When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
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
