Search found 1541 matches

by Physics Guy
Thu Mar 14, 2024 8:40 am
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Logic and Dan Peterson arguments.
Replies: 33
Views: 1115

Re: Logic and Dan Peterson arguments.

I can't resist adding a favourite example of how inference gets tricky with multiple options. As far as I know, I thought of it myself, but it may very well be well known, and I might even have read it somewhere and just forgotten the source. There is an animal in a tree, but no-one can see it quite...
by Physics Guy
Thu Mar 14, 2024 8:27 am
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Logic and Dan Peterson arguments.
Replies: 33
Views: 1115

Re: Logic and Dan Peterson arguments.

Peterson's examples of logic and evidence are all syllogisms. They're great as far as they go, but the whole deal with a syllogism is that it follows one story line. It's about Socrates, and mortality. Is he or not, yes or no? The question is fixed, the possible answers are predefined. There is no m...
by Physics Guy
Thu Mar 14, 2024 8:07 am
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Gemli explains...
Replies: 243
Views: 6771

Re: Gemli explains...

Within the story, the flux capacitor was testable. It worked. I was never sure why the tire tracks caught fire like that, but perhaps it was flux. Or capacitance. In some ways the Higgs field is still just a maguffin playing a role in a story, defined by the function it serves rather than as a thing...
by Physics Guy
Wed Mar 13, 2024 8:04 pm
Forum: Spirit Paradise
Topic: Weaponizing Stupidity
Replies: 32
Views: 944

Re: Weaponizing Stupidity

One time when we were living in the Boston area, some kind of student activist for the Democratic Party stopped me on the sidewalk and tried to get me involved somehow even after I explained that I wasn't a US citizen. I politely disengaged but my penser d'escalier (the thing you think of just too l...
by Physics Guy
Wed Mar 13, 2024 2:29 pm
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Temple Sealings of Dead People who Were Married More than Once
Replies: 55
Views: 1418

Re: Temple Sealings of Dead People who Were Married More than Once

The posts of the collective Never-Mormon are welcome, even though the alien intelligence of its colossal hive mind is too overwhelming for it to be welcome itself.
by Physics Guy
Tue Mar 12, 2024 7:55 am
Forum: Spirit Paradise
Topic: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers
Replies: 260
Views: 84718

Re: Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

When I started running games there were formulas for how many experience points players got for each monster they killed—and for every item of loot they acquired. At some point I decided that tying experience and treasure together was an arbitrary constraint. They were both valuable rewards and it w...
by Physics Guy
Mon Mar 11, 2024 11:46 am
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Gemli explains...
Replies: 243
Views: 6771

Re: Gemli explains...

To say that stories about murder weapons can be evidence, but stories about fairies cannot be evidence, is special pleading, unless you can explain, without begging the question, why the subject of the stories makes this big difference. I take stories as evidence all the time. If my brother-in-law t...
by Physics Guy
Mon Mar 11, 2024 11:29 am
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Gemli explains...
Replies: 243
Views: 6771

Re: Gemli explains...

I have not served on any juries, but I'm pretty sure that the whole jury doesn't get trained in ballistics, go to the lab with the alleged murder weapon, and conduct all those tests personally. Instead some expert tells the jury a story, about how the weapon was tested—probably after someone else ha...
by Physics Guy
Mon Mar 11, 2024 10:45 am
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Gemli explains...
Replies: 243
Views: 6771

Re: Gemli explains...

Dr. Shades wrote:
Mon Mar 11, 2024 10:37 am
Res Ipsa wrote:
Sun Mar 10, 2024 5:51 pm
Stories are evidence.
Of what is The Lord of the Rings evidence?
Res Ipsa's statement was like the sentence, "People drink coffee," said in response to a claim that no-one drinks coffee, to assert that some people do drink coffee. It does not mean that all people drink coffee.
by Physics Guy
Sun Mar 10, 2024 6:49 pm
Forum: Terrestrial Forum
Topic: Gemli explains...
Replies: 243
Views: 6771

Re: Gemli explains...

Yeah, that’s the succinct point for which I was groping: special pleading. Anyone can ride a high horse about not accepting inadequate evidence, but if they can’t explain why that kind of evidence is inadequate for their opponents when they accept it themselves in other cases, then that’s the fallac...