13 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Bayes and Richard Price on Predictions
Bayes’s much more famous work, “An Essay toward Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances,”24 was not published until after his death, when it was brought to the Royal Society’s attention in 1763 by a friend of his named Richard Price. It concerned how we formulate probabilistic beliefs about the world when we encounter new data.
Price, in framing Bayes’s essay, gives the example of a person who emerges into the world (perhaps he is Adam, or perhaps he came from Plato’s cave) and sees the...Folksonomies: statistics predictions
Folksonomies: statistics predictions
1 
notes
notesGiving the example of someone who watches the sun rise each day, increasing the probability that it will rise again the next day, but that probability never reaching 100 percent.
06 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Ignorance is God
Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force, and enacted a code of laws for their government ... the real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature. 1 notes
notesKnowledge is science. Priests should be interpreters of nature.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
On the Emerging Science of Biology
It is an old saying, abundantly justified, that where sciences meet there growth occurs. It is true moreover to say that in scientific borderlands not only are facts gathered that [are] often new in kind, but it is in these regions that wholly new concepts arise. It is my own faith that just as the older biology from its faithful studies of external forms provided a new concept in the doctrine of evolution, so the new biology is yet fated to furnish entirely new fundamental concepts of scienc...Folksonomies: biology
Folksonomies: biology
1 notes
notesDestined to make new discoveries because it explores new territory.
25 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
"I Refute It Thus"
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, 'I refute it thus.' Folksonomies: solipsism
Folksonomies: solipsism
1 notes
notesAn amusing anecdote about disproving solipsism and the idea that nothing really exists.
12 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Scripture Perverted Through Misinterpretation of "Logos"
But the reformation of these blasphemous attributes, and substitution of those more worthy, pure and sublime, seems to have been the chief object of Jesus in his discources to the Jews: and his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st. chapter of John, in these words, `{en arche en o logos, kai o logos en pros ton Theon kai Theos en o logos. `otos en en arche pros ton Theon. Panta de ayto egeneto, kai choris ayto egeneto ode en, o gegon... 1 notes
notesJefferson argues that it means "reason," which makes much more sense in scripture than "word," which makes no sense.
