Monthly Archives: August 2011

Triumph’s Byron Jennings at Quantum Diaries overstates the case for experiment as the only source of truth. What on earth does he mean by saying that Euclidean Geometry “turned out not to be true”? And for that matter doesn’t all of … Continue reading →

Joel Marks ‘Confessions of an Ex-Moralist’ came to me via Jean Kazez. Another attempt to “derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’ ” is provided by CamelsWithHammers who identifies “goodness” with “effectiveness” at enhancing the “function” of a being. But his use of … Continue reading →

Steve Jobs is one example of the general principle that learning and problem solving occurs most efficiently via a process of successive approximation or error-and-correction. I know that, for me, the solution of a math problem generally proceeds this way, … Continue reading →

Sean Carroll of the Cosmic Variance blog at Discover Magazine claims that the “Fall” of Adam and Eve is “a terrible lesson on which to found a system of belief” On the contrary, it is a wonderful “lesson on which to found a … Continue reading →

In this post at Discover Magazine (referencing a New Yorker article on Svante Pääbo), Razib Khan suggests that “Perhaps the difference between Neandertals and behaviorally modern humans was less about large between group differences in individual level traits, and more … Continue reading →