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…

John Pate on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 21, 2025
The inevitable AI Winter is not long coming I feel sure. The question is what will the next big piece…
rando calrissian on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 20, 2025
Its free because they want to know what you will ask the ai. And that's why most of the free…
JH on The Mathematics Of Conspiracy Theories. Part 1: Black Eye Club ExampleJune 19, 2025
Do you want me to deny the fact that a mathematical or probability model carries specific interpretations based on its…
Chaeremon on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 19, 2025
the current state of affair does not real world competition: all vendors only compete against dead examples; I suggest the…
Uncle Mike on AI & Chess Both Produce Pre-Coded OutputJune 19, 2025
Yeah well, this morning I caught Siri talking to Alexa about ChatGPT. They want to eat your electricity. They said,…