“Eight, five, seven, five, three-oh…”
“Twelve! Four! Two! Twenty-six!”
“Eight, five, seven, five, um… Five…”
“Pony! Squirrel! Potato! Potato! Potato!”
“Eight, five, uh… Eight. Five. SEVEN. Eight five seven five three oh…”
“Eight, five seven, five three oh two.”
“Got it! I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Arguing from the facts, Opinionator, NYT (paywall).
Using recent debate over raising the Federal Government’s debt limit as an example, Gary Gutting has attempted to illustrate the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning but, to my way of thinking, has made a needlessly complex argument whose example positions are really only talking past one another. Each has a series of factually correct issues they wish to address, but rather than acknowledge their opponents’ arguments, they merely introduce new arguments, moving the goal posts and leaving neither any basis for compromise much less an opportunity to create consensus.
It also reveals some of the complexity of the issue and reveals its nature not as a principled debate about a contentious issue, but rather shabby political theater.
A while back, I was talking with a fellow Okayer, NightOwl, about COPD, of which she said “You have good days and you have bad days” and for the last couple of months, I’ve had way more bad days. This really makes me appreciate the good ones all the more — while I tend to suspect that recently, the problem has been with barometric pressure and high humidity, I have no way of learning this with any certainty and even if I did, there isn’t much I could do to compensate. At one time, I had an industrial-strength dehumidifier and was removing maybe a gallon of water a night from this little 16×16′ bedroom, but this had no effect.
And this is why one doesn’t trust scientific research to the private sector. That validating a given experiment through research (as opposed to doing new research) should be an issue should come as a surprise to no one — it may be essential, but it’s not hard to see where it wouldn’t be as rewarding.
It also isn’t hard to imagine how many people will read this and go “See? Science. It’s just a theory.”
I’m especially fond of knowing the right word or phrase to describe an idea; this is the second time I’ve encountered the term ‘fictive learning’ and now it finally stuck with me.
Explaining stock market bubbles as a failure of fictive learning.
It never ceases to fascinate me how muddled our thinking can be when we believe ourselves to be thinking clearly and rationally.
Significant in that it’s release also coincides with Terry’s decision to file for his own assisted death with the Dignitas organization, this is, by and large, the kind of documentary one would expect, given the sources involved. What makes it remarkable, however, is to show just how ultimately straight-forward and painless the procedure actually is.
At an hour, the video runs long (especially for youtube), but it’s worth viewing in it’s entirety simply because the narrative lends an impact to the conclusion that won’t be felt if one just fast-forwards to the end.
I’m fond of this blog, which tracks various kinds of cognitive disconnects. Here’s an example of something called ‘The Backfire Effect‘. Submitted for your inspection without comment, but I feel it captures the dynamic quite nicely.
Kurt Vonnegut offers a reductionist view of the human need to dramatize their lives.
social network exile 