complexitystudies

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 [...]

[Read more →]

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?
First of all [...]

[Read more →]

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:
but on any truly [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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 at [...]

[Read more →]

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 obviously [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]

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 only meaningless [...]

[Read more →]

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

[Read more →]