The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
— Bertrand Russell
This is a nice thing to keep in mind (often forgotten): Statistical significance means only that the pattern of distribution and relationship between variables which is found in the data from a sample can be confidently generalized to the larger populattion from which the sample was randomly drawn. By itself, it does not ensure that [...]
What is the difference between a fact and a proposition? Often these two terms are confuted, so here a little informal clearing up. First of all: Facts are. Facts happen in the world. When a stone drops from a cliff, and you witnessed it, you were witness of a fact. This fact happened. It cannot [...]
A lot of posts on this blog will be about rationality, scientific realism etc. – you may ask how this is connected to complexity science. This is because my thesis work concerns looking at “human” systems (many individual agents acting independently – ok, so they’re pseudo-humans ). I am especially interested in the relationship of [...]
