Yes, you are right, Laripu. I also met him a few times when he visited the UK. He was an incredibly intelligent and erudite man. I never had the nerve to ask him to sign any books of his that I own.
Quiney – I was not aware of that thesis. Though it was always self evident to me that any single element is obviously working within the closed system in relation to eveey other element that makes up complicated natural systems. So to try and isolate any hypothetical elelment is impossible…
Quine D, it was the 1980s. I found out at nearly the last minute that he was giving a lecture (on reification as I recall). I was supposed to be on a first date with a nice young lady that night. I convinced her to go to the lecture with me.
It was also our last date. Oh well, too bad. I don’t even remember her name. But the book was “Theories and Things” and I still have it. 🙂
Quiney – thanks for the Dunhem-Quine thesis. New to me as a piece of philosophy; but a standard in statistics: For example: the t-test relies on the assumption that the two samples being compared come from a Normal distribution, with some rather precise mathematical properties. If the test leads you to reject H0, you have a choice of saying “the group means are different” or “the distributions are not Normal”. Or even “we got lucky”
But there are additional tests and checks for Normality; and the test is mathematically robust; and we reject H0 only when the the chance of a false positive is suitably low. More complex tests involve more complex assumptions and more complex checks.
Laripu, I can sympathize with you on your problem with philosophy lectures and dating. I once persuaded a girl to go with me and see Daniel Dennett give a talk in a church(!) near London’s Piccadilly Circus. I never saw her again …
Quiney – thanks for the Dunhem-Quine thesis. New to me as a piece of philosophy; but a standard in statistics: For example: the t-test relies on the assumption that the two samples being compared come from a Normal distribution, with some rather precise mathematical properties. If the test leads you to reject H0, you have a choice of saying “the group means are different” or “the distributions are not Normal”. Or even “we got lucky”
But there are additional tests and checks for Normality; and the test is mathematically robust; and we reject H0 only when the the chance of a false positive is suitably low. More complex tests involve more complex assumptions and more complex checks.
Aye. However is statistical analysis (esp in politics and social sciences) any point of view can be supported by selection for confirmation bias, the thesis obviously invalidates that result, but to the gullible masses they lap up the erroneous data due to their pig ignorance….god I hate the proletariat and common thick as mince moron who make up the majority of mankind….
When I first saw the moniker “Quine Duhem” in a J&M discussion, I presumed it was some Latin phrase or quotation like “Quis custodiet ipso custodes”, known to classics-educated persons. I had no idea it was based on certain people’s names!
If that puts me in M27Holts’ category of “thick as mince”, so be it, ipso facto!
I feel.better, but struggled to handle 24kg of shopping over 800m farmers walk, so I’m at 50% operating strength. But still struggling to pee, so the prostate is still inflamed, 6 days antibiotics to go though…
It actually made me a little sad to think about Quine. There was a time when I was really sharp: good at mathematics, competent enough at simple physics, clever enough to pick and choose the practical parts of philosophy. I could play guitar like a reasonable amateur and sing the clothing off young women in my living room.
But no more. Thirty-five years of writing software have taken a toll. Time, age, and routine exacted payment. I am no longer the man I used to be, eager for knowledge and optimistic in the future.
Now, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, time has left me “cold as butter for the flies”. All I want is peace and stability and economic security. What I get are war in Ukraine and Trump and inflation.
I’m certain I’m not the only one among us who feels that way.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or Endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
“First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, “…that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you.” and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.”
Postdog. You could have shagged her mate and used our old friend intentionality to fill in the gaps….plus isn’t your example of trying to postulate on angels on a pinhead? Eh? Could do with hell seeping out into my house to keep the wife warm and my bills down…
postdoggerel: Definitely angels on a pinhead! The unstated assumptions in your hypothetical student’s thesis are that souls have mass and Hell has a finite volume, both of which can be challenged.
Laripu: Your situation, as you describe it, is similar to mine, about thirty years ago, when I escaped from/was kicked out of teaching.
Since then, my life has been enriched by several new careers, two or three depending on how I count them (and some of which generated income), running in parallel, and embracing many aspects of the arts (but as audience, not, alas, as performer). I have also been enriched by the J&M strips and this community in the virtual Cock & Bull pub! And I have several friendship groups, most of whom are at least twenty years younger than me! (Sadly, most friends of my own generation are deceased!)
I consider myself as now entering a second retirement, with many of Laripu’s feelings about the world (also not forgetting cause and effect of climate change), but with satisfaction that the aforementioned careers have made some small changes for the general good.
Here endeth my soul-searching for the day. Now watch M27Holts bring me down to earth! How’s the prostate, Rob?
