Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
All Of Statistics: Part II
(A) No new data (cont.) If we want to know how that data arose, and we are not satisfied by X itself, we need to propose a model---a fully causal…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
All Of Statistics: Part III
(B) New data It might surprise you, but in classical (both frequentist and Bayesian) practice, if we expect to see new X, the procedure is almost always no different than…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Scientific Truths Are Not Better Truths Than Just-Plain Truths
One of the key fallacies of scientism, in the sense of being the most destructive to common sense and personal wellbeing, is to suppose that any theory put forth in…
Posted inBook review Culture Philosophy Statistics
Reasoning To Belief: Feser’s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism — Part Last: Skulls Full Of Nothing
Don't Think Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part Interlude, Part IV, Part V, Part VI. Part Last. Buy the book ($12.92 as of last glance). There is a…
Posted inPhilosophy
Science is decided by committee
Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Michael Crichton and SETI
Michael Crichton, as you will have heard by now, is dead. Unfortunately. The Wall Street Journal today reprinted an excerpt of a speech Crichton gave called "Aliens Cause Global Warming."…
Posted inPhilosophy
Just what are falling temperatures evidence of?
If increasing temperatures are consistent with or are evidence of global warming, what theory is consistent with or evidence of falling temperatures? Global warming, too? We have to ask this…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
Theory confirmation and disconfirmation
Time for an incomplete mini-lesson on theory confirmation and disconfirmation. Suppose you have a theory, or model, about how some thing works. That thing might be global warming, stock market…
