Is that a satisfactory state of affairs? "Experts" also prescribed thalidomide for years before embarking on a decades-long scramble to unravel its teratogenic properties. "Experts" also initially prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19. While empiricism is an important part of medical sciences, medicine is not a purely empirical subject because pure empiricism is insufficient in the long run.
The software analog of settling merely for "it seems to work" would be if someone were to hand you a bare binary whose behavior must be inferred entirely through black box testing, without source code, architecture diagrams, or any other documentation. Sure, users can try running it in a pinch, which is the case for various medications, but it's surely possible to do better in the long run.
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Is that a satisfactory state of affairs? "Experts" also prescribed thalidomide for years before embarking on a decades-long scramble to unravel its teratogenic properties. "Experts" also initially prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19. While empiricism is an important part of medical sciences, medicine is not a purely empirical subject because pure empiricism is insufficient in the long run.
The software analog of settling merely for "it seems to work" would be if someone were to hand you a bare binary whose behavior must be inferred entirely through black box testing, without source code, architecture diagrams, or any other documentation. Sure, users can try running it in a pinch, which is the case for various medications, but it's surely possible to do better in the long run.