Son of Glenner, thanks for the commiseration. It’s a new day, Saturday, and I feel better because I’m not working today. Retirement is sounding pretty good… this former software engineer will become an unpaid poet sometime in 2023.
Re angels on a pin head – one, and only one, provided the dance is the gavotte, which is of course the literal equivalent of the digits 42. You will find it thoroughly explained in Pratchett&Gaimans ‘Good Omens’ resp. The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. All provided under the classical ‘ceteris paribus’ clause, of course.
Re prostate status , log details 05/11. Five days of anti biotics to go. Urine flow poor, discomfort moderate. Appetite back to normal, libido is not…sleeping ok….think I might live….
No reason why Hell has to have physics, or even why our real world has to. Certainly has physics now, but as far as I know, there is no way to know that tomorrow will be the same.
The infinate multiverse makes everything possible, including an infinate number of realities which are in an infinity of super computers, plus an infinity of universes where I am king of the universe…
M27, the cause is natural selection. My claim is that something like 30% to 40% of people everywhere are vile, angry, violent, stupid, racist, because in prehistoric tribal times, that helped ensure survival.
Someone on Quora (not me) wrote that the modern Republican Party has these factions:
– The Rich Aren’t Rich Enough faction
– The Jesus For President faction
– The We Hate All Those Other People You Know Who We Mean faction
– The Bugfuck and Batshit Coalition
Seems about right. And these factions aren’t disjoint.
The problem IS religion. The only way people get away with ridiculous anti-human behaviour is by validation from religious authority. Until religion is regarded as retarded we aint getting anywhere fast…
You need to think harder about why someone as personally awful as Trump could get elected to such high office. The comfortable answer is that his voters were all bad people or fools. I go with a much less comfortable answer, which is that there was a very large sector of the electorate that felt — rightly I believe! — that their legitimate concerns were being studiously ignored by both the woke identitarian left and the big money libertarian right, and that they had no champion.
Trump became that champion. Trump intuited their concerns and kinda sorta addressed them in his campaign, and that by itself was enough to get him elected, even in the face of all his personal flaws. He was actually handed a huge political opportunity there, the kind that comes once in a generation, and if he had been any kind of competent politician he could have gone on to engineer a historic realignment in American politics. Unfortunately he turned out to be the ignorant jackass he always appeared to be, so he totally blew his chance. I cannot tell you how badly this pains me!!!
It plugs into some of the same tribal instincts as sports. The idea of a human as some kind of amateur sage who will reflect on the relative virtues of various policy directions, is weirdly alien to our nature and it’s half surprising that it even gets a try. We’re at our best, as well as at our worst, as an enthusiastically violent mob, throwing down the challenge to the other.
Politicians who mean well, rarely seem to understand this or have any idea how to invoke it in a positive way. I sure don’t. If there really is no way, maybe we’re just doomed to a rough ride. The religions sure have it figured out, the populist right have it figured out.
I agree that in a practical analysis, the more rational political leadership doesn’t have much to offer the masses – identity politics, neoliberalism, etc., been going down hill for generations – just thinking what you sell the people is something else.
M27Holts, I realized that the Good Omens angel on a needle answer is not in the book but in the miniseries. But it could have been in the book and probably in some universe it is. Perhaps in yours…
Rationality was lampooned in Star Trek with Spock and Nerds lampooned in almost every drama ad-nauseum. Until piety is lampooned as universally then we are doomed to the armageddon that religious people all crave. Too much respect for men of the cloth…they should be put in stocks and bombarded with rotten tomatoes and used condoms and sanitary pads…
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet.. JT Eberhard
Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
I love jesusandmo.net cartoons - witty and sharp! Katha Pollitt
Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist... Nick Cohen
I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech
includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious... Council of Ex-Muslims
August 2, 2006
What?!! Jesus and Mo converted to tolerance and secularism? Shock! Horror!
What next? Barmaid becoming a nun in Mother Theresa’s order? Richard Dawkins becoming a Cardinal? Surely not.
When it comes down to beer vs religion, we all know which one wins.
If only
I am fond of a cheeky Bishops Finger….
M27Holts: AKA Nun’s Delight
Quine: until a religion decides to ban beer.
BTW, is your name a reference to the great philosopher WVO Quine? I met him once, got him to autograph a book.
I answered my own question:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis
Was he any good with nth level intentionality?
Yes, you are right, Laripu. I also met him a few times when he visited the UK. He was an incredibly intelligent and erudite man. I never had the nerve to ask him to sign any books of his that I own.
