Note: This is based off of a discussion I recently lead titled “Science vs. Bayes.” Portions of this were inspired by Overcoming Bias.
Some believe that science is facing a crisis. I don’t mean those who argue that we are approaching “the end of science.” I mean that some physicists are disturbed that those damn kids believe in kooky, untestable theories like String Theory, which isn’t science. Or that some people believe in the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics rather than the Copenhagen interpretation. To these scientists, the acid test is falsification: is there some way of making a prediction with the theory that can be demonstrated to be wrong? If it cannot be falsified, it is not a scientific theory.
Others argue in response that while falsification is definitely important to science, it is not the end all, be all of it. Other factors must be taken into account when considering what theory to adopt to explain a given phenomena. Sometimes these people are called Bayesians, named for their use of Bayesian Inference, which depends on using Bayes theorem to calculate the probability of a theory being true given a set of other probabilities.
I’d like to argue here that the supposed differences between Bayesians and Scientists are actually non-existent, and that the Bastian’s are simply making explicit certain actions scientists take in the course of doing science.
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Bayes, Musings, Philosophy, Science
Note: I originally wrote this article almost a month ago, before the incident involving the teenagers and the tiger at the San Francisco Zoo. After that incident, I decided to hold off posting this until the matter calmed down a bit. Now that reddit isn’t being spammed with constant updates on the incident, I feel its safe to throw my two cents into the conversation, though I will not address this particular incidentspecifically.
As explained in this article (Warning: graphic picture), a man was mauled to death by two tigers when he climbed over a protective barrier, and stuck his arm through the bars of the cage to take a close up picture with his cell phone. To paraphrase a comment from bash.org, they should put something in the cage to deter people from getting near it. Perhaps a fierce animal that would attack anyone that got too close?
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Musings, WTF
I’ve been thinking about a post like this for a while, but what finally pushed me over the edge is this: There Is A Reddit Bot War Going On Right Now. Here’s Proof. The link goes to a reddit comment about a bot war over Ron Paul happening on reddit. Apparently, some people have set up bots to up-vote anything with Ron Paul in the title. Others have retaliated by setting up bots that down vote on the same criteria. I’m sorry, but what the fuck?!?
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Musings
Time travel has been a trope of Science Fiction since its inception as a genre. Perhaps the most famous is H. G. Wells “The Time Machine,” which gives us brief glimpses of the future at several points. The idea is certainly seductive. Who wouldn’t want to be able to whiz off to the future to view the progress humanity has made, or travel to the past and witness historic events?
But whether or not time travel is possible is still an open debate among physicists. In this post I want to discuss some of the paradoxes that would seem to result if time travel is possible, as well as an interesting algorithm for solving NP problems using a time machine.
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Computer Science, Metaphysics, Musings, Philosophy
The paradox of the heap, also known as the Sorities Paradox (from the Greek word for heap), is a paradox revolving around the problem of vagueness.
In its classical formulation, the paradox is expressed as follows:
One grain of sand is not a heap.
If one grain of sand is not a heap, adding one grain of sand will not make it a heap.
So two grains of sand are not a heap.
So three grains of sand do not make a heap.
…
X grains of sand do not make a heap.
Therefore, 10,000 grains of sand do not make a heap.
The form of this argument boils down to:
X grains of sand are not a heap.
If X grains of sand are not a heap, adding 1 grain of sand will not make it a heap.
(Some arbitrary large number of grains of sand) do not make a heap.
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Computer Science, Evolution, Musings, Philosophy, Vagueness
You’ll have to forgive me, as the first part of this is reconstructed from memory, from a paper I read several months ago.
Lets do a little thought experiment.
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Mathematics, Musings
Cognitive Daily has an interesting discussion going on about whether or not an artificial intelligence requires a body. There are some interesting posts in the discussion, but as with most of these discussions, it quickly turned into a matter of “what does it mean to be intelligent?”
To drop my two cents in on the matter, I must say that the answer to the question is obviously yes; but we have to define “body.”
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Computer Science, Musings
Reading this XKCD comic brings to mind something I’ve thought about off and on for a while now. Doing a quick google search brings up nothing on the subject, so here is a small attempt to at least sketch out the domain of a question/answer.
I think that some people don’t accept the (what I believe to be) self evident proposition that reality must be consistent.
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Metaphysics, Musings