tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56256722024-03-18T15:55:32.489+00:00Ruminaçœs Digitais<i>Morrerás em breve. É incontestável. E quanta verdade morrerá contigo sem saberes que a sabias. Só por não teres tido a sorte de num simples encontro ou encontrão ta fazerem vir ao de cima</i> - Vergílio FerreiraJoão Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.comBlogger1084125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-38887864377684278792024-03-18T15:55:00.001+00:002024-03-18T15:55:00.140+00:00Then we are doing science.<p style="text-align: justify;">The truth lies directly before us in the reality surrounding us. However, we cannot use it as it is. An unbroken description of reality would be simultaneously the truest and most useless thing in the world, and it would certainly not be science. If we want to make reality and therefore truth useful to science, we must do violence to reality. We must introduce the distinction, which does not exist in nature, between <i>essential </i>and <i>inessential</i>. In nature, everything is equally essential. By seeking out the relationships that seem essential to us, we order the material in a surveyable way at the same time. Then we are doing science.</p><div>— Jakob von Uexküll</div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-31194410259567842482024-03-12T14:07:00.001+00:002024-03-12T14:07:00.141+00:00In the end<p>In the end,<br />we will remember<br />not the words of our enemies,<br />but the silence of our friends.<br /></p><p>-- Martin Luther King, Jr.<br /></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-19473329792173928932024-03-09T14:00:00.002+00:002024-03-09T14:00:00.142+00:00no moral guarantees<div style="text-align: justify;"></div><p style="text-align: justify;">The correct decision, given a trolley problem, is to switch the track, then wonder for the rest of your life whether you made the right decision. Anyone who could confidently switch the track and then never think about it again is a sociopath, as is anyone who fails to switch the track and believes his decision entirely exculpates him. Trolleys and certain deaths don't reflect moral decisions in the real world. Not only do you not know precisely the consequences of your actions ahead of time, you certainly don't know the consequences of the counterfactual. [...] The universe offers no moral guarantees. We make decisions, and live with them, and never know the results of the decisions we didn't make. This is the best we're offered. -- <b>Andreas Schou</b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-65665492628539230332024-03-04T15:13:00.005+00:002024-03-04T15:13:00.254+00:00Applied Stoicism<p style="text-align: justify;">Stallone turned down the huge sum of money [for another actor to be Rocky] because he had "establish[ed] business relations with poverty," as the Stoic philosopher Seneca put it. "The trick is,” Tom Rothman (CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group) says, “to be fiscally responsible so you can be creatively reckless."<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">"If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid… Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.” Bill Cunningham </p><p>-- Billy Oppenheimer<span style="font-size: x-small;"> [<a href="https://twitter.com/bpoppenheimer/status/1726350602685276195">link</a>]</span><br /></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-2766527538946643452024-02-29T15:10:00.001+00:002024-02-29T15:10:00.157+00:00Ecology, not Economy<p>The earth has, in principle, unlimited resources. They are just limited in the rate of sustainable extraction. And, of course, extraction costs put a limit on useful access to mineral resources -- <b>Charles St Pierre</b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-17415264139546799202024-02-26T08:30:00.001+00:002024-02-26T08:30:00.143+00:00Fascism<p>Fascism is a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place. -- <i>The School for Dictators</i>, <b>Ignazio Silone</b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-54940021023161871822024-02-22T15:06:00.002+00:002024-03-07T15:58:34.032+00:00School<p>School is mostly about indoctrination into the national identity. It is also about child care, and for older children, about keeping them out of the labour force. If we were honest we could talk about education policy with this in mind, though no one does (okay, there are <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=5DXbFO_EvpAC&amp;pg=PA276&amp;lpg=PA276&amp;dq=school+as+indoctrination+paul+frijters&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=pHh2_o81Dd&amp;sig=E9tGVC709eY1VDNraTXaIQIjX7c&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CDkQ6AEwBGoVChMI7IDt4IngyAIVJ9qmCh2F0wHn#v=onepage&amp;q=school%20as%20indoctrination%20paul%20frijters&amp;f=false" rev="en_rl_none">some</a> exceptions) -- <b>Cameron K. Murray</b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-73304967497236050582024-02-18T15:04:00.003+00:002024-02-18T15:04:00.325+00:00Assertions<p>People have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy -- <i>Echopraxia</i>,<i> </i><b>Peter Watts </b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-82320701269571993842024-02-13T08:15:00.001+00:002024-02-13T08:15:00.124+00:00Internalities<p style="text-align: justify;">«Externalities» is a funny econ word that unintentionally identifies the root of the problem, imagining that there's an outside, external world upon which society acts, rather than being embedded in, a component of, even an expression of, the Earth's biogeochemical systems -- Peter Brennan<br /></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-60283930308035889472024-02-08T10:30:00.002+00:002024-02-08T10:30:00.172+00:00Words matter<p style="text-align: justify;">There has been a lot of discussion using words like «war», «terrorism», «war crimes», «human shields» [...] The problem I wish to highlight is that words matter and, when discussing those topics, the vocabulary many of us have has been bent, twisted, and manipulated by various forces for their own benefit. <br /><br />I’d like you to stop using fungible terms like «war crime», «ethnic cleansing», «collateral damage», etc., and stick strictly to the vocabulary used in International Humanitarian Law (IHL). There’s a simple reason for that: the vocabulary of IHL is extremely clear and deliberately freed of nuance and gray areas. <br /></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: justify;"><b><i>When does international humanitarian law apply?</i></b> <br /><i>International humanitarian law applies only to armed conflict; it does not cover internal tensions or disturbances such as isolated acts of violence. The law applies only once a conflict has begun, and then equally to all sides regardless of who started the fighting.</i><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This wording is extremely carefully made. There is no reference to <i>aggressor</i> or <i>invader</i> or any of the terms that might indicate who started it. Because <i>who started it</i> is invariably a topic of discussion when someone is trying to minimize their side’s crimes against humanity, i.e.: those noncombatants wouldn't have gotten hurt if we hadn't had to do this awful thing.<br /><br />When I speak and write about these issues, I try hard, in my words, to stick to simple concepts. There are no «terrorists», or «freedom fighters» and I barely acknowledge the existence of states – there are just combatants and noncombatants and their actions are either legal or they are crimes against humanity. [...] Noncombatants' actions are always legal, because they are not engaging in violence. Combatants' actions are extremely problematic, especially when combatants begin killing noncombatants as a matter of operations – then we're down to arguing whether the death was necessary or justified and that is extremely problematic. -- <i><a href="https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2023/10/11/its-just-words/">It's Just Words</a></i> <b>Marcus Ranum</b><br /></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-59809747681091292782024-02-01T07:30:00.002+00:002024-03-07T15:59:02.334+00:00a deal with humanity<p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">You do not get to target civilians because somebody else has targeted civilians. It’s nonreciprocal because your obligations are to the civilians. It’s not a deal between fighters. It’s a deal with humanity. -- <b>Sari Bashi</b></span></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-61806644701410323262024-01-29T22:44:00.002+00:002024-01-29T22:44:00.136+00:00Why the universe wasn't full of mysteries, but now it is<p style="text-align: justify;"> Psychologists have a name for this tendency to think we understand things better than we do: the «<i>illusion of explanatory depth</i>». [...] Think of it this way: for most of human history, we didn't know why things fall down. People trip, cups spill, buildings topple, and nobody had any good explanations for this, or at least not any true ones. If you didn't have an illusion of explanatory depth, you'd spend your days dumbfounded: “Why do things fall?? Why do you return to earth when you jump?? What's up with clouds—they don't seem to fall at all!!<br /><br />You can't live your life if you're always getting stuck on mysteries like this. You'd get so mesmerized by the inexplicability of your porridge falling into your bowl and bubbles rising in your water that you'd forget to eat or drink and you'd die. That's why we need the illusion of explanatory depth: most things have to feel like they make sense, even if they don't, so that we can get on with the business of living.<br /><br />And indeed, people born before the discovery of gravity understood this whole falling business exactly as well as they needed in order to survive. They knew that they'd fall and die if they walked off a cliff, that the things they throw in the air will fall down on people's heads, and that houses tip over if they aren't built properly. Maybe they thought they understood it better than they actually did, but for their purposes, they understood it perfectly well. [...] Okay, so an illusion of explanatory depth is extremely important to staying alive. It does, unfortunately, have a downside: it fools you into thinking the universe isn't full of mysteries.<br /><br />This, I think, explains the curious course of our scientific discovery. You might think that we discover things in order from most intuitive to least intuitive. No, thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, it often goes the opposite way: we discover the least obvious things first, because those are things that we realize we don't understand. That would fit with our incredible ancient progress in mathematics, because math is not obvious. <i>-- <a href="https://www.experimental-history.com/p/on-the-importance-of-staring-directly">On the importance of staring directly into the sun</a></i> <b>Adam Mastroianni</b><br /></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-25766048819304232112024-01-25T08:35:00.003+00:002024-03-07T16:30:28.985+00:00Stilts everywhere<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. This is impossible. -- <i>Science and Hypothesis</i>, <b>Henri Poincaré</b> </div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-151171037514013842024-01-17T08:00:00.001+00:002024-01-17T08:00:00.129+00:00Coping<p></p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe. -- <b>Robert A. Heinlein</b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-35438427875081894832024-01-09T16:00:00.002+00:002024-03-07T15:59:19.423+00:00Where the buck stops<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Nothing can be soundly understood<br /></div><div>If daylight itself needs proof.