Guest guest Posted October 9, 2003 Report Share Posted October 9, 2003 Which is? On Thursday, October 9, 2003, at 05:39 AM, (AT) (DOT) com wrote: > Message: 2 > Wed, 08 Oct 2003 09:30:59 -0500 > Sant & Brown <santbrown > Re: Digest Number 588 > >> Scientists are people. It's that simple. People are biased. Ergo, >> Scientists are Biased. > > Hmmmmmm. Which, I wonder, is the false premise here *lol* > > Best, > Pat > To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing and be nothing. - - Elbert Hubbard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 *lol* I was making a little joke, Gene. I guess I have a low opinion of scientists - or, more accurately, I was expressing a low opinion of scientists ;=) The situation, as it had developed on the list lately, seemed in need of a little leavening. It still does. Best, Pat > > Which is? > . . . > >> Scientists are people. It's that simple. People are biased. Ergo, > >> Scientists are Biased. > > > > Hmmmmmm. Which, I wonder, is the false premise here *lol* > > > > Best, > > Pat > > -- SANTBROWN townhounds/ http://www.angelfire.com/art/pendragon/ ---------- * " I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet " - Gandhi * " The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men " - Leonardo da Vinci ---------- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 10, 2003 Report Share Posted October 10, 2003 > Which is? > . . . > >> Scientists are people. It's that simple. People are biased. > >> Ergo, Scientists are Biased. > > > > Hmmmmmm. Which, I wonder, is the false premise here *lol* Don't intend to start a fight here just to offer another opinion. Two-valued logic of the sort used here limits one's ability to hypothesize about a particular question and then also limits in the same way any conclusion one might reach. Re: the logic as stated, Proposition #1 is clear. Proposition #2 is unclear b/c it relies only on opinion and as such is unverifiable. Proposition #3 is unclear b/c it relies on any one of several points of reference, and as such, w/o more info it is little more than an opinion from a holder of one of those PORs. Therefore, the conclusion does not follow using the stated logic. Instead, one might say, Scientists are people. Some people are biased. (This takes into account multiple PORs and qualifies only one of them) Therefore, some scientists are biased. (This would be true only within the limits of proposition #2) This logic system is over 2,000 years old. It's still taught primarily for building clear thinking skills and as the foundation for understanding more advanced logic systems. By itself, it does little more than create interesting logic puzzles, and as we can see it's easily misused even with the best of intentions b/c the rules are not always easy to follow. To expand one's decision-making capability further, a number of multi-valued logic systems might be used to better describe a situation of interest, such tools as utility theory plus a couple of others rigorous techniques and to get really advanced one might move all the way into Fuzzy Logic. In spite of several uninformed rants and a couple of cute sound bites from a well-known politician about Fuzzy Logic, this methodology is indeed very powerful. Oh, BTW got a self-focusing camera plus any number of other hi-tech consumer products, then you got a fuzzy logic chip embedded in it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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