Stick with me on this not-so-easy subject, because I’m going to reveal a trick used to make you “Follow the Science!” Belief is an act. Uncertainty is a state. Decision is a […]
The Frequency Interpretation Of Probability Is False: Some Reasons Contra von Mises
What is the chance that “Donald Trump wins the 2024 Presidential election”? Impossible to say, says Richard von Mises, because the event is singular and must be embedded in an infinite collection […]
Our Base Metaphors & Analogies Used In Science Have Outlived Their Usefulness: Part I
Metaphors and analogies exhaust themselves. No matter how useful they are as guides to thought, pushed too far they can loosen our grip on Reality or lead to stagnation, and they can […]
Classical Statistics Has Outlived Its Usefulness: Here’s The Fix
A PDF of this article may be downloaded here. This article is a precis of Uncertainty. Opening Act Patient walks into the doctor and says, “Doc, I saw that new ad. The […]
There Is No Problem Of Old Evidence In Bayesian Probability
Rationalists, like those at Less Wrong (think Eliezer Yudkowsky and Scott Alexander), are prone to fetishsize Bayes theorem, seeing it as the key to all thought. It isn’t. Bayes is a helpful […]
David Stove Exposes Karl Popper’s Wee P!
We have discussed before (and in detail here) how Fisher, inventor of the wee P of which scientists boast (“Look how small my P is!” shouted the excited scientist), was deeply influenced […]
Bertrand’s Paradox — Solved!
Anon sent a question about Bertrand’s Paradox. The paradox is supposed to show something has gone wrong with our thinking in probability. And it has, but not in the way its proponents […]
Why Dembski’s Design Inference (Of Causation) Goes Wrong
Probability does not exist; therefore, nothing has a probability, so nothing can be caused by probability, though the uncertainty of statements can be had conditional on assumptions, and this probability changes when […]
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