As for the Naval Gunner, the point is that he would be right in other fields than fundamental physics. In weather forecasting long term forecasts using coarser models are actually more accurate than those using fine meshes, because of the chaotic behaviour at smaller scales.

I don't quite agree here. It's true that chaotic interactions and floating point multiplication errors mean that long-running fine-grained maps are less accurate than long-running coarse-grained maps, but it seems cleaner to consider that a fact about computer science, not meteorology.

Thanks for pointing to the more recent EY post, which I look forward to reading. No time tonight.

I would actually recommend Hands vs. Fingers first if you haven't read it yet. It's shorter and may be more directly relevant to your interests.