Quiney – I was not aware of that thesis. Though it was always self evident to me that any single element is obviously working within the closed system in relation to eveey other element that makes up complicated natural systems. So to try and isolate any hypothetical elelment is impossible…
Quine D, it was the 1980s. I found out at nearly the last minute that he was giving a lecture (on reification as I recall). I was supposed to be on a first date with a nice young lady that night. I convinced her to go to the lecture with me.
It was also our last date. Oh well, too bad. I don’t even remember her name. But the book was “Theories and Things” and I still have it. 🙂
Quiney – thanks for the Dunhem-Quine thesis. New to me as a piece of philosophy; but a standard in statistics: For example: the t-test relies on the assumption that the two samples being compared come from a Normal distribution, with some rather precise mathematical properties. If the test leads you to reject H0, you have a choice of saying “the group means are different” or “the distributions are not Normal”. Or even “we got lucky”
But there are additional tests and checks for Normality; and the test is mathematically robust; and we reject H0 only when the the chance of a false positive is suitably low. More complex tests involve more complex assumptions and more complex checks.
Laripu, I can sympathize with you on your problem with philosophy lectures and dating. I once persuaded a girl to go with me and see Daniel Dennett give a talk in a church(!) near London’s Piccadilly Circus. I never saw her again …
Quiney – thanks for the Dunhem-Quine thesis. New to me as a piece of philosophy; but a standard in statistics: For example: the t-test relies on the assumption that the two samples being compared come from a Normal distribution, with some rather precise mathematical properties. If the test leads you to reject H0, you have a choice of saying “the group means are different” or “the distributions are not Normal”. Or even “we got lucky”
But there are additional tests and checks for Normality; and the test is mathematically robust; and we reject H0 only when the the chance of a false positive is suitably low. More complex tests involve more complex assumptions and more complex checks.
Aye. However is statistical analysis (esp in politics and social sciences) any point of view can be supported by selection for confirmation bias, the thesis obviously invalidates that result, but to the gullible masses they lap up the erroneous data due to their pig ignorance….god I hate the proletariat and common thick as mince moron who make up the majority of mankind….
When I first saw the moniker “Quine Duhem” in a J&M discussion, I presumed it was some Latin phrase or quotation like “Quis custodiet ipso custodes”, known to classics-educated persons. I had no idea it was based on certain people’s names!
If that puts me in M27Holts’ category of “thick as mince”, so be it, ipso facto!
Thanks to the rest of you for educating me.
BTW, M27Holts, how’s your little infection healing up? OK, I hope.
I feel.better, but struggled to handle 24kg of shopping over 800m farmers walk, so I’m at 50% operating strength. But still struggling to pee, so the prostate is still inflamed, 6 days antibiotics to go though…
Who watches the watchmen? I hated Latin at school, preferred mathematics…
Anyway SOG, bet your grandad was one of those wild scots who used to attack those pesky Romans before they built Hadrians wall….
It actually made me a little sad to think about Quine. There was a time when I was really sharp: good at mathematics, competent enough at simple physics, clever enough to pick and choose the practical parts of philosophy. I could play guitar like a reasonable amateur and sing the clothing off young women in my living room.
But no more. Thirty-five years of writing software have taken a toll. Time, age, and routine exacted payment. I am no longer the man I used to be, eager for knowledge and optimistic in the future.
Now, to paraphrase Dylan Thomas, time has left me “cold as butter for the flies”. All I want is peace and stability and economic security. What I get are war in Ukraine and Trump and inflation.
I’m certain I’m not the only one among us who feels that way.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or Endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
“First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa Banyan during my Freshman year, “…that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you.” and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze.”
Postdog. You could have shagged her mate and used our old friend intentionality to fill in the gaps….plus isn’t your example of trying to postulate on angels on a pinhead? Eh? Could do with hell seeping out into my house to keep the wife warm and my bills down…
postdoggerel: Definitely angels on a pinhead! The unstated assumptions in your hypothetical student’s thesis are that souls have mass and Hell has a finite volume, both of which can be challenged.
Laripu: Your situation, as you describe it, is similar to mine, about thirty years ago, when I escaped from/was kicked out of teaching.
Since then, my life has been enriched by several new careers, two or three depending on how I count them (and some of which generated income), running in parallel, and embracing many aspects of the arts (but as audience, not, alas, as performer). I have also been enriched by the J&M strips and this community in the virtual Cock & Bull pub! And I have several friendship groups, most of whom are at least twenty years younger than me! (Sadly, most friends of my own generation are deceased!)
I consider myself as now entering a second retirement, with many of Laripu’s feelings about the world (also not forgetting cause and effect of climate change), but with satisfaction that the aforementioned careers have made some small changes for the general good.
