Posted inCulture Philosophy
Ought Wrongs To Be Righted? Not Always
Following up on the Bad Arguments to the Death Penalty post, we have the question Ought Wrongs To Be Righted? No: not all of them. Here is the great late…
Posted inStatistics
Pascal’s Pensées, A Tour: V
Since our walk through Summa Contra Gentiles is going so well, why not let's do the same with Pascal's sketchbook on what we can now call Thinking Thursdays. We'll use…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Improper Language About Priors
Suppose you decided (almost surely by some ad hoc rule) that the uncertainty in some thing (call it y) is best quantified by a normal distribution with central parameter θ…
Posted inCulture Philosophy
Evolution & The Big Bang Are Perfectly Consistent With Christianity (And Catholicism)
We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogcast Summary Against Modern Thought to bring you breaking news: Evolution & The Big Bang Are Perfectly Consistent With Christianity. In what should have been…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Problem Of Grue Isn’t; Or, A Gruesome Non-Paradox About Induction
Skepticism about induction happens only among academic philosophers, and only in print. Tell an induction skeptic to take a long walk off a short dock or hint that his health…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
I Was Wrong About Axioms: Day One Teaching
I was wrong about how belief in axioms are held. I was not wrong about the beliefs themselves, which is to say, the axioms which we all know and love…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Nine Counter-Arguments To Frequentism
It is well to collect cogent proofs of frequentism's failings so that supporters of that theory can look upon them and find joy. Alan Hájek has done yeoman service in…
Posted inStatistics
Failed Counterexamples To The Principle Of Indifference
What is the so-called Principle Of Indifference? A semi-screwy, semi-right idea in probability. To cadge an example from David Stove, let T be any tautology (a truth), then Pr(Bob…