</div><div><br /></div><div>-- <b>Imām al-Ḥaddād</b> (trans. Moṣṭafā al-Badawī), "The Sublime Treasures: Answers to Sufi Questions"</div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-3942041796234419342024-01-05T08:34:00.001+00:002024-01-05T08:34:00.142+00:00Unmixing the unmixable<p></p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">What is more important in determining an (individual) organism's phenotype, its genes or its environment? Any developmental biologist knows that this is a meaningless question. Every aspect of an organism's phenotype is the joint product of its genes and its environment. To ask which is more important is like asking, Which is more important in determining the area of a rectangle, the length or the width? Which is more important in causing a car to run, the engine or the gasoline? Genes <i>allow</i> the environment to influence the development of phenotypes. -- <b>Tooby </b>and <b>Cosmides</b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-57633124177221368162024-01-03T09:30:00.004+00:002024-03-07T16:31:05.036+00:00Analogy Rot<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">It is the most common way of trying to cope with novelty: by means of metaphors and analogies we try to link the new to the old, the novel to the familiar. Under sufficiently slow and gradual change, it works reasonably well; in the case of a sharp discontinuity, however, the method breaks down: though we may glorify it with the name 'common sense', our past experience is no longer relevant, the analogies become too shallow, and the metaphors become more misleading than illuminating. <b>-- E. W. Dijkstra</b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-43820359859747841782023-12-28T15:50:00.001+00:002023-12-28T15:50:00.135+00:00Out of the Boxes<p></p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">Just as there are odors that dogs can smell and we cannot, as well as sounds that dogs can hear and we cannot, so too there are wavelengths of light we cannot see and flavors we cannot taste. Why then, given our brains wired the way they are, does the remark, "Perhaps there are thoughts we cannot think," surprise you? <b>--</b> <b>Richard Hamming</b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-73991878331331570132023-12-21T09:23:00.004+00:002024-03-07T16:31:24.251+00:00Uniforms<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">In many ways nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth. Anyone can believe in the truth. To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army. <b>--</b> <b>Mencius Moldbug</b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-52632893135964348112023-12-14T09:21:00.002+00:002024-03-07T16:31:35.595+00:00Science vs. Scientists<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">Let me differentiate between scientific method and the neurology of the individual scientist. Scientific method has always depended on feedback [or flip-flopping as the Tsarists call it]; I therefore consider it the highest form of group intelligence thus far evolved on this backward planet. The individual scientist seems a different animal entirely. The ones I've met seem as passionate, and hence as egotistic and prejudiced, as painters, ballerinas or even, God save the mark, novelists. My hope lies in the feedback system itself, not in any alleged saintliness of the individuals in the system. <b>--</b> <b>Robert Anton Wilson</b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-87069598246333709692023-12-10T18:43:00.029+00:002023-12-10T18:43:00.137+00:00Mapping<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">No map represents all of its intended territory [...] Every map is at least a map of the map-maker (his assumptions, world-view...)</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 15px;">**</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #010101;">A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. If the map could be ideally correct, it would include, in a reduced scale, the map of the map; the map of the map of the map; and so on, endlessly, a fact first noticed by [Josiah] Royce. If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is </span><i><span style="color: #010101;">not</span></i><span style="color: #010101;"> the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyze languages by linguistic means.</span></span></p><div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []"><div style="text-align: center;">**</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #010101;">If words </span><i><span style="color: #010101;">are not</span></i><span style="color: #010101;"> things, or maps </span><i><span style="color: #010101;">are not</span></i><span style="color: #010101;"> the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in </span><i><span style="color: #010101;">structure, and structure alone</span></i><span style="color: #010101;">. The only usefulness of a map or a language depends on the </span><i><span style="color: #010101;">similarity of structure</span></i><span style="color: #010101;"> between the empirical world and the map-languages. If the structure is not similar, then the traveler or speaker is led astray, which, in serious human life-problems, must become always eminently harmful. If the structures </span><i><span style="color: #010101;">are similar</span></i><span style="color: #010101;">, then the empirical world becomes 'rational' to a potentially rational being, which means no more than that verbal, or map-predicted characteristics, which follow up the linguistic or map-structure, are applicable to the empirical world.