Sengachi

"Not if they change their minds when confronted with the evidence."

"Would you do that?"

"Yeah."

This is where I think the chain of logic makes a misstep. It is assumed that you will be able to distinguish evidence which should change your mind from evidence that is not sufficient to change your mind. But doing so is not trivial. Especially in complicated fields, simply being able to understand new evidence enough to update on it is a task that can require significant education.

I would not encourage a layperson to have an opinio... (read more)

Hmm. I don't think it's not useful to practice looking at the truth even when it hurts. For instance with the paperwork situation, it could be that not fixing the paperwork even if you recognize errors in it is something you would see as a moral failing in yourself, something you would be averse to recognizing even if you allowed yourself to not go through the arduous task of fixing those mistakes. Because sometimes the terminal result of a self-evaluation is reducing one's opinion of oneself, being able to see painful truths is a necessary tool to make th... (read more)

Just so you all know, Clifford Algebra derivations of quantized field theory show why the Born Probabilities are a squared proportion. I'm not sure there's an intuitively satisfying explanation I can give you for why this is that uses words and not math, but here's my best try.

In mathematical systems with maximal algebraic complexity for their given dimensionality, the multiplication of an object by its dual provides an invariant of the system, a quantity which cannot be altered. (And all physical field theories (except gravity, at this time) can be deriv... (read more)

I saw the path Frozen's plot took as well done.

I liked the fact that Anna's relationship with Hans didn't work out. Disney went out of its way to poke holes in the traditional 'love at first sight' meme, something I think is a huge improvement on how Disney portrays most relationships. Furthermore, they showed Anna and Kristoff's relationship to grow on a solid foundation over time, and to be mutually pursued, as opposed to being a one-sided chase. Whereas Anna wanted her relationship with Hans to miraculously change her life, her relationship with Kristof... (read more)

The Intelligence website links no longer function.

There was a time when I was very rude to religious people because I thought that made me wise. Then there was a time when I was very polite because I thought equity in consideration was wise.

Now I'm just curt because I have science to do and no time to deal with fools.

This ought to be embedded deeply in the minds of everyone involved in education. Most regrettably, it is not.

That last part is the most important.

We can't answer every question.

No, but I think we can answer any question.

There are cases in which you can relate dimensionless units. For instance, moles is a dimensionless unit, it just means times 6.022*10^23. But you can relate moles to moles in some cases, for instance with electrolysis. If you know how many electrons are being pumped into a reaction and you want to know how much Fe(II) becomes Fe, then you can compare moles of electrons to moles of Iron, even though neither moles, elements, or electrons can be related directly to one another in the conventional sense of m/s. In the same way one can relate dollars of one th... (read more)

And now I feel stupid. Thank you very much. (No sarcasm)

So far as I can tell, the only insurmountable disadvantage is that you can't use a Thorium reactor to make nuclear bombs. Wait, did I say disadvantage? I meant advantage. Or, well ... are you a politician or an average person? That'll make the difference between advantage and disadvantage.

But I don't think it likely that the quote would make others more likely to guess who made such a wish correctly.

That's the thing, the science wasn't good or bad, it was the to decision to give the results to certain people that held that quality of good/bad. And it was very, very bad. But the process of looking at the world, wondering how it works, then figuring out how it works, and then making it work the way you desire, that process carries with it no intrinsic moral qualities.

A useful belief is an accurate one. It is, however, easy to believe a belief is useful without testing its veracity. Therefore it is optimal to test for accuracy in beliefs, as opposed to querying one's belief in its usefulness.

Then try to make it politically profitable to help sustain those changes you make. Make it so painfully obvious that the only reason to remove those changes would be for one's unethical gain that no politician would ever do so. The problem then though, is that people end up just not caring enough.

Here is what I think is a better example of the Gettier problem, and a subsequent reason the Gettier problem is flawed in its definitions of truths.

You are driving down the highway, passing what appear to be several dozen barns. Unknown to you, all but one of these barns is a stage prop cutout. You decide to stop at one of these barns and by luck it is the only real one. You now have a belief (which is that the barns you see are real), which is justified, and in this case, true. But it cannot be called knowledge. Why? Because the belief is imprecise and le... (read more)

And as the tired old joke goes: bullet-proof glass.

Fertility and intelligence may be correlated, but that does not state much about intelligence and birth rate. Just because two -things are correlated, does not imply causation, and even if they are, their may be non-listed effects which cause results opposite those that would be anticipated with only two factors taken into consideration.