Briggs

Are We Special? New Thoughts about the Anthropic Principle — Guest Post by Bob Kurland

Editor's note This post first appeared at Kurland's home site. My criticisms follow. "Scientists are slowly waking up to an inconvenient truth - the universe looks suspiciously like a fix.…

Fun

Teaching: No Post, No Podcast, But One Book

Tried to do it, but ran out of time. Not only is there the teaching, and the radio shows, and the eating, and the talking too much, but there is…

Philosophy Statistics

The I-Have-Big-Muscles Fallacy

Harvard graduate walks down the street where a 50-lb sack of cement blocks his way. He reaches down to shift it but discovers that despite all his might the bulk…

Culture

Orlando Shooting — Open Thread

Today is the first day of class; I originally had another post scheduled, but since I thought readers would like to discuss recent events, and I haven't had time to…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: Chance Is Not A Cause

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. Be careful!…

Culture

Melody May Be A Learned Response?

Received this email from reader Don Siegel: Greetings. Vis a vis how music is getting worse---I'm a prof at Syr. Univ (Earth Sciences) but also lately, a solo jazz guitarist…

Statistics

Fermi’s Paradox & Gaian Bottlenecks

Democracy (the system) is enough to account for the seeming alien life-form which is Hillary and for whatever that thing is on Trump's head. But as queer as Democracy is…

Podcast

Trust Me. I’m A Scientist — WMBriggs Podcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dzAsvJpC10 Download MP3. You'll have to listen in. This is the busiest time of year for me, so I haven't the time to write out a transcript of the show.…

hudbwu on My Horrible Interaction With AIJuly 14, 2026
@Rudolph Harrier: it's weird that you mention D&D in relation to LLMs. In my experience, nothing shows the utter impotence…
hudbwu on My Horrible Interaction With AIJuly 14, 2026
A moment of silence for people who still test "AI" tools, so we who don't use them could know what…
hudbwu on University of California Prof Tries To Save System From DIEingJuly 14, 2026
And then people wonder why USA gets it's butt kicked in war.
Cloudbuster on University of California Prof Tries To Save System From DIEingJuly 14, 2026
Cary Cotterman: "Her ambition, hilariously, was to become a civil rights lawyer." Pretty good odds she succeeded and is busily…
Myster Mars on Why British & EU Rulers Are Juicing War With RussiaJuly 14, 2026
In Mike Pompeo's defense, we need only look at Russia’s relentless crackdown on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Lenin first…