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Category

Mathematics

Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
January 4, 2021
Categorized
Mathematics, Media, Science
Tagged
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Rob Sheldon responds to News’s recent Salvo article, “War on Math”

Denyse O'Leary
January 4, 2021
Mathematics, Media, Science
Sheldon: Talking to a retired St Louis public high school math teacher, the battle was first enjoined 30 years ago over Geometry--eliminating it from the curriculum. Why? Because it was the only course that taught logic, he said. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 30, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Tagged
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James Randi (1928-2020)

Denyse O'Leary
October 30, 2020
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Thing is, the kind of skepticism Randi represented was based in a world where everyone agreed that 2 + 2 = 4. Today, it is NOT doubters of Darwin, etc., who are destroying science. Hardly! It is the ensconced science bureaucrats who are willing to entertain the destruction of math and—be sure of it—eventually, just plain literacy. It would be good to think that Randi never came to know of the doom. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 6, 2020
Categorized
Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Logic and Reason, Mathematics, Mind
Tagged
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Robert J. Marks: Pigeons can solve the Monty Hall problem. But can you?

Denyse O'Leary
October 6, 2020
Animal minds, Intelligent Design, Logic and Reason, Mathematics, Mind
The dilemma pits human folk intuition against actual probability theory, with surprising results. But the howler is that pigeons tended to get this right more easily than humans - at least in one study. (Another study found that it depended on the humans’ age.) Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
October 4, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Tagged
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Mathematical Association of America gone Woke: Math is created by humans

Denyse O'Leary
October 4, 2020
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Math is not, of course, created by humans but only recognized by humans—a critical distinction. 2 + 2 = 4, even if the Woke burn down research labs under the banner of “2 + 2 = 5!” The biggest losers will, of course, be those with the fewest private resources when public ones are destroyed. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 29, 2020
Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Natural selection
Tagged
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How much computing power would we need to evolve computer via Darwinian evolution that can program itself ?

Denyse O'Leary
September 29, 2020
Artificial Intelligence, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Natural selection
But read the fine print: We would need to run many trials of planets in parallel in order to simulate the real conditions in the universe. Yampolskiy concludes, ‘In fact, depending on some assumptions we make regarding multiverse, quantum aspects of biology, and probabilistic nature of Darwinian algorithm such compute may never be available.’” Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 23, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Tagged
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Mathematicians debate the war on math

Denyse O'Leary
September 23, 2020
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Carlo Rovelli stops short of saying that 2+2=5 but the article gives every sense that many would love to go there if only they could get some kind of a nudge. It is far to say that the war on Platonism is just the war on math, PhD version. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
September 21, 2020
Categorized
Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Science fiction
Tagged
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The weirdness of the number 42

Denyse O'Leary
September 21, 2020
Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Science fiction
Here’s Scientific American in a more entertaining mode. Remember when Deep Thought, the computer in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) spit out the Answer to the great question of life? It was: 42 But 42 does have some interesting features. Read More ›
Type
post
Author
Denyse O'Leary
Date
August 19, 2020
Categorized
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Tagged
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Arithmetic as racism: A teacher’s reflections on the progressive war on math

Denyse O'Leary
August 19, 2020
Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Naturalism
Mahlberg: English philosopher G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) saw the early signs of the West’s abandonment of objective truth, and in a cheeky tone, he warned: We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green… Read More ›