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+7 +1
The Limits of Logic
Logicians don't rule the world or get the most done. Could it be that a consistent world view is neither desirable nor achievable? If we abandon the straightjacket of rationality might this lead to a more powerful and exciting future, or is it a heresy that leads to madness?
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+24 +1
The magical thinking of guys who love logic
Ian Danskin, who makes videos under the moniker Innuendo Studios, has made a name for himself on the internet for his YouTube series on the techniques and beliefs of the alt-right. His most recent video, “The Card Says Moops,” is worth watching in full, but there was one particular line in it that struck me. Danskin points out that, even when their beliefs skew towards the bizarre and conspiratorial, people on the online right often identify as “rationalists.”
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+47 +1
You Can Make An Argument For Anything
Why it’s so easy to spew convincing-sounding B.S.
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+13 +1
The Fallacy of the ‘I Turned Out Fine’ Argument
You didn’t use seatbelts when you were growing up and you lived to tell about it? That doesn’t make it a good parenting strategy.
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+2 +1
The Limits of Logic
Logicians don't rule the world or get the most done. Could it be that a consistent world view is neither desirable nor achievable? If we abandon the straightjacket of rationality might this lead to a more powerful and exciting future, or is it a heresy that leads to madness?
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+21 +1
The rise and fall and rise of logic
The history of logic should be of interest to anyone with aspirations to thinking that is correct, or at least reasonable. This story illustrates different approaches to intellectual enquiry and human cognition more generally. Reflecting on the history of logic forces us to reflect on what it means to be a reasonable cognitive agent, to think properly. Is it to engage in discussions with others? Is it to think for ourselves? Is it to perform calculations?
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+18 +1
Solving the Raven-Paradox and Improving the Way we do Science
Evidence can only ever be gained through experiments and analyses that are most likely to produce results that falsify or cast doubt on the hypothesis being tested. By Rajiv Prabhakar.
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+17 +1
The One Drop Fallacy
Last month, in the process of exploring the awkward fact that most people in today’s industrial world have never learned how to think, I talked at some length about thoughtstoppers: those crisp little words or phrases that combine absurdity and powerful emotions to short-circuit the thinking process... By John Michael Greer.
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+17 +1
The Tyranny of Simple Explanations
The history of science has been distorted by a longstanding conviction that correct theories about nature are always the most elegant ones. By Philip Ball. (Aug. 11, 2016)
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+32 +1
The rise and fall and rise of logic
Is logical thinking a way to discover or to debate? The answers from philosophy and mathematics define human knowledge. By Catarina Dutilh Novaes.
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+17 +1
Three examples of transcendent knowledge
Even though I have been talking about transcendent knowledge in most of my blog posts, the characteristics of that category of knowledge, even its qualification of knowledge, have not been properly discussed up to now. I’ll take three examples of transcendent knowledge and try to better define it through their presentation.
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+8 +1
The Unexpected Dangers of Recreational Counting
Deciphering mathematical card tricks is a wonderful pastime, but it can get you into some bizarre predicaments. By Jesse Dunietz.
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+2 +1
Limits of Logic: The Gödel Legacy
Douglas Hofstadter
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+32 +1
Western logic has held contradictions as false for centuries. Is that wrong?
Since Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Western philosophers and logicians have with few exceptions viewed contradictions as unacceptable, simply incapable of being true. But certain logical paradoxes demonstrate that some contradictions aren’t so easily dismissed as merely false, an idea that some Eastern philosophical traditions have grappled with more successfully. In this instalment of Aeon In Sight, the US-based British philosopher Graham Priest explains how the Liar Paradox – unresolved since antiquity – upends the traditional Western view that all contradictions must be false.
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+27 +1
A programming language for living cells
MIT biological engineers have created a programming language that allows them to rapidly design complex, DNA-encoded circuits that give new functions to living cells.
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+17 +1
Physicists demonstrate a quantum Fredkin gate
Researchers from Griffith University and the University of Queensland have overcome one of the key challenges to quantum computing by simplifying a complex quantum logic operation. They demonstrated this by experimentally realising a challenging circuit—the quantum Fredkin gate—for the first time.
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+7 +1
Of Liars and Truth-Tellers
I wanted to talk for a minute about Smullyan’s logic puzzles in order to illustrate a point about religious arguments.
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+50 +3
In our opinion: If elected officials were sincere about wanting to help the poor, they would ban lotteries
Whoever might win the Powerball lottery this week, assuming someone draws the right set of numbers, will claim about $1.5 billion before taxes. That’s the equivalent of a year’s worth of work at gross wages of $720,000 per hour. It’s enough, should the winner choose to invest in real estate, to afford to buy all of the residential property in the town of Heber City and have enough left over to buy each and every resident of that city a new car worth $30,000.
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+14 +1
Bayes’s Theorem: What’s the Big Deal?
Bayes’s theorem, touted as a powerful method for generating knowledge, can also be used to promote superstition and pseudoscience. By John Horgan.
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+41 +1
How Much Power Do You Need To Destroy A Planet?
Being a lifelong Star Wars fan this is a question that's pertinent, Star Wars doesn't care about physics but one of the few places we can invoke real science is in figuring out just how much power it takes to obliterate planets.
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