Posted inCulture Philosophy
You Too Can Be A Genius After 10,000 Hours
No, you cannot. That title is a lie, and, judging by a recent spate of books on the subject, a popular one. Ann Hulbert of Slate has compiled a list…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Are Men Smarter Than Women?
The Question No. That is to say, Yes. But not really. Actually, what we have here is an badly phrased question: just what do we mean when we ask "Are…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Confidence Intervals, Logic, Induction
Induction "Because all the many flames observed before have been hot is a good reason to believe this flame will be hot" is an example of an inductive argument, and…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Truth of Things: When Probability & Statistics Cannot Be Used
I am always struggling with (my limited ability of) finding ways to describe the philosophy behind logical probability, especially to people who have a difficult time unlearning classical frequentist theory.…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Is Experimental Economics Irrational?
Everybody knows there's no such thing as money. So how come everybody acts like it's real? In particular, why do economists and other similar creatures find the lack of "rationality"…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Randomness is a Matter of Information
How many pads of paper do I have on my desk right now? How many books are on my shelves this minute? You don't know the answer to any of…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Peer Review and Proof
Suppose that I today, below, in this post, prove to you a certain mathematics theorem, say, "The Symmetry of Individual Constants." Is that theorem true? Before you answer, consider that…
Posted inPhilosophy
What Do Philosophers Believe? Survey: Part II
Read Part I. Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? 43% went with externalism, about 26% with internalism. It is impossible to write about this without sounding goofy or repetitive. Briefly, internalism…