This tweet turned up in a search for the #wcsj2015 hashtag -- a conference of science journalists going on in South Korea where a Nobel biologist has made such a sexist ass of himself that the Royal Society decided to publicly distance itself ( https://royalsociety.org/news/2015/06/tim-hunt-comments/) from him -- but the subtitle of the book featured in the tweet bears on this discussion:
https://twitter.com/AskAstroAlex/status/608419170821246976 -- rec -- On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Grant Holland <grant.holland...@gmail.com> wrote: > Glen, > > I like it. Very well put. > > Grant > > On 6/9/15 9:56 AM, glen wrote: > >> Statistics is one tool. I'm not sure it's the most powerful tool, >> though. I tend to think the best tool is ... well, it goes by many names. >> One name is "active listening" ... "empathy" ... etc. The technique is >> well known to all of us (well unless we're autistic or psychopathic). When >> you hear someone say something that just sounds wrong, there are 2 basic >> steps: >> >> 1) find out why you think they're wrong (including the statistics that >> surround any of the facts involved), and >> 2) try to figure out what the speaker _really_ means by whatever nonsense >> they're spouting. >> >> Since I don't believe our thoughts are very accurate at all, I have no >> problems empathizing with someone who spouts (apparent) nonsense. I do it >> myself on a regular basis. I try not to. But it's difficult. In fact, >> the reason I find purposeful nonsense (including climate denial or >> chemtrails, but more like chatbots) so cool is because of the accidental >> nonsense in which we bathe. >> >> >> >> On 06/09/2015 08:36 AM, Grant Holland wrote: >> >>> Righto. So what we do is put a measure on "how much confidence" we have. >>> Statistics gives us some tools for that - namely the "moment functionals" >>> (mean, variance, skewness, etc.); and information theory gives us some more >>> general tools for that - entropy and the other entropic funtionals. So >>> maybe it's a mixture of the relative and the absolute. Maybe we've moved up >>> to the "junior" level? >>> >>> Grant >>> >>> On 6/9/15 9:14 AM, Nick Thompson wrote: >>> >>>> Correct. Nothing is certain. We've known that since Kant. NOW what? >>>> That >>>> there are no certain facts does not imply that some facts are not more >>>> enduring and useful than others. We need to get beyond the sophomoric >>>> revelation that "everything is relative." >>>> >>> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
