What is a scientific theory? In an abstract sense, a scientific theory is a group of statements about the world. For instance the Special Theory of Relativity has, “The speed of light in a vacuum is invariant,” as a core statement, among others, about the world. This statement is scientific because, in part, it is meant to hold in a ‘law-like’ fashion: it holds across time, space and observer. The Popperian view is that we […]
Month: March 2013
You think this has nothing to do with you.
Philosophy is disparaged often enough, and by people who ought to know better. As of late, every time this happens I think of this scene — but with the text (something like) below….. Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your desk and you select, I don’t know, some statistical mathematical model, for instance, because you’re trying to show the world that you take science seriously […]
Risky Kakanomics
Gloria Origgi writes: This is an application of the theory of kakonomics, that is, the study of the rational preferences for lower-quality or mediocre outcomes, to the apparently weird results of Italian elections. The apparent irrationality of 30% of the electorate who decided to vote for Berlusconi again is explained as a perfectly rational strategy of maintaining a system of mediocre exchanges in which politicians don’t do what they have promised to do and citizens […]