Beware of shorthand

The world is an intractable, complicated place. Part of the human condition is to simplify, narratise, overlay an organising metaphor that makes sense of the chaos.

So we are drawn to signs that stand for more complicated underlying realities. The laws of physics are such a sinplification. They don't lie, so much as operate as a simple heuristic. We rely on Newto's work to save us the bother of going through that inductive discovery everyday.

Hence our heuristics become our metaphors, and our metaphors coalesce to form an invisible superstructure, on which we hang the imaginative drapes of reality.

We do this in all walks of life. We rate, we grade, we categorise, we risk manage by reference to a simplified narrative structure. But we must understand the complicated workings, and assumptions, and tolerances, of our models.

But be aware of these heuristics. They may fail.