June 2014 – William M. Briggs

Do You Believe In Global Warming Because Of The Seriousness Of The Charges?

An activist tells you, "Based on my theory of rampant, out-of-control global warming, otters, driven mad by the heat, will take to the streets and destroy mankind, just like apes…

Philosophy SAMT

Summary Against Modern Thought: Potency, Actuality, & Movement

See the first post in this series for an explanation and guide of our tour of Summa Contra Gentiles. Previous post. Last time we only proved one premise, that some…

Statistics

Class Report: How Not To Teach Statistics

It's over. Two solid weeks of 9 to 5 to 9 and beyond statistics. Plus a few cocktails and cookouts and camaraderie. I'm exhausted. The students are mostly later early…

Culture Philosophy

From Paganism To Christianity To Deism To Malleism

Pagans---the word is not an insult---believed that God was immanent. If you've seen Star Wars, you have it. "The Force" was God, and The Force was everything. To quote that…

Culture Statistics

Casual Sex Is Good for You, Says New Biased Study

In a ridiculously biased "study", a researcher has shown that some college students who self-select to participate in a study of "causal" sex and who say they like having "casual"…

Philosophy Statistics

Probabilities Aren’t Decisions

The title says it all. But its presence implies, and it is true, that people often mistake the two. If you decide to bet fifty bucks the USA beats Germany,…

Philosophy Statistics

The Biggest Error In Regression

I know, I know: we're sick to death of regression, but we have to cover the biggest error, which is how the Deadly Sin of Reification happens. You have a…

Philosophy Statistics

Free Will The Result Of ‘Background Noise’?

Once again the lack of metaphysical training has led some scientists to say an incredibly silly thing. That free will "could be the result of 'background noise' in the brain."…

Johnno on Funding Increases To Foster Even More Cheating In ScienceAugust 14, 2025
Briggs you fool... what you so outdatingly call cheating, I prefer to see as a more progressive healthy open relationship…
hudbwu on Lying Increases Trust In Science, Says AcademicAugust 14, 2025
To be fair, the center of this article (that I looked at from the link provided) is a reduction-to-absurd argument…
hudbwu on Funding Increases To Foster Even More Cheating In ScienceAugust 14, 2025
I love how the scale in the last graph is *LoGaRithMic_!
hudbwu on Compulsory Moral Bioenhancement Should Be Covert Says Academic Who Says Ticks Should Be Genetically Modified To Stop You Eating MeatAugust 14, 2025
Do you remember the time when craving loonies posted these things not in peer-reviewed journals, but on Internet fora? Man,…
NLR on Funding Increases To Foster Even More Cheating In ScienceAugust 13, 2025
From the link at the end of the post: On the one hand, we have the fabricated research of an…