I hear and I forget
— Kǒng Fūzǐ (Confucius)
I see and I remember
I do and I understand
Since its inception, the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics has been used to justify mysterianism, subjectivism, postmodernism, relativism, the preferred status of consciousness and human beings in the universe, a realm of intuition outside of logic and science, and other intellectual errors too many to number. It seems that people who reject reason and science [...]
Bee over at Backreaction had a post last week on Max Tegmark: Discover Interview with Tegmark, and I would like to respond to some things said there and in a previous post by Bee on the topic. (The Tegmark paper on “The Mathematical Universe” can be found on arxiv.org.) Does the theory warrant further scrutiny? [...]
I will duplicate some of my longer comments on OB here on my blog, as I’m not sure if all my readers are reading OB on a regular basis, and tracking comments there is difficult anyway. The post concerned (it’s not long): Overcoming Bias: Tyler Vid on Disagreement The sentence I disagree with is this: [...]
A nice debunking article also delving a little bit into philosophy of science issues; but primarily a nice heuristic for evaluating “extraordinary” claims: Telekinesis and Quantum Field Theory | Cosmic Variance Technorati Tags: philosophy of science, physics
This incident shows how “naive” philosophers put forth arguments for undermining this fragile project of science (=trying to make humans listen to reason). (I refer to the Pope’s quotation of Feyerabend, not that he is not allowed to speak at the university). Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog: Pope Quotes Feyerabend, and Gets in Big Trouble [...]
One of the most interesting topics in the philosophy of mathematics is the Axiom of Choice. Here is a nice page with a little intro to the topic and also lots of links for further reading. For the philosophical relevancy, this quote is a nice demonstration: Jerry Bona once said, The Axiom of Choice is [...]
That’s the attitude – it’s time scientists speak up: Evolution is a scientific fact, and every organization whose research depends on it should explain why. Spread the word : Article : Nature Technorati Tags: evolution, philosophy, philosophy of science
In this dire age, we all need some sparks of optimism – get them from these scientists: Life lessons | Science | The Guardian Technorati Tags: philosophy of science
I guess this is the same idea I presented a couple of days ago in this post (which incidentally was also inspired by an Overcoming Bias blogpost): Overcoming Bias: The Simple Math of Everything I called it a concept hierarchy of science; and mathematics is nothing else than concepts in relation. (the uninterpreted equations are [...]
I knew the turtle anecdote quoted in the post below, but never thought about applying it to knowledge – good move! Open Society: Justificationists All the Way Down Technorati Tags: philosophy of science
