Not mine, but this video is so good I have to post it.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” – Max Planck Look, I’m the first to admit that we young people are dumb: we are sex-crazed, druggy rock [...]
Sometimes I have to force myself to be open-minded. Religious people go door-to-door trying to convert others to their religion, and atheists expend lots of effort trying to get believers to see reason. It’s commonplace for one person to try change the mind of another. But what about changing your own mind? I’m an atheist, [...]
Continue reading about What Would It Take to Convince You God Exists?
David Brooks at the New York Times posted an op-ed article entitled “The End of Philosophy”. Unfortunately, he comes off sounding like an idiot. His thesis, if it even exists, is confusing at best, and I have no idea what it has to do with “the end of philosophy” (cue the scary music). His thesis [...]
I figure what with all the riddles I’ve been giving that now is a good time to go over this. According to Wikipedia, the two incompleteness theorems can be summarized as follows: “We can never find an all-encompassing axiomatic system which is able to prove all mathematical truths, but no falsehoods.” “If an axiomatic system [...]
Continue reading about Gödel’s Proof Does Not Ruin The Credibility Of Math
I will give you $1 million to answer a yes or no question either truthfully or falsely. Would you take me up on this offer? Please use rot13 to encode your answers so as not to ruin the puzzle for anybody else.
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I’m posting all these puzzles because Yat said he thought that logic puzzles are becoming stale, and I’m trying to prove him otherwise. There are two types of inhabitants in the world: humans and vampires. Humans always tell the truth and vampires always lie. Also, inhabitants can either be sane or insane. Someone who is [...]
Since my other Raymond Smullyan puzzle was so popular, I’m adding another one. As always, you can find his riddles in his books in much greater depth. A perfect logician goes to visit the island of knights and knaves. Knights always tell the truth and knaves always lie. There is no one else on the [...]
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My friend and coworker Erik Morton wrote a fantastic essay on the history of the newspaper industry: This is the “unofficial” post-mortem from the New York Publishers Association conference Chelsea and I attended on Friday in Saratoga Springs. If what we witnessed is any indication of overall attitude of the newspaper industry, I really do [...]
I was watching Charmed today and Surprise! the three sisters just wish they were “normal”. Why did they have to be born with this burden of being witches? The superpowers just get in the way. They just want normal lives. They are so alone, nobody can understand them, their lives are so hard. Boo-hoo. New [...]
Continue reading about New Rule: Superheroes Have To Stop Feeling Sorry for Themselves
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