RE:A GREAT REVIEW OF BHN-1 compliments of a great mind..not mine...escerpts and exclusions...indirect connection to this play
True your points about certainty are well taken - and perhaps as a successful (?) person of some standing yourself it is OK to be very skeptical and to make the very germane observation that until something is demonstrated as absolutely and verifiably true - that it could still be wishful thinking. There are many people who wish all things in life were simply a binery outcome or some Platonic dualism. However for anyone with any genuine scientific understanding of life, the universe and everything contained within (or without?) it - all things are provisional and the only way of properly understanding the outcomes is to affix a statistical probability to any outcome. Of course this is the only way a-priori stance that can reasonable be taken and it is always a matter of judgement as to the quality and relative importance that can be attached to all the diverse information streams available for scrutiny - and it is an impossibility for anyone to be a master of everything. After any event has actually physically taken place (in the rear view mirror) it can be parsed or crystallised out as the unique outcome of what seems to have been a binery event. Either it worked or it didn't. The stock will go up or it will plummet ..She let you come back to her room and fed you breakfast or she told you go forth and multiply (but with someone else obviously) and take the horse you rode in on with you as you go...
In the real World as we all peer ahead using our favourite crystal balls there is never a certainty (and only a fool thinks the future is already written!) only a worryingly problematic and remotely scrutable stochastic uncertainty - an uncertainty that can be minimised with varying degrees of robustness such that the outcome predicted has the preponderance of evidence stacked in its favour and only the most minimal stochastic probability against... Yes the rear view mirror (favoured of cynics rather than the true skeptics)is always perfectly clear - and some folks make others lives as miserable as possible by devoutly cleaning that mirror and searching for whatever remaining imperfections that they can see...
Let me just state that I have met a lot of the "characters" that frequent these BBs and I hope that has allowed me to develop a far greater understanding than I would otherwise have of who is who behind a lot of the "anonymous" cyberhandles. . I have a tremendous amount of respect for his abilities as an extremely knowledgeable geologist and an all around good guy. His only fault (if it can even be called that?) is that he gets extremely passionate about geology and the hunt for oil and gas - but whenever he does so he usually has the scientific and business smarts to be able to put together one of the most robust and plausible defense of that enthusiasm with a whole barrage of links, papers and evidentiary details. So in a way if any might want to criticise him without extremely good cause shows a little bit of lack of true class. Of course you do not know him and it is easy to be abrasive with anonymous cyber persons...
Unfortunately for the office geologist he is wedded to his models - models that he has slaved over for often many years and to which his ego and reputation are staked. I have the luxury of being the "hired gun," I am not wedded to any preconceived belief system with regard to how Mother Nature's local architecture is arranged - I simply see the evidence unfold, I weed out all the interpretations that are incorrect, or which are self evidently in direct contradiction of the "facts," and I leave as viable probabilities (weighted of course by how well each one is supported by a consilient preponderance of the evidence) any of the models or explanations that are most robust interpretation of what the drill bit has just uncovered. And on a horizontal well where all the millions that are spent are all for getting the proper placement of that horizontal in just 1-4 days of actual drilling - I geo-steer Captain Kirk like as I see fit - or as over ruled by whatever Caesar is in the real seat of power at the time. (You would be amazed by how many wells are quite preventable drilled in all the wrong places simply because of some geofantasist's ego trumping their ability to step back and see the big picture clearly. They prefer to throw out or ignore the facts and keep the (wrong) model rather than sacrificing the model at the alter of erroneous beliefs and simply honouring the facts. It is what it is my friend...