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the results of the special counsel investigation of that president william barr proud supporter of the catholic church an organization responsible for centuries of incalculable human suffering and misery from the inquisition to the magdalene asylums to the systemic enabling of child rape this person is lecturing us about morality i won t dwell on the bitter results of people believing dogmatically that their religion is in possession of god s ultimate rulebook for human society and that violations of those rules lead inevitably to death and destruction suffice it to say that such people should not be in charge of law enforcement in a democracy via butterflies wheels an illusion of knowledge may 13 2019 posted by ezra resnick in reason science add a comment how can you eat genetically modified foods they re untested and unnatural actually the scientific consensus is that they re tested safe and as natural as any of our crops you re so naive and gullible the scientific consensus has been wrong before and every so often it changes i m not betting my life on a science experiment when the scientific consensus does change it s because of new or better evidence that comes to light at any given moment shouldn t we base our decisions on the best available data analyzed by the relevant experts what are you basing your position on instead i m not stupid if that s what you re implying i consider myself pretty knowledgeable about science and health mostly it s just common sense let me tell you about an interesting study researchers asked people for their opinions on gm foods then asked them to self assess their level of knowledge on the subject and then asked them some true or false science questions to see how much they actually knew they found that as extremity of opposition to and concern about genetically modified foods increases objective knowledge about science and genetics decreases but perceived understanding of genetically modified foods increases extreme opponents know the least but think they know the most the authors also noted that people tend to be poor judges of how much they know they often suffer from an illusion of knowledge thinking that they understand everything from common household objects to complex social policies better than they do based on this information don t you think that basic psychology statistics and logic would require you to reevaluate your position actually i consider myself pretty knowledgeable about psychology statistics and logic and i think i m going to trust my own judgement here i m getting a queasy feeling probably from eating too much gm food via jesus and mo the quest for good explanations february 19 2018 posted by ezra resnick in science superstition tags david deutsch 1 comment so far for most of human history the rate of progress was so slow as to be unnoticeable on the timescale of an individual s life the gaps between significant innovations or increases in knowledge were typically measured in centuries if not millennia but since the enlightenment and the scientific revolution we have been in an unprecedented era of rapid and continually accelerating progress an explosion of knowledge in his book the beginning of infinity david deutsch tries to put his finger on the key factor that makes the difference between no progress and progress a central tenet of the enlightenment was a rejection of authority with regard to knowledge but rejection of authority on its own is not enough we need an alternate better way of seeking knowledge without relying on authority the scientific revolution initiated a sustained tradition of criticism which came to require that a scientific theory be testable the theory must make predictions which if the theory were false could be contradicted by the outcome of some possible observation yet testability alone is not sufficient for scientific progress the prophet who claims the world will end tomorrow and the gambler who feels his winning streak will continue are making eminently testable predictions testability is not enough because the purpose of science is not mere prediction in order to solve problems you need explanations assertions about what is out there and how it behaves a scientific theory says something about the reality that accounts for our observations but having a testable explanatory theory is still not enough consider mythical explanations like the idea that disease is the gods punishment for sinners such myths do make a testable claim about the underlying reality but they are nevertheless unscientific that is useless for improving our understanding of the world because they are bad explanations they are easy to invent and easy to adapt such as to explain anything if a myth s predictions fail a righteous person falls ill the myth can simply be tweaked the gods sometimes test the faith of the righteous or replaced with a different myth the devil witchcraft and no progress is ever made no knowledge created the details of a myth are only loosely connected to the particulars of the phenomena it purports to explain so there s no way to judge the relative merits of competing myths and no reason to prefer one over another at bottom they are all equivalent to the gods did it but an explanation that could easily explain anything actually explains nothing good explanations like the germ theory of disease on the other hand are hard to discover and hard to vary once discovered the details of a good explanation are intimately connected to the specifics of the phenomena being explained and every detail plays a functional role if a previously good explanation is refuted by experiment it ceases to be a good explanation and must be dropped but theories that have passed many stringent tests and are highly constrained by other existing knowledge become extremely good explanations and our scientific knowledge grows seeking good explanations according to deutsch is the key to the scientific frame of mind which unlocks potentially unlimited progress as the physicist richard feynman said science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves by adopting easily variable explanations the gambler and prophet are ensuring that they will be able to continue fooling themselves no matter what happens just as thoroughly as if they had adopted untestable theories they are insulating themselves from facing evidence that they are mistaken about what is really there in the physical world the quest for good explanations is i believe the basic regulating principle not only of science but of the enlightenment generally it is the feature that distinguishes those approaches to knowledge from all others and it implies all those other conditions for scientific progress old ways of thought which did not seek good explanations permitted no process such as science for correcting errors and misconceptions improvements happened so rarely that most people never experienced one ideas were static for long periods the emergence of science and more broadly what i am calling the enlightenment was the beginning of the end of such static parochial systems of ideas it initiated the present era in human history unique for its sustained rapid creation of knowledge with ever increasing reach proof that all integers are equal june 1 2017 posted by ezra resnick in math 1 comment so far in particular we