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;">** </div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #010101;">[...] a language, any language, has at its bottom certain metaphysics, which ascribe, consciously or unconsciously, some sort of structure to this world. Our old mythologies ascribed an anthropomorphic structure to the world, and, of course, under such a delusion, the primitives built up a language to picture such a world and gave it a subject-predicate form.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #010101;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #010101;">-- <i>Science and Sanity</i>, <b>Alfred Korzybski</b> <br /></span></span></div><span style="font-size: 15px;"><span style="color: #010101;"></span></span></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-86631585070737769842023-12-06T09:18:00.003+00:002023-12-06T09:18:00.149+00:00Intelligence and Wisdom<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;">I want here to make a long aside on intelligence. I have met far too many people, particularly among the colleged elite (note: if you have a college degree, you are a kind of elite; most people do not have one), who treat intelligence as a moral virtue or – God help us – the only moral virtue. This is extraordinarily foolish and I use that word (as you will see) carefully. Intelligence, as a trait, is a mix of inborn factors and perhaps early upbringing – again, I don’t want to descend into the swamps here; the key thing is that by the time we are mature enough to understand it, it isn’t susceptible to much change. Consequently, intelligence isn’t a virtue (in the moral sense) at all but simply an attribute about a person, like an attractive face, red hair, height and so on. Being intelligent does not make one a better person; it is merely the luck of birth. It carries all of the moral virtue of being good at basketball or League of Legends; less, really, since one has to show discipline and practice in those things (though for the already intelligent, there is a strong element of intellectual training necessary to really harness that inborn trait, much like natural talent at sports or e-sports). If you had the luck to be born smart, you ought – in my view – to feel obliged to give back just as if you had had the luck to have been born rich or beautiful.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Here I think it is crucial to separate intelligence from wisdom; the moral virtue lies in the latter. Intelligence is one’s ability to think through complex problems; it is an inherent ability with no moral value (but it does, of course, have use-value). Wisdom concerns one’s judgement and consequent code of conduct. I have seen too many students berate themselves – often quite cruelly – as being ‘stupid,’ because they have made some mistake (in situations, by the by, where I can be almost perfectly certain that said students, by virtue of being in my classroom, were in the top 25%, probably the top 15%, of the intelligence distribution). And on the one hand, I cringe because the self-criticism I hear from them is one that elevates intelligence to a moral virtue (they are a ‘bad person’ for being ‘stupid’) and at the same time an in-born, immutable trait that they cannot change. They are declaring (they think) not only that they have no worth (which is not true) but also the impossibility of worth. But of course they haven’t been stupid, but rather they have been foolish. The difference is that wisdom and foolishness is about choices and judgement; we can make the choice to be wiser in the future. A single foolish decision doesn’t make a fool. We have not yet found a way to make a stupid person intelligent, but we have refined many paths for the foolish person to reach to wisdom; indeed, all children are fools and must become wise as they mature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It may be the case that it is easier for intelligent people to be wise, because they can more rapidly puzzle out life’s problems and find helpful solutions; I am unconvinced, having known a great many terribly smart, terribly foolish people (I mean, I went to graduate school in history – none of us there could have had very much sense) who in their foolishness thought they were smart enough to live without wisdom. It is certainly the case that there are great stores of wisdom, quite clearly labeled as such, available to anyone without the ability or inclination to puzzle out the basic principles of wisdom on their own. To be honest, I would advise the intelligent to use those stores as well; attempting to think one’s way to wisdom is a path full of peril, hubris and error. I have met many people who achieved a real measure of wisdom through these stores and who were often quite a bit wiser than some of the super-smart people I have known (and, as an aside, being an academic plays absolute havoc with your ability to assess normal intelligence when your entire peer-group is very smart; I suggest avoiding ever descending entirely into an academic bubble – maintain non-academic friends!).