institutions capable of generating such engagements between the different ways of discovering the human, and we need disciplines open to such interactions.

David Nirenberg, “The World John von Neumann Built” - https://www.thenation.com/article/society/john-von-neumann/.