Successful Prediction
Successful prediction is the revenge of the nerds. Superforecasters are intelligent but not necessarily brilliant, falling just in the top fifth of the population. They are highly numerate, not in the sense of being math whizzes but in the sense of comfortably thinking in guesstimates. They have personality traits that psychologists call “openness to experience” (intellectual curiosity and a taste for variety), “need for cognition” (pleasure taken in intellectual activity), and “int...
notes The Double Multiplicative Nature of Fraction or Ratio Equ...
Most real-world numbers aren’t always so nice and neat, with wholenumber multiples. If, say, Plant A grew from 2 to 3 feet, and Plant B grew from 6 to 8 feet, then we would say that Plant A grew 1/2 of its original height, whereas Plant B only grew 1/3 of its original height. Such reasoning exemplifies multiplicative thinking and necessarily involves rational numbers.
Consider a final example. If you ask a rising 6th grader to compare 13/15 and 14/ 16, chances are that the student will say... notes Busyness Correlated with Improved Cognitive Performance
Sustained engagement in mentally challenging activities has been shown to improve memory in older adults. We hypothesized that a busy schedule would be a proxy for an engaged lifestyle and would facilitate cognition. Here, we examined the relationship between busyness and cognition in adults aged 50–89. Participants (N = 330) from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (DLBS) completed a cognitive battery and the Martin and Park Environmental Demands Questionnaire (MPED), an assessment of busyness...
1 Ways to Tackle a Problem
If a problem seems familiar, try reasoning by Analogy. If you solved a similar one in the past, and can adapt to thedifferences, you may be able to re-use that solution.
If the problem still seems too hard, divide it into several parts. Every difference you recognize may suggest a separate subproblem to solve.
If it seems unfamiliar, change how you’re describing it. Find a different description that highlights more relevant information.
If you get too many ideas, then focus on ... notes Five Talk Moves
Move 1. Repeating
When a student says something that a teacher or student thinks is important, one way to highlight it is to repeat it. A teacher might ask, "Who can repeat what Mia just said?"
Repeating helps confirm that what the speaker said is what the listener heard, and it lets the speaker know that he or she was heard—and that it matters. It enables teachers to highlight an idea that's central to the discussion. Moreover, hearing the idea again, or multiple times, helps students lear... notes Violence Must be Considered Proportionally When Compared ...
In absolute numbers, of course, civilized societies are matchless in the destruction they have wreaked. But should we look at absolute numbers, or at relative numbers, calculated as a proportion of the populations? The choice confronts us with the moral imponderable of whether it is worse for 50 percent of a population of one hundred to be killed or 1 percent of a population of one billion. In one frame of mind, one could say that a person who is tortured or killed suffers to the same degree ... notes Nemesis
But why should comets become more likely to hit us every million years?
Here we launch ourselves into deep speculation. It has been suggested
that the sun has a sister star, and the two orbit each other with a
periodicity of about 26 million years. This hypothetical binary partner,
which has never been seen but which has nevertheless been given the
dramatic name Nemesis, passes, once per orbital rotation, through the
so-called Oort Cloud, the belt of perhaps a trillion comets which orbits
the...
1 König’s paradox: Ordinals
Let’s start by turning back the clock. It is India in the fifth century BCE, the age of the historical Buddha, and a rather peculiar principle of reasoning appears to be in general use. This principle is called the catuskoti, meaning ‘four corners’. It insists that there are four possibilities regarding any statement: it might be true (and true only), false (and false only), both true and false, or neither true nor false.
[...]
To get back to something that the Buddha might recognise,... notesAlso Betrand Russel's "Set of All Sets that Do Not Contain Themselves"
A Zen monk in a Japanese temple draws beautiful lines in the sand and makes a wonderful pattern. He then draws a line in the pattern, in his mind disfiguring the pattern, the reasoning behind this is his view is that nothing is perfect in this world.
What is perfect? That is a misconstrued concept, the world is as it should be, otherwise it would not be so. Everything around us follows the basic laws of the universe, cause and effect. Things are as they should be. That there are brutal dictatorships around the world is a result of cause and effect, it is how things should be, or they would not be like that, is that not perfect? Sure we can try and change the world and make it more just and fair, if we succeed, that is how things should be, if we fail that is how things should be, but as a human one must try ,a human being is born with the ability to act, take action and change it, if you succeed, then you have taken the action that leads to change, that is as how the world should be, is that not a perfect world?, following the laws of the universe of cause and effect. As a human take action to destroy what you do not like, but do not say it is not perfect. The world follows the laws of cause and effect perfectly, it is a perfect world.
That blacks are downtrodden does not make the world imperfect, it is a result of cause and effect, and as humans they must take action and cause things to change for the better. Without action things will remain perfectly bad for black people. Perfectly bad is still perfect.
Science and Everyday Life Cannot be Separated
You frequently state, and in your letter you imply, that I have developed a completely one-sided outlook and look at everything in terms of science. Obviously my method of thought and reasoning is influenced by a scientific training – if that were not so my scientific training will have been a waste and a failure. But you look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralizing invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separ... notesA good passage from Rosalind Franklin covering science and spirituality.
