Here’s an interesting question a friend of mine posted to Facebook: If you could only choose five books to give to a high school drop-out to get them through the rest of their life, what books would they be and why?
From the archives: Parkinson’s and schizophrenia
March 28, 2012 By 8 Comments
Unlike my recent “From the archives” posts, this is a post I wrote way back in 2008. I had completely forgotten about it until recently, when a woman e-mailed me to thank me for it, because she had a mentally ill son and by showing her friends my post she could get them to better understand [...]
You need alegebra and statistics to understand the world
March 26, 2012 By 39 Comments
Andrew Sullivan writes a post titