Philosophy – Page 61 – William M. Briggs

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!…

Philosophy Statistics

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.…

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 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…

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…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: Failed Arguments For The Eternity Of The World II

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. Format change…

Culture Philosophy Statistics

Why Is Economics Plagued By Math?

The answer is easy: because math is numbers and numbers are measurement and measurements are necessary to make a subject "scientific" in the modern sense of that word. Why should…

Neil Jordan on Class 94: Quantifying The UnquantifiableSeptember 17, 2026
At last, an opportunity to join you in the "Quagmire of Marginal Statistics." This and later quote are from memory…
McChuck on The MRS Degree — Guest Post by Johnathan EdwardsSeptember 17, 2026
"South Korea and Japan will no longer exist, perhaps in our lifetime, if they don’t start reproducing or bringing more…
McChuck on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 17, 2026
How many of the breast milk lab techs (doesn't that sound filthy out of context?) were wearing latex gloves, known…
JH on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
The alternative to preserved clay is, sooner rather than later, mouldy clay… Does this mean to create fear? There are…
Cary Cotterman on PFAS and Preservatives: Entrenching Chemophobia through Everyday Stuff — Guest Post by Jaap HanekampSeptember 16, 2026
Growing up in the late 1950s, I played with modeling clay almost every day. Who knows, back then it was…