prove that n 1 for any integer n first assume that n is odd that means that n 1 is even so n 1 2 k for some integer k the following identity is trivially true for any n n 2 1 n 1 n 1 we can substitute 2 k for n 1 n 2 1 2 k n 1 2 k n 2 k next we subtract 2 kn n 1 from both sides of the equation yielding n 2 2 kn n 2 k n 1 factoring out n 2 k 1 produces n n 2 k 1 n 2 k 1 now we simply divide both sides of the equation by n 2 k 1 and voila n 1 alternatively assume that n is even that means that n 1 is odd so n 1 2 k 1 for some integer k once again we begin with the identity n 2 1 n 1 n 1 this time we substitute 2 k 1 for n 1 n 2 1 2 k 1 n 1 2 k n 2 k n 1 we subtract 2 kn 2 n 1 from both sides of the equation n 2 2 kn 2 n 2 k n 2 we factor out n 2 k 2 n n 2 k 2 n 2 k 2 and now we simply divide both sides of the equation by n 2 k 2 to complete the proof n 1 q e d skeptic vs imbecile may 3 2017 posted by ezra resnick in politics science tags bret stephens add a comment in his first op ed column for the new york times bret stephens blames a supposed lack of concern among the american public about climate change on science advocates who according to stephens claim to have 100 percent of the truth on their side claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions censoriously asserting one s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts who are these censorious arrogant ideologues derailing our climate policy conversations with their claims of total scientific certainty curiously stephens never offers any examples in any case he s just muddying the waters by focusing on tone rather than substance the scientific method is the best tool we have for understanding reality and predicting the future as close to certainty as is allowed by the available evidence and it has been amazingly successful so we ought to be basing our public policy on the scientific consensus and unfortunately abrupt and expensive changes are sometimes called for especially when earlier scientific recommendations have been delayed and avoided for years being skeptical is certainly a good default position when considering claims not sufficiently supported by evidence but willfully ignoring the judgement of the overwhelming majority of experts doesn t make you a skeptic it does in fact make you an imbecile stephens s anti science nonsense only gets worse as the column concludes none of this is to deny climate change or the possible severity of its consequences but ordinary citizens also have a right to be skeptical of an overweening scientism they know as all environmentalists should that history is littered with the human wreckage of scientific errors married to political power perhaps if there were less certitude about our climate future more americans would be interested in having a reasoned conversation about it if you don t remember learning about scientism in school that s because it s a bullshit term used to preemptively dismiss a scientific thesis you don t like without actually confronting it despite all his insinuation stephens doesn t directly challenge the accepted climate science here s a trick you can try at home the next time someone presents you with a well reasoned argument whose consequences you wish to avoid just say i have a right to be skeptical of your overweening reasonablism if they persist tell them their assertions of certitude and moral superiority raise fair questions about their ideological intentions then blame them for the failure of conversation you might lose a friend but maybe you ll get a column in the times this would all be laughable if it weren t so dangerous let us not forget the political climate we are living in we have a u s president who claimed global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the chinese appointed a climate change denier to head the environmental protection agency proposed deep budget cuts to many scientific programs and agencies including the epa the list goes on sophistry and misdirection may deceive voters and readers but nature will not be cheated we ignore reality at our peril stephens is right about one thing we need a politically engaged public who care about climate change but more fundamentally what we need is a scientifically literate public who are committed to a rational conversation based on objective facts who demand policies based on the best scientific evidence who can tell the difference between a skeptic and an imbecile the trade off triangle or culture wars explained december 11 2016 posted by ezra resnick in democracy freedom politics 2 comments i think many of our worst political and social conflicts are caused by failures to recognize the trade off between two values that are both important let s start with an easy example the relationship between the efficiency and safety of our transportation systems we naturally want our transportation systems to be both efficient and safe and while it s obviously possible to have a system that is both inefficient and unsafe it s less obvious that it s not possible to have a system that is both maximally efficient and maximally safe there s a tension between the two once we reach a certain level of efficiency and safety further improvements to one will necessarily come at the expense of the other consider speed limits for instance we could doubtless save many lives by reducing all speed limits to 10 mph but we don t do so because of the intolerable loss of efficiency conversely we could save many lost hours by abolishing all speed limits but we don t do so because of the intolerable risk to safety clearly we need some reasonable balance between efficiency and safety one problem however is that as humans we tend to be biased by our own personal experiences among other things which can cause us to focus too much on one side of the equation at the expense of the other if you have not had any firsthand exposure to traffic deaths and injuries for instance but you have experienced many annoying traffic regulations and delays you might consider safety concerns overblown and advocate against onerous safety precautions in the name of increased efficiency if that path is followed too far however traffic casualties will inevitably rise and someone who loses a loved one as a result may come to demonize the pursuit of efficiency and advocate for increasing road safety at any cost finding and maintaining an optimal compromise is not easy but if we want to make progress while avoiding the harmful extremes we must recognize that efficiency and safety are both important and also understand that there is a trade off between them so that whenever we increase one we are mindful of the impact on the other there is never going to be a silver bullet that maximizes both transportation safety versus efficiency is really just a special case of a more general dilemma how to build a civil society while maintaining individual freedom in this context freedom refers to an individual s ability to express themselves make their own choices and pursue their own goals without interference while civility refers to a society s cohesiveness and inclusiveness the extent to which it affords equal opportunities to all its members and treats them all with justice and compassion leaving no one behind unfortunately there is a tension between freedom and civility as illustrated by this graph at the bottom left we have no f...