Here endeth my soul-searching for the day. Now watch M27Holts bring me down to earth! How’s the prostate, Rob?
Son of Glenner, thanks for the commiseration. It’s a new day, Saturday, and I feel better because I’m not working today. Retirement is sounding pretty good… this former software engineer will become an unpaid poet sometime in 2023.
The unstated assumption behind the other unstated assumptions is that Hell has physics. No reason why it has to.
Re angels on a pin head – one, and only one, provided the dance is the gavotte, which is of course the literal equivalent of the digits 42. You will find it thoroughly explained in Pratchett&Gaimans ‘Good Omens’ resp. The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. All provided under the classical ‘ceteris paribus’ clause, of course.
Laripu, think of it as lines of coda instead of lines of code? Minus the pay, just another tyop.
Re prostate status , log details 05/11. Five days of anti biotics to go. Urine flow poor, discomfort moderate. Appetite back to normal, libido is not…sleeping ok….think I might live….
Just ordered that book…Good Omens…
No reason why Hell has to have physics, or even why our real world has to. Certainly has physics now, but as far as I know, there is no way to know that tomorrow will be the same.
Well done, M27Holts! There is also a BBC mini series based upon the book, also very worth while.
‘Good omens’ is together with ‘The once and future king’ my coffin library. They’ll go with me just in case there is a hereafter after all 🙂
Shaughn, add a light source too. Some nether regions may be quite dark.
All assuming Maxwell’s are functional yonder.
Donn: “real world”?!!
Are you sure it’s not just a simulation in some Matrix?
The infinate multiverse makes everything possible, including an infinate number of realities which are in an infinity of super computers, plus an infinity of universes where I am king of the universe…
Spelling Timothy..Infinite…
Though in the multiverse that will be the correct spelling….haha
Unusual to see M27Holts bothering about spelling!
SoG, definately but it doesnt. Matter when your a mathematical jeanius and. The rest of the world is . Stoopid.
Watching a programme about the Trump resurgence in the USA. Such programmes only confirm my bias that conservative republicans have shit for brains…
M27, the cause is natural selection. My claim is that something like 30% to 40% of people everywhere are vile, angry, violent, stupid, racist, because in prehistoric tribal times, that helped ensure survival.
Someone on Quora (not me) wrote that the modern Republican Party has these factions:
– The Rich Aren’t Rich Enough faction
– The Jesus For President faction
– The We Hate All Those Other People You Know Who We Mean faction
– The Bugfuck and Batshit Coalition
Seems about right. And these factions aren’t disjoint.
The problem IS religion. The only way people get away with ridiculous anti-human behaviour is by validation from religious authority. Until religion is regarded as retarded we aint getting anywhere fast…
You need to think harder about why someone as personally awful as Trump could get elected to such high office. The comfortable answer is that his voters were all bad people or fools. I go with a much less comfortable answer, which is that there was a very large sector of the electorate that felt — rightly I believe! — that their legitimate concerns were being studiously ignored by both the woke identitarian left and the big money libertarian right, and that they had no champion.
Trump became that champion. Trump intuited their concerns and kinda sorta addressed them in his campaign, and that by itself was enough to get him elected, even in the face of all his personal flaws. He was actually handed a huge political opportunity there, the kind that comes once in a generation, and if he had been any kind of competent politician he could have gone on to engineer a historic realignment in American politics. Unfortunately he turned out to be the ignorant jackass he always appeared to be, so he totally blew his chance. I cannot tell you how badly this pains me!!!
It plugs into some of the same tribal instincts as sports. The idea of a human as some kind of amateur sage who will reflect on the relative virtues of various policy directions, is weirdly alien to our nature and it’s half surprising that it even gets a try. We’re at our best, as well as at our worst, as an enthusiastically violent mob, throwing down the challenge to the other.
Politicians who mean well, rarely seem to understand this or have any idea how to invoke it in a positive way. I sure don’t. If there really is no way, maybe we’re just doomed to a rough ride. The religions sure have it figured out, the populist right have it figured out.
I agree that in a practical analysis, the more rational political leadership doesn’t have much to offer the masses – identity politics, neoliberalism, etc., been going down hill for generations – just thinking what you sell the people is something else.
M27Holts, I realized that the Good Omens angel on a needle answer is not in the book but in the miniseries. But it could have been in the book and probably in some universe it is. Perhaps in yours…
Rationality was lampooned in Star Trek with Spock and Nerds lampooned in almost every drama ad-nauseum. Until piety is lampooned as universally then we are doomed to the armageddon that religious people all crave. Too much respect for men of the cloth…they should be put in stocks and bombarded with rotten tomatoes and used condoms and sanitary pads…