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Intelligence is an important, but quite frankly, overrated thing in our society; in almost any relationship, we ought to prefer the wise person to the intelligent one. <a href="https://acoup.blog/2020/08/28/fireside-friday-august-28-2020/">link</a> <b>Bret Devereaux</b> </div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-8265822080849623022023-11-30T09:08:00.001+00:002023-11-30T09:08:00.139+00:00Language Corrections<p style="text-align: justify;">Essentially PC [Politic Correctness] is a correction from language that developed in an oppressive context and achieved mainstream usage, Doublespeak must <b>be</b> corrected in order to understand what is really being said. Both concepts can be said to use euphemism as their mechanism, but there's an important distinction. PC uses value neutral terms to replace inherently and unfairly derogatory ones. Doublespeak uses ironic terms to hide their motives and cynically cast them as the opposite. If I speak of sex workers rather than "whores" it is not because I am trying to hide any truth about them. It is that the "acceptable" term holds no deeper truth and only insult. If I speak of "creative bookkeeping" rather than theft, I am trying to hide or minimize guilt. <b>@absurdistwords</b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-4195700523512018852023-11-23T09:04:00.001+00:002023-11-23T09:04:00.151+00:00The Razor<div data-en-clipboard="true" data-pm-slice="1 1 []" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">Generations of writers opined vaguely that </span>'<span style="color: #010101;">simple hypotheses are more plausible</span>'<span style="color: #010101;"> without giving any logical reason for it. We suggest that this should be turned around: we should say rather that </span>'<span style="color: #010101;">more plausible hypotheses tend to be simpler</span>'<span style="color: #010101;">. An hypothesis that we consider simpler is one that has fewer equally plausible alternatives. (p.606)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">Actual scientific practice does not really obey Ockham</span></span>'<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">s razor, either in its previous </span></span>'<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">simplicity</span></span>'<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;"> form or in our revised </span></span>'<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">plausibility</span></span>'<span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;"> form. As so many of us have deplored, the attractive new hypothesis or model, which accounts for the facts in such a neat, plausible way that you want to believe it at once, is usually pooh-poohed by the official Establishment in favor of some drab, complicated, uninteresting one; or, if necessary, in favor of no alternative at all. The progress of science is carried forward mostly by the few fundamental dissenting innovators, such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Darwin, Mendel, Pasteur, Boltzmann, Einstein, Wegener, Jeffreys – all of whom had to undergo this initial rejection and attack. In the cases of Galileo, Laplace, and Darwin, these attacks continued for more than a century after their deaths. This is not because their new hypotheses were faulty – quite the contrary – but because this is part of the sociology of science (and, indeed, of all scholarship). In any field, the Establishment is seldom in pursuit of the truth, because it is composed of those who sincerely believe that they are already in possession of it. Progress is delayed also by another aspect of this. Scholars who failed to heed the teachings of William of Ockham about issues amenable to reason and issues amenable only to faith, were – and still are – doomed to a lifetime of generating nonsense. (p.613) </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;"><i>Probability Theory, The Logic of Science</i>, </span></span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">E.T.Jaynes</span></span></b></div>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5625672.post-48331144292105905262023-11-16T09:02:00.001+00:002023-11-16T09:02:00.134+00:00Reifying Ghosts<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">Belief in the existence of </span>'<span style="color: #010101;">stochastic processes</span>'<span style="color: #010101;"> in the real world; i.e. that the property of being </span>'<span style="color: #010101;">stochastic</span>'<span style="color: #010101;"> rather than </span>'<span style="color: #010101;">deterministic</span>'<span style="color: #010101;"> is a real physical property of a process, that exists independently of human information, is another example of the mind projection fallacy: attributing one</span>'<span style="color: #010101;">s own ignorance to Nature instead. The current literature of probability theory is full of claims to the effect that a </span>'<span style="color: #010101;">Gaussian random process</span>'<span style="color: #010101;"> is fully determined by its first and second moments. If it were made clear that this is only the defining property for an abstract mathematical model, there could be no objection to this; but it is always presented in verbiage that implies that one is describing an objectively true property of a real physical process. To one who believes such a thing literally, there could be no motivation to investigate the causes more deeply than noting the first and second moments, and so the real processes at work might never be discovered. (p.506) </span></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;"><i>Probability Theory, The Logic of Science</i>, </span></span><b><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="color: #010101;">E.T.Jaynes</span></span></b></p>João Netohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05560718055133816500noreply@blogger.com0