William M. Briggs

The simple reason to distrust numerology is that there are so many numbers that there are bound to be meaningless coincidences between them and the world.

Reminder: The Thursday Class is only for those interested in studying uncertainty.

The highly hotly hoped for (well, by me) second edition of the award-eligible sure-to-be some-seller Everything You Believe Is Wrong is nearing completion.

You may have heard of the depressing contretemps at Cornell of late (written in the lady’s (a hotelie) own words here, but I cannot recommended reading it).

The simple answer to today’s titular question is no, Bayesianism cannot quantify true belief.

Here, in one place, a compilation of anti-hysteria AI articles, well designed to soothes souls, provide calm, and gain insight, all by proving computer models will never come alive, never gain consciousness or sentience, will never become self-aware, do n…

I received this very thoughtful criticism on a Class video at YouTube, which I take to be most kind, and found it important enough to answer here.

Academic philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have written a peer-reviewed paper in which they say that killing newborns is A-OK, and even in some cases to be encouraged.

Isaac Asimov in The Naked Sun, one of his many robot-mystery books, wrote that the minds of his positronic-brained robots (unlike our forever-dumb switch-brained computers) were “Logical but not reasonable.”

Reminder: The Thursday Class is only for those interested in studying uncertainty.

Before us today is an excellent example of the Appeal To Non-Authority Fallacy, as described below and, more fully, in the upcoming second edition of Everything You Believe Is Wrong.

Before us today may be the most pristine example of female privilege since the Lindsay Clancy trial.

Reminder: The Thursday Class is only for those interested in studying uncertainty.

This originally appeared at Jaap’s blog, and is presented lightly edited here.

My friend Johnathan has responded to the debate on fertility with a perspective I think is shared by many, and which deserves discussion.

Here is a report on a brief speech made by U.N.

“Yes, I use P-values.

I was on with Jon Harris discussing, among other things, the so-called fertility crisis.

A trio of academics, responsible for the paper “Temperature and Maltreatment of Young Children“, did not mention Lindsay Clancy by name, but you will forgive my lapse into clickbait titling when you realize they had women like her in mind.

Since we’re careening into the last full weekend of a summer that was too brief, and has already exited my far north sanctuary—the maples are already colored—, and since Class will begin again next week, I thought we should revisit this hilarious Research,

The most race-obsessed people, paradoxically, are those who claim race does not exist.

All know that women, and the men who mate with them, are having fewer babies.

Little Nate Confas, whom I have teased before (here, here, here) for his trusting in Great Brains to save us, has been suspended by those Great Brains from Ghent University for his sin against Equality, consisting in exposing conman Jason Arday’s plagiari…

Here is the opening sentence of the peer-reviewed paper “Historical slavery predicts contemporary disparities in mortality between Black and White Americans“: “Black–White mortality disparities remain a persistent form of inequality in the United States.”

I was on with Fr.

Here is a graph of the yearly number of total papers that have the keyword “climate change” in them: I got these from scholar.google.com, searching for the term “climate change” (using the quotation marks), and then searching year by year.

Reminder: no Class until after Labor Day.

Podcast with Ian Pilon.

Brit coppers—do they still call them the Old Bill?

Reminder: No Class until after Labor Day.