MetaFilter posts tagged with logic and Science

Need ammo?

Neilopolis — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:55:38 -0800

How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic: "...a handy one-stop shop for all the material you should need to rebut the more common anti-global warming science arguments constantly echoed across the internet."

I am a strange loop.

loquacious — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:30:41 -0800

Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid has been recorded as a series of video lectures for MIT's Open Courseware project.

(Un)blinding them with science!

Mr. Anthropomorphism — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:24:24 -0800

In a breathless, passionate, yet level-headed 15 part series, YouTube user, paleontologist, ex-Christian, and potential Space Coyote impersonator AronRa presents an uncommonly well-written and presented argument against what he identifies as the 14 "Fundamental Falsehoods of Creationism." All your favorites are addressed: 1. "Evolution = Atheism" (transcript) 2. "Scriptures are the 'Word of God'" (transcript) 3. "Human Interpretation = Absolute Truth" (transcript) 4. "Belief = knowledge" (transcript) 5. “Evolution = the religion of atheism” (transcript) 6. “Evolution must explain the origin of life, the universe, and everything.” (transcript) 7. “Evolution is random.”(transcript) 8. “Mutations are rare, harmful decreases in genetic information.” (transcript) 9. “No transitional species have ever been found.” (transcript) 10. “The evolutionary ‘tree of life’ is nowhere implied either in the fossil record, nor in any aspect of biology.” (transcript) 11. “Macroevolution has never been observed.” (transcript) 12. “Creation science” (transcript) 13. “Evolution is a fraud!” (transcript) 14. “Creation is evident” Part I (transcript) 15. “Creation is evident” Part II (transcript)

Parmenides

homunculus — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:36:03 -0800

Parmenides. "The pre-Socratic philosopher sparked an intellectual revolution that still echoes today. Yet for philosophy and science to continue to progress in the 21st century, we may need to embark on an entirely new cognitive journey ."

Dissecting Humor

Falconetti — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:54:35 -0800

Nothing is funnier than an academic or scientist explaining humor .

Nature of Mathematical Truth

Gyan — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 10:24:24 -0800

Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth : A Talk with Verena Huber-Dyson

You can't prove this title wasn't an attempt to illustrate Godel

Gyan — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:59:04 -0800

Godel's theorems have been used to extrapolate a great many "truths" about the world. Torkel Franzen sets the record straight in his new book Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse. Read the introduction (PDF). If you want, check out his explanation of the theorems.

The Complexity of a Controversial Concept

kliuless — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 18:03:37 -0800

The Logic of Diversity "A new book, The Wisdom of Crowds [..:] by The New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki, has recently popularized the idea that groups can, in some ways, be smarter than their members, which is superficially similar to Page's results. While Surowiecki gives many examples of what one might call collective cognition, where groups out-perform isolated individuals, he really has only one explanation for this phenomenon, based on one of his examples: jelly beans [...] averaging together many independent, unbiased guesses gives a result that is probably closer to the truth than any one guess. While true — it's the central limit theorem of statistics — it's far from being the only way in which diversity can be beneficial in problem solving." (Three-Toed Sloth)