Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 16:31:16 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: ben@narcissus.ml.org, nate@trout.mt.sri.com, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: RMS's view on dynamic linking Message-ID: <12622.856657876@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 22 Feb 1997 16:35:27 MST." <199702222335.QAA05383@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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> Political science isn't a science. It can not predict. It is misnamed. So noted. I would also like to table an objection to "social science" under the same terms, however. :-) That's not to say that human behavior cannot be categorized - you do have all your basic fear response, sex drive, and pack instinct indices to rely on when you're trying to predict things such as whether one group is likely to jump on another anytime soon, and they're generally not far wrong. Where it falls down as a science is in basically the same place that political science breaks down - on the smaller (and I daresay more practical) scale where the brownian motion of individual human quirks is too great an influence on events to allow a linear set of rules to operate reliably. In other words, you just have to pick a basic direction and roll with the random punches as they come from all conceivable directions. > Sociology *can* be a science, since it *can* predict, as long as it's > applied statistically. Most sociologists fail to apply it statistically. Oh sure, just apply more-a them-there statistics and all the numbers come out right. Why didn't they think of that! :-) Needless to say, I heartily disagree. > I can predict that a social construct like FreeBSD operate in a certain > fashion based on its organizing principles, based on observation of > other social constructs with similar organizing principles. In the > same way I can predict a rock will fall on Mars by observing that rocks Heh, somehow I doubt that the greatest periods of accelleration or decelleration in FreeBSD's future will have much to do with its organizing principles. I suspect that most people will continue to go on in much the same way they have these last 3-4 years, quietly fixing bugs and adding features to the system as they deem it appropriate. Where the greatest potential changes lie are in passing comets - some event external to the project sucking one or more project members away, or perhaps more positively funding its development in some specific direction. Who knows? Least of all, I suspect, Terry. :-) Jordan
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