Models

If you buy a spanky new gaming PC it will have a physics engine. This is a chip that does all the tricky physics calculations.

But is it reality? Well, it might be. It might be the dynamics of a football or the stall-flutter of a Spitfire. It might be the handling charateristics of a Mitsubishi Evo on a frozen Finnish lake. It might though be used for flying faster then light or for a rotund Italian plumber leaping from platform to platform in a way rotund Italian plumbers don’t.

We have now the power to create different realities. Yes, we can simulate the real world but we can also create worlds. Computers can entertain - and God knows I’ve put my stint in at gaming - and they can enlighten but they can also lie. Anyone with a knowledge of A-level plus maths will know something very curious. When you solve a differential equation you don’t get a result as such. You get a template and the actual real world numbers depend on boundary conditions and such. Mathematics is an incredible toolbox and whilst it can be used to understand reality it can also be used to create new realities. For example it is entirely possible - indeed quite easy - to build a model of the solar system and then subtract Jupiter. The same perturbed Keplerian orbits pertain and the laws of motion and gravity are not changed because there is nothing in them to say “A gas giant must exist between Mars and Saturn”.

But Jupiter exists. And that changes a lot. Jupiter “shepards” the asteroid belt. Jupiter majorly perturbs the planetary orbits and there is a little thing called the Tisserand relation. Carl Murray taught me Solar System Dynamics BTW.

So science requires two things. It requires theories and it requires facts. In short, that a certain arrangement of matter and energy does not violate the laws of physics (and annoy Chief Engineer Scott) does not mean it must exist.

And this is where the warmists have failed epically. They have grown to love their models* so much they can no longer see that they have created a possible reality and that that is not the same as an actual reality - which is something only verifiable by rollin up one’s sleeves and doing that terribly old-hat and enlightenment thing called “an experiment”. They quite simply don’t appreciate the power of contingencies. He’s a thought experiment for you. What if a certain Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov had fallen under a train in 1915? It’s entirely possible that Russia wouldn’t have gone Commie. What would our world look like if that hadn’t happened? And why didn’t someone shove him? Would have saved an awful lot of agro.

An aside - the singular killer argument against Communism is very simple. Communism is contradictory. It is portrayed by the likes of Marx as inevitable and driven by social pressures and the vast multitude. So how come every Communist leader has had to create a cult of personality? Even if like Lenin they didn’t actually have one. I mean how much bronze was cast to show the beardy little fucker hailing a cab?

Anyway. The truth is what is out there. It is not on any computer. Oh, don’t get me wrong! Modern science is impossible without our reckoning machines but if I can fly a Swallow Moth with a fusion cell through the imagined craters of Titan due to the power of computation it doesn’t mean such things exist.

*Who doesn’t love models - they tend to be quite attractive. I mean it’s their job, right? Unless you are Naomi Campbell and your job is to be a right stroppy cow.