Anaximander: And the Birth of Science
In this way the logical contradiction between radical relativism and dogmatic absolutism is resolved, but at the price of rendering the Social Justice Theory completely unfalsifiable and indefeasible: no matter what evidence about reality (physical, biological, and social) or philosophical argument may be presented, Theory always can and always doe
... See moreHelen Pluckrose • Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody
“The Liberal Principle: Checking of each by each through public criticism is the only legitimate way to decide who is right.”26 Unlike the other four, this last principle cannot be accepted by postmodern Social Justice thought. Theory insists that it isn’t acceptable to criticize some ideas. It also holds that whether a person is right or wrong can
... See moreHelen Pluckrose • Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody
The idea of building knowledge from first principles has a long tradition in philosophy. In the Western canon it goes back to Plato and Socrates, with significant contributions from Aristotle and Descartes. Essentially, they were looking for the foundational knowledge that would not change and that we could build everything else on, from our ethica
... See moreRhiannon Beaubien • The Great Mental Models Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts
In science, progress is possible. In fact, if one believes in Bayes’s theorem, scientific progress is inevitable as predictions are made and as beliefs are tested and refined.* The march toward scientific progress is not always straightforward, and some well-regarded (even “consensus”) theories are later proved wrong—but either way science tends to
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