The Unreasonable Political Effectiveness of Mathematical Modelling

Ever since Thomas Malthus used simple mathematics to model the evolution of food production vs the increasing human population of planet Earth and declared that we would very soon eat ourselves out of house and home, politicians have been falling hook, line and sinker for mathematical models.  This paper examines how and why the mathematical modelling of complex systems has proved unreasonably effective in convincing mathematically illiterate politicians to take practical measures that have turned out to be disastrous. It then suggests that mathematical modelling of the human brain is not a good strategy to pursue.