What, Why & How do we Know ?
We were living in Oslo when Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and turned out to wish him well at the balcony of The Grand Hotel along with the rest of the crowds on Stortingata. At that time he’d written a hopeful book and won and election and he was clearly one of … Continue reading “Suffer the Little Children”
I’ve been using parts of the verb “moderate” in ambiguous contexts recently, but deliberately because, whatever its etymology, its different uses are surely related at root. Everything in moderation is a kind of plea for moderation, a middle-way between extremes – a good example here on dietary “fads” from Julian Baggini. He concludes – in … Continue reading “Moderation”
Just a quickie, a hold-that-thought post (prompted by the US Glyphosate court verdict, but not specifically about that): Two things – herbicides and pesticides, and controlling vermin. Humans are an intelligent evolved species. We didn’t get where we are by allowing the environment to take over our lives – we legitimately manage our environment in … Continue reading “Poisoning the Environment”
A pet hate of mine is “rational” people who see the point of a rational argument as being to change someone’s mind, to convince someone of something. A bonkers idea at any time, not to mention a complete waste of time if you think the person you are trying to convince isn’t being rational anyway. … Continue reading “Changing Your Mind”
I said, when reading Aldous Huxley back in 2007, that I was having trouble seeing the wood for the trees – what specific points Huxley was making – even though it was already a given that some kind of perennial philosophy is what we are dealing with in real life. Since before then my approach is … Continue reading “Perennialism”
Picked-up the Guardian long-read on “The Cult of Mary Beard” last night. As a clearly sympathetic biographical piece I found the use of “cult” in the title a little odd. I presumed some irony, but never found that to be resolved, not even in the conclusion that her star having been in the ascendancy as … Continue reading “The Cult of Mary Beard”
After PostCapitalism (Paul Mason) [Take#2], numerous local discussions around the so-called Magic Money Tree and reasons to nevertheless control the money supply, and Javid falling into line this weekend on the idea of “supplying” money for public / affordable housing stock …. it’s all happening. We now have: Preliminary steps toward a universal economic dynamics … Continue reading “21st Century Economics – not before time?”
Had this Grauniad piece bookmarked for a couple of weeks: Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in. As usual the headline is misleading click-bait. Anyone could have predicted that ubiquitous speed-of-light comms was going to “accelerate” things in general – Kondratiev, Kuhn and many more already did. In fact my whole … Continue reading “Accelerationism – Careful what you wish for”
Just a bookmarking post. Hat-tip to @anitaleirfall for posting this link to Daniel Kahnemann’s “retraction” of underpowered statistical significance data in his Thinking Fast and Slow based on his earlier work with Amos Tversky. Noted previously that super-statistician Taleb had profound effect on Kahnemann. Kahnemann’s work is behind “Nudge“. (He and Tversky much referenced in Thaler … Continue reading “Nudge – (erroneous) internalisation of small (but significant) facts – Scary!”
Ergodicity is my new favourite word. Some things are ergodic, some are not, they’re non-ergodic. And rather than a definition (see also post-note below), it deserves a riff … A ubiquitous question is, does the end always justify the means or maybe no end ever justifies any & all means? You might achieve the same … Continue reading “Ergodic or non-Ergodic, that is the question.”