Bonini paradox
The Bonini Paradox , named after Professor Charles P. Bonini of the Stanford Graduate School of Business , describes difficulties in constructing models and simulations of complex systems, such as the human brain.
More recently, the paradox has been reformulated by John M. Dutton and William H. Starbuck: “As models of complex systems become more complete, they also become less understandable. In other words, as a model becomes more realistic, it becomes as difficult to understand as the real process that the model represents. ”(Computer Simulation of Human Behavior, 1971)
precursor
The paradox was mentioned earlier in a quote from Paul Valéry : "Everything simple is wrong, everything complicated is useless." ( Notre Destin et les Lettres , 1937)
The biologist Richard Levins (1930–2016) mentions a similar finding when he states that complex models have “too many parameters to measure” , leading to analytically unsolvable equations that are beyond the capacity of our computers, and the results even then would be meaningless if we could solve them.
Comparisons
swell
- ^ Charles P. Bonini: Simulation of information and decision systems in the firm. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1963.
- ^ WH Starbuck: Organizations and their environments. In: MD Dunnette (Ed.): Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology. Rand, Chicago 1975, pp. 1069-1123.
- ^ R. Levins: The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology. In: American Scientist. 54: 421-431 (1966).
- ↑ Jay Odenbaugh: The strategy of 'The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology'. In: Biology and Philosophy. 21, No. 5 2006, pp. 607-621.