Emil O. W. Kirkegaard blog
So why trust science? I would say I am a proud supporter of scientism, crude versions aside. Naomi Oreskes is a prominent science historian who mostly writes history books attacking climate skepticism and Big Capitalism. But now she has a new brief book defending science. Actually, some of the main content is about attacking how…
Continue ReadingIt appears this comment was deleted and I’ve checked the archive sites, and none of them appear to have just the right time in between him posting it and it being deleted. I assume it’s because Scott saw the tweets, decided this comment was in the category “Things I will regret posting” and then preemptively…
Continue ReadingNow that we’re on the topic of curious people, it may be in order to recap the story of Mafia Mark, also know as Mark Alfano. He’s an associate professor of philosophy at Delft University of Technology. A few months ago, he was entertaining us all on Twitter by attacking Nathan Cofnas, a phd student…
Continue ReadingIn Making sense of Heritability (2005), Sesardić wrote: On the less obvious side, a nasty campaign against H could have the unintended effect of strengthening H [hereditarianism] epistemically, and making the criticism of H look less convincing. Simply, if you happen to believe that H is true and if you also know that opponents of…
Continue ReadingEysenck, H. J. (1995). Genius: The natural history of creativity (Vol. 12). Cambridge University Press. The book is on LibGen I continue my Eysenck readings with his popular genius book (prior review The Psychology of Politics (1954)). Having previously read some of Simonton’s work, Eysenck sure is a very different beast! The writing style follows…
Continue ReadingI am posting this because this is not widely known, but I think this angle should be taken more seriously. I hope philosophers will read this and get inspired! Urbach, P. (1974). Progress and Degeneration in the’IQ Debate’ (I). The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 25(2), 99-135. PDF Urbach, P. (1974). Progress and…
Continue ReadingPearl, J., & Mackenzie, D. (2018). The book of why: the new science of cause and effect. Basic Books. This is an interesting but annoying book. The basic pattern of the book goes like this: Scientists used to totally not know anything proper about how to do X or think about X. But no worries,…
Continue ReadingQuoting from Arthur Jensen’s book Educability and group differences (1973). He was being criticized for postulating genetic causes, which some critics think would cause great social harm if they were to be believed. That is, Jensen was replying to the Turkheimers of yesteryear. The scientific task is to get at the facts and properly verifiable…
Continue ReadingKathryn Paige Harden is professor of psychology who belongs to the Turkheimerian ‘left psychometrics’ school. I’ve discussed the odd behavior of Eric Turkheimer before, but since then I found a rather amazing essay: The Search for a Psychometric Left 1997 (the journal seems to no longer exist). It’s definitely worth reading in its entirely, but…
Continue ReadingPaul Graham‘s 2004 essay What you can’t say had a big influence on me and remains my favorite essay. In he argued essentially that popular morality shows fashion tendencies i.e. that it varies over time but for no evidence-linked reason. What is at one time considered a grievous moral evil is later considered not a…
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