OFF TOPIC - Larry and Bosco: I think you are both right to relate the reliance on TA, especially the more abstruse mathematical versions, which sometimes suggest a kind of mechanistic inevitability of cause and effect, to a cultural hunger for the certainty that science can offer within careful circumscribed limits (and I include in the definition of science, engineering and mathematics). The social sciences, especially in the US, have always sought the "respectability" of the hard sciences, adopting concepts such as hypothesis, experiment and predictability to data, which is not amenable to the scientific method. The "science" or "discipline" of statistics, in that it measures averages and probabilities, would seem to have some congruence with stock markets and, to a lesser extent, to the price movement of individual stocks, but my belief is that those who rely on TA and attribute to it quasi-scientific status are not acting scientifically, at all, but are using the language of science to satisfy a more visceral craving for certainty in the face of the anxieties and chaos of life.
Victor |
