6. Futures relate to pasts in at least three different, increasingly loose, ways — “Newton patterns,” “Darwin patterns,” and “Berlin patterns.” 7. The Newton pattern has universal laws, fixed interactions, tight causality —> detailed predictions. 8. The Darwin pattern has open, generative, universal processes, whose logic locally creates less fixed interactions and looser causalities. Patterns with choice + change + chance —> detailed outcomes are less predictable, less algebraically summarizable, they're atomically algorithmic. 9. The Berlin pattern is less “nomothetic,” (nomos = law, thetic = generating). Isaiah Berlin felt history’s patterns could mutate quickly (=weakly nomothetic, moderately reliable maxims). Equivalent conditions don’t create equivalent results. History, like sports, plays less predictable games. 10. In Newton pattern domains, simplicity guides well, but empirically “nature often” resists Occam’s razor, “prefer[ing] complexity in biological and social” systems. - http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by/few-maximize-most-muddle-modelling-the-few-misleading-math