
“If a new system is implemented, humans can be very resourceful when finding new ways to make mistakes. It can be very dangerous when humans get complacent and think they know better than the maths.“
[Humble PI: A Comedy of Maths Errors, Matt Parker]
If someone has accumulated knowledge based on a lot of experiences in a particular subject, we call her/him an expert. When a paradigm is shifted or a new knowledge system comes, we often follow existing experts’ opinions without a doubt. I don’t underestimate the important role of existing experts to show a vivid and clear vision for the new age, stemming from appropriate heuristics. However, sometimes their knowledge and experiences are obsolete. For example, the experts about the Ptolemaic system lost their power in the age of the Copernican system. When a new system of knowledge is coming, what can we do? Should we stick to old ways of doing things?
Our model based on previous experiences is suitable for predicting similar tasks but vulnerable to predict rare events. The model (or knowledge) based on mathematics, however, is still robust to an extreme case or a rapid change. Moreover, our knowledge from experiences seems to be fragmentary and unconnected for understanding a big complex system while mathematics can describe it more effectively and clearly. Hence, when you do something totally new, please think one more time before act on instinct or previous experience. Human keeps on making the same mistakes over and over again. Also, previous experience may not predict something new effectively. Instead, find evidence (or facts), do mathematical thinking (or making mathematical model) with them, and take the simplest way to understand without logic fallacy. I cannot say such mathematical thinking is the best (or the only) way to be right. Rather, mathematical thinking is the way not to be wrong.