18 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Gender is Not Binary
he gender binary is the artificial division of the world into things that are "masculine" or "for men" and things that are "feminine" or "for women". One of the starkest ways to think of this is to consider the phrase "opposite sexes/genders" (as opposed to "different sexes/genders"), when both men and women are human beings with fundamentally many more commonalities than differences.
The division is artificial in several ways:
much of it is very clearly socially constructed. For example,...
1 Interesting concept from feminist and homosexual literature. The scientific point of view on this is that human males and females are dimorphic to various degrees.
08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Harry Potter and the Fundamental Attribution Error
“You saved them from You-Know-Who,” McGonagall said. “How
should they not care?”
Harry looked up at McGonagall and sighed. “I suppose there’s no
chance that if I said fundamental attribution error you’d have any idea
what that meant.”
McGonagall shook her head. “No, but please explain.”
“Well...” Harry said, trying to figure out how to describe that particular
bit of Muggle science. “Suppose you come into work and see your
coworker kicking his desk. You think, ‘...Folksonomies: rationality cognitive bias
Folksonomies: rationality cognitive bias
1 
notes
notesRational Potter explains to McConagall that people are projecting onto him powers he does not have.
28 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Robert Boyle's Definition of a Good Hypothesis
The Requisites of a good Hypothesis are:
That It be Intelligible.
That It neither Assume nor Suppose anything Impossible, unintelligible, or demonstrably False.
That It be consistent with Itself.
That It be lit and sufficient to Explicate the Phaenomena, especially the chief.
That It be, at least, consistent, with the rest of the Phaenomena It particularly relates to, and do not contradict any other known Phaenomena of nature, or manifest Physical Truth.
The Qualities and Conditions of...Folksonomies: hypothesis
Folksonomies: hypothesis
1 notes
notesA list of traits for good hypotheses and a list for excellent hypotheses.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
"Natural" Classification of Species as Evidence for Evolu...
Actually, the nested arrangement of life was recognized long before
Darwin. Starting with the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in , biologists
began classifying animals and plants, discovering that they consistently
fell into what was called a “natural” classification. Strikingly,
different biologists came up with nearly identical groupings. This means
that these groupings are not subjective artifacts of a human need to
classify, but that they tell us something real and fundamen...
2 Taxonomists working independently naturally "nest" species in the same groups.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Convergent Evolution in Cacti and Succulents
Let’s begin with one observation that strikes anyone who travels widely.
If you go to two distant areas that have similar climate and terrain,
you find different types of life. Take deserts. Many desert plants are
succulents: they show an adaptive combination of traits that include
large fleshy stems to store water, spines to deter predators, and small or
missing leaves to reduce water loss. But different deserts have different
types of succulents. In North and South America, the succulents... 1 notes
notesThe two groups of species share many many traits, but they exist in completely different parts of the world, evolving separately, but converging to be almost interchangeable.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Clarification of the Term "Vestigial"
Opponents of evolution always raise the same argument when vestigial
traits are cited as evidence for evolution. “The features are not
useless,” they say. “They are either useful for something, or we haven’t
yet discovered what they’re for.” They claim, in other words, that a trait
can’t be vestigial if it still has a function, or a function yet to be found.
But this rejoinder misses the point. Evolutionary theory doesn’t say
that vestigial characters have no function. A trai... 1 notes
notesA trait is vestigial not because it no longer serves a purpose, but because it no longer serves its original purpose.
