What does it mean to find generating processes?

From InterSciWiki

This goes back to the discussion of Goodenough and the errors of etic/emic thinking or any thinking that starts with a single ("privileged") generator.

Description, comparison, simulation, explanation, causality?

There are many kinds of generators, but a generator is some process that once started keeps generating new elements. The perfectly random generation of errors around a "true" or mean value, for example, generates the normal distribution. Here independent deviaions contribute additively to each observation. When the normal distribution is converted to cumulative form, you get the extpoential.

In the q-exponential, errors are multiplicative. The idea here is opportunity. You may have been luck to be located higher on a normal curve (B instead of C or A instead of B) but if others are LOOKING at your grades, you get a BOOST in evaluation. The effect of grades and boosts are multiplicative, i.e., the effect of grades takes on a power boost, grades-squared or grades^some power. You might call this the multiplicative advantage of good luck, and the multiplicative disadvantage of bad luck

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