Briggs

Diversity Is Not Always Desirable: Part II

Diversity Is Not Always Desirable Parts I, II, III, IV Suppose we are not interested in "the best" or the "is qualified" premises and merely seek to stock our organization…

Culture Philosophy

Diversity Is Not Always Desirable: Part I

I will continue to be away from the computer until (I think) this Thursday. So here is a corrected and amplified classic series, which originally ran in December 2010. Diversity…

Culture Philosophy

Squirrel Arrested For Stealing Nuts: Nonhuman Rights Entail Nonhuman Responsibilities

Wesley Smith writes at the Weekly Standard: [T]he annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science hosted a panel supporting the Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans, which…

Fun Statistics

Are The Masters Winners Getting Younger And Better? Predictions Update

Update As of this writing, the 2012 Masters is halfway through, so it's a good time to re-examine the predictions made last April for this year's tournament. Scores have been…

Philosophy

Good Friday: Rally For Reason With St Anselm’s Ontological Argument

It's Good Friday, an excellent time to prove---I use this word in its logical sense---that many people come to religion through rational argument. We earlier this week examined the so-called…

Culture Statistics

Do Conservatives Distrust Science More Than Liberals?

Science versus Scientism That, anyway, is the latest question making the rounds in the science wars. The simplistic answer, the one de rigueur on campuses and newsrooms, is "Yes." Why,…

Culture Fun Philosophy

The Reason Rally Fizzles

An army; well, a brigade; or anyway at least a couple of battalions of Brights milled around the mall in Washington DC on March 24---various estimates gave "highs are around…

Philosophy Statistics

The Humble Tautology And Probability

Start with the premises P1 = "All men are mortal" and P2 = "Socrates is a man" and from them we want to know the status of the conclusion C…

John Pate on University of California Prof Tries To Save System From DIEingJuly 15, 2026
I don't believe China to be hampered by such nonsense or, for that matter, much of S.E.A. in general.
Rudolph Harrier on My Horrible Interaction With AIJuly 15, 2026
I don't find LLMs to be particular bad at D&D in comparison to other things. For example, I queried an…
JohnK on Hume’s Guillotine, Euclid’s Catapult: Induction, Axioms, and Objective EthicsJuly 15, 2026
Does one detect the sea-captain's lurking circularity in this "we" who "need air, gravity, food..." etc.? And don't "we" also…
hudbwu on Hume’s Guillotine, Euclid’s Catapult: Induction, Axioms, and Objective EthicsJuly 15, 2026
Hume: "People saying things doesn't translate into rules for living." Stultes: "OMG I can do whatever I want!" If only…
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…