William M. Briggs

A Brief Explanation Of Occam’s Razor

We're interested in whether some proposition Y is true. One explanation, perhaps causal or deterministic, or even only probabilistic, is X. Thus, Pr(Y | X) is high or equals 1.…

Culture

Stream: California Tried To Make Global Warming Skepticism Illegal

Today's post is at The Stream: California To Make Global Warming Skepticism Illegal. "All right, Briggsy. We know you're in there! Throw out your notes on improved cloud parameterizations in…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: Arguments Against The World Being Eternal

See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. All posts are under the category SAMT. Previous post. We had…

Culture

Rampant Harassment by Atheists Expected At Reason Rally 2016

The Angry Atheists are meeting today, this time in DC, and evidently they're expecting an uppity crowd, because their Code of Conduct for Reason Rally warns of a host of…

Culture Philosophy

Animals Aren’t Men, Even If Government Says So

I once saw, with mine own eyes, a squirrel steal an acorn from a second squirrel. This shouldn't be surprising; squirrels are career criminals and everybody knows it. Think of…

Philosophy Statistics

The Bayesian Metaphor Can Do More Harm Than Good: Update

Quoting from a post on vampires, "In Bayesian inference, you start with some initial beliefs (called 'Bayesian priors' or just 'priors'), and then you 'update' them as you receive new…

Podcast

Multiverses, Infinities, Probability & The Deadly Sin of Reification — WMBriggs Podcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZffCuj9ZHA Download MP3 June is Probability Month here at WMBriggs.com, mostly because I'll be teaching (I'll be in Ithaca the 12th to 24th) and want to keep from being distracted…

Philosophy

Stream: Pretend to Believe In Free Will Or Else You Will Make Bad Choices

Today's post is at The Stream: Pretend to Believe In Free Will Or Else You Will Make Bad Choices. I want to be nice about this, but believing that we…

shawn marshall on Belgian Judge Wants To Arrest Little Nate Cofnast Because Cofnast Says Smart People Are Smarter Than Dumb PeopleMarch 23, 2026
Jordan Petersen has quoted IQ racial differences for years - based upon tests that remove the advantages of social milieu
spetzer86 on Belgian Judge Wants To Arrest Little Nate Cofnast Because Cofnast Says Smart People Are Smarter Than Dumb PeopleMarch 23, 2026
Jordan Peterson's discussion regarding intelligence and how people with IQ's below 100 are struggling with today's jobs and how this…
Tars Tarkas on Belgian Judge Wants To Arrest Little Nate Cofnast Because Cofnast Says Smart People Are Smarter Than Dumb PeopleMarch 23, 2026
IMHO, intelligence does not define moral worth. This seems to be the sticking point for people like the learned judge.…
Sid Porter on Belgian Judge Wants To Arrest Little Nate Cofnast Because Cofnast Says Smart People Are Smarter Than Dumb PeopleMarch 23, 2026
Tread carefully here Sarge. Buried deep in Belgian law it is probably illegal to criticize judges. I hear the waffles…
Brian (bulaoren) on Belgian Judge Wants To Arrest Little Nate Cofnast Because Cofnast Says Smart People Are Smarter Than Dumb PeopleMarch 23, 2026
The crime, of which Mr. Cofnast stands accused, is called "Noticing"; Steve Sailor wrote a book about it.

William M. Briggs

It’s The End Of The World Again

Belgian Judge Wants To Arrest Little Nate Cofnast Because Cofnast Says Smart People Are Smarter Than Dumb People

Class 83: Why Were Paul Ehrlich’s Predictions So Good (and so Bad)?

The Great Effeminization of the Academy

The Only Metric That Matters: Or, Pinker’s Folly

Lancet Discovers Public Health Is Politics

Class 82: Be More Uncertain (About Models)

On Not Reading

The Great Smoothing: Another Reason Not To Fear (or trust) AI

A Synchronicity Or Coincidence? What Is Behind Curious Events?

Class 81: The Second Biggest Error In Time Series

The Paper Test Shows Why AGI Is Not Possible: And Why The Brain Is Different In Kind

Researcher Imagines Weather With No Human Influence: Concludes Climate Change Hurts Incomes

Faith Deposited: Why Godless Science Fails

Class 80: Granger Causality; Per Se & Accidental Time Series; Stationarity

Scientists Seeking To Escape Criticism Run To The Warmth & Comfort Of Bluesky

The Loss of Ephemera — Guest Post by The Blonde Bombshell

Class 79: Time Series Example

The Importance Of Not Making Decisions

Don’t Take The ‘Long-Covid’ Alzheimer’s Study Seriously

AI Is Driving Many Crazy: Our Latest Panic