February 2014 – William M. Briggs

Why You Should Care About The Philosophy Of Probability & Statistics

"Why, Dr Briggs," asks the earnest Student, "Why must we study all this gobbledegook about philosophy when it's more important to learn all the neat methods of handling data? Why…

Culture

Briggs And The Owl: A Refutation Of Atheism

Note this is not your usual author."The owl of Minerva spreads its wings and takes flight when the shades of night are falling." --Hegel Or, as explained by Wikipedia, "[P]hilosophy…

Book review Philosophy

Which God Are You Rejecting? David Bentley Hart’s The Experience of God, Part I

The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart. A good joke A joke which many atheists think clever goes like this: (speaking to a theist) "You reject…

Statistics

Update On The On-line Probability & Statistics Course. Comments Wanted

It's been a while, but I think I've finally figured out how to make an on-line class work. Details about this will be forthcoming, but for now I wanted to…

Culture Statistics

Prosecute Global Warming Heretics. Update 2: Kill, Nuremberg Them, Too!

Prosecute the heretics! is the new cry from the high priests of global warming. Climate "deniers", they say, are no better than mobsters, good fellas who are extorting the climate,…

Philosophy Statistics

The Mysticism Of Randomness: Philosophy of Probability & Statistics Video Series

Nothing can be caused by "chance". Chance, like randomness, isn't a thing, it isn't real, it isn't physical, therefore it cannot cause anything. Randomness means "unknown." Therefore "random variables" are…

Culture

From Latin & Greek To Remedial English

From Twitter's @LeMarquand came this picture: An overstatement, sure. Not every high school went in for amo, amas, amat or saw students parsing snatches of The Odyssey in the original.…

Culture Philosophy

The “Right” To This, That, And The Other Thing

A good friend of mine, an inveterate lefty who tortures himself by reading Think Progress and other horror sites designed to confirm the worst fears of their readers, posted this…

JohnK on Lewontin’s Other Fallacy: Race & IntelligenceSeptember 2, 2026
I liked the "zinc" metaphor very much. I really appreciate the pains you took on this piece, Matt, which are…
shawn marshall on Lewontin’s Other Fallacy: Race & IntelligenceSeptember 1, 2026
Let me say something stupid cuz I'm not vey bright - to me it is an indication of the Existence…
Carlos Julio Casanova Guerra on Lewontin’s Other Fallacy: Race & IntelligenceSeptember 1, 2026
I was hoping you wrote about race, because I wanted to hand you a quote, since long ago, but I…
McChuck on Lewontin’s Other Fallacy: Race & IntelligenceSeptember 1, 2026
DIE, put this way, sounds an awful lot like Lysenkoism.
John Pate on Lewontin’s Other Fallacy: Race & IntelligenceSeptember 1, 2026
As I'm fond of pointing out, a 100% of the reason you're a man and not a monkey is genetics.…