I suggest there are 4 stages in the life-cycle of a didact:
— spindizzy
(1) The belief that one’s intellectual opponents can be won over by rationality.
(2) The belief that one’s intellectual opponents can be won over by rationality and emotional reassurance.
(3) The belief that one’s intellectual opponents can be won over without rationality.
(4) The belief that one’s intellectual opponents do not need to be won over.
I am not suggesting that any stage is superior to any other.
I have lead many a discussion with constructivists – who deny that such a concept as “truth” exists. I understand and respect their motivation – a distrust of proclaimed truth, which is the hallmark of ideology. I always say that truth in science is something different: while ideologists posit the truth (they already “have” it) [...]
Making sense of data requires visualization methods – here is an ingenious overview: A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods Technorati Tags: complexity, statistics
Watch this video, it is truly stunning: although I do feel very sorry for the Stormtroopers (being a devout Imperial ). GameDrift – Technology and Gaming Combined – Previews – Star Wars: Force Unleashed – AI Tech Demo Star Wars: Force Unleashed – AI Tech Demo Technorati Tags: artificial intelligence, entertainment
Here some more links devoted to rational thinking, which I found on the site mentioned in the previous post and which are simply excellent: Chance Welcome Page Fallacy Files Argument Mapping Tutorials Technorati Tags: bias, cognitive science, rationality, statistics
One of the most important skills today is critical thinking. We live in an information overflow society – the problem is not information access, but information filtering, and yes, even drawing conclusions contrary to the information being presented (because it is false/dumbed down/rests on false assumptions etc etc). I recently read a good paper by [...]
A new book has come out which casts into serious doubt some of the models which have influenced policy-makers so far. This further convinces me that it is time to lay a serious philosophy of science foundation for modelling; especially the semantics of models, which have not yet received due attention (interpretation is more of [...]
Buckminster Fuller seems to have been a very remarkable person, so I would like to introduce him here on my blog. I like his word creations (text from Wikipedia, retrieved 18 Feb 2007): Use of language and neologisms Buckminster Fuller spoke and wrote in a unique style and thought it crucial to describe the world [...]
Much has been written on ethics in philosophy and elsewhere, but in fact it all boils down to this in the end: “How can morality be defined?” This is one of the ageless questions, asked by man. It is a question that has been answered from almost the moment it was asked. The problem is [...]
This is a very nice paper, especially well suited for a first introduction: Heylighen F. (2001): “The Science of Self-organization and Adaptivity”, in: L. D. Kiel, (ed.) Knowledge Management, Organizational Intelligence and Learning, and Complexity, in: The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems ((EOLSS), (Eolss Publishers, Oxford) @INCOLLECTION {Heylighen2001, title = {The science of self-organization and [...]
I’m starting a new category: paper of the week. Here, I want to introduce papers important to complexity science and my research, together with related weblinks. Please note that paper of the week means neither at minimum nor at maximum a paper a week, it’s just more of a moniker with a hint to the [...]
