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What will happen to the newspapers?
Newspapers everywhere are finding it progressively harder to make any money, and their future is in doubt. Lots of people have opinions on what should happen next, or what newspapers should do. I'm interested in a different question here - leaving aside all normative discussion of what we might like or not like, what do people think is actually ( Read more... ) -
Pinker on statistics
I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture. Cognitive psychology tells us that the unaided human mind is vulnerable to many fallacies and illusions because of its reliance on its memory for vivid anecdotes rather than systematic statistics. Yet ( Read more... ) -
Do men make the first move?
Reading this fascinating comment thread on Greta Christina's blog:What counts as “the first move”?
Fair question. I would say “the first overt, unambiguous, verbal move.” I.e., asking someone out, or otherwise making a move that can’t be interpreted as anything other than a move, and that requires an overt response. (The point being that if you toss ( Read more... ) -
Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable
Following up my earlier post asking what shall I start a fight on the Internet about, I present:
Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable, Eliezer Yudkowsky, 2007-08-04.The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal ( Read more... ) -
What shall I argue about?
Am off sick and in bed, typing on my phone, and bored. A friend recommends I entertain myself in the time honoured fashion, by starting a fight on the Internet. But what about? Suggestions both frivolous and serious please! -
You have reached the in-progress mark of this story
You have reached the in-progress mark of this story ( Read more... ) -
Any official Debian developers out there able to sponsor mercurial-server?
Just released mercurial-server version 1.2. Sent off the files to the Debian sponsor, but he replied that he's no longer a Debian developer - damn! Anyone out there willing and able to take this on? It's 100% Lintian clean - it's already been through several releases and been bashed into shape for Debian ( Read more... ) -
Anonymous commenting disabled
I'm sorry, I've had to turn off anonymous commenting on my journal; deleting spam is keeping me too busy. When the spammers start registering accounts, I'll have to go to friends-only. I'm largely writing on Twitter at the moment, with some things going on my blog and others going on Google+ (because I'm still optimistic they'll see sense on the ( Read more... ) -
Hole where a post should be
I spent ages writing a post here, and the Dreamwidth rich text editor dumped it. Next time I will use a text editor. This entry was originally posted at http://ciphergoth.dreamwidth.org/356957.html, where there are
( Read more... )