complexitystudies

metaphysics, philosophy, and a vision of the future

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Entries from September 2007

Christian extremists disrupt Hindu Senate invocation

September 30th, 2007 · No Comments

This is so scary. (This is in the U.S. Senate, not somewhere in a backwater countryside. These people decide over war and peace).
YouTube – Christian extremists disrupt Hindu Senate invocation

Technorati Tags: bias

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Tags: bias

New York Times – Criticial Evaluation of Health News

September 24th, 2007 · No Comments

On the last of 9 pages concerning Hormon Replacement Therapy and contradicting studies, there are some recommendations for critical thinking concerning results of health studies that made it into the media (or into mainstream science, for that matter )
New York Times
Here the relevant excerpt:
What to Believe?
So how should we respond the [...]

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Tags: critical thinking

Brain stem center of consciousness?

September 24th, 2007 · No Comments

I am deeply convinced that consciousness/awareness is not something limited to humans or primates but is a property of nearly all higher animals. There now seems to be serious backing for this opinion (locating consciousness in the evolutionary old brain stem):
Lowly brain stem may orchestrate the basics of consciousness
Of course, this raises the issue of [...]

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Tags: ethics · philosophy

Primate Behavior and Agent-based Modelling

September 24th, 2007 · No Comments

ABM models primate behaviour:
ScienceDaily: Primate Behavior Explained By Computer ‘Agents’

Technorati Tags: complexity

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Tags: complexity

Gowers’ Weblog

September 16th, 2007 · No Comments

Tim Gowers, a Field’s medalist, has now entered the blogosphere, cool! He has an interesting post on the advantage of teaching syntactically versus semantically. I don’t know if I quite agree, as I have received a largely syntactical education and had to strive for the semantics myself. I would have appreciated more semantics in my [...]

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Tags: mathematics

TA on the KARL JASPERS FORUM: Constructivism and Science

September 12th, 2007 · No Comments

Was some time ago, but related to my last constructivism rant:
KARL JASPERS FORUM

Technorati Tags: philosophy of science

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Tags: philosophy of science

A minimalist ontology

September 7th, 2007 · 2 Comments

Discussions on the constructivist mailing list are proving very fruitful – at least I am writing down thoughts I am mulling around. Here another excerpt:
Is a house real? Its constituent parts (cement, bricks)? Does one have to go further down? Is only a completely reductionist account real?
No – all constructions. I propose a minimalist ontology: [...]

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Tags: phd · philosophy of science

TouchGraph Google Browser

September 5th, 2007 · No Comments

Woah – this is nifty! Enter a site and it will graph the connections leading to/from it:
TouchGraph | Products: Google Browser

Technorati Tags: internet

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Tags: internet

Can I have a question

September 5th, 2007 · No Comments

I an computer game forum someone inadvertently posted a nice confutation of words (he was obviously pretty bad at english and misunderstood something gravely from the game dialogues).
As so often happens on net forums, another guy had a link to an even more confused post.
I thought I had to share this, because trying to [...]

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Tags: humor

Another constructivism rant

September 3rd, 2007 · 1 Comment

I am having an interesting discussion on the constructivism list; I would like to post an excerpt here on the blog, unfortunately the list archive is only available for members, so no link to the whole discussion
Here the excerpt (the parts proceeded by the ‘>’ or ‘>>’ are not from me, but arguments [...]

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Tags: philosophy of science