aea2167b   
   XPost: sci.math   
      
   In sci.math Joe Snodgrass  wrote:   
   [...]   
   > The Law of the Excluded Middle does not apply to human psychology.   
      
   In psychology, it's  called "double effect".   
      
   In many behaviorist theories it can be argued that X causes "more Y".   
   But, then, it can usually be also argued through another chain   
   that X causes "less Y".   
      
   Sometimes it's claimed this (therefore) is not a very informative   
   kind of formalism.   
      
   But it can be experiemnatlly verified that for many stimulus/respose   
   (if these can be disentangled given the human abilty to anticipate)   
   scenarios people either do a "lot of Y" or "little Y" with a big   
   gap in the middle. A so-called "bra curve".   
      
   > There can never be a mathematical model of human behavior.   
   > What are YOUR thoughts on this chain of reasoning?   
      
   Game theory is probably what you're looking for. Not much to do   
   with chess, but more (roughly) the mathematics of   
   (near-,semi,quasi-,etc)optimal behaviour given divergent goals.   
   And, surprisingly, is sometimes found to apply to people.   
      
   --   
   R Kym Horsell    
      
   If your ideas are any good you'll have to ram them down people's throats.   
     -- Howard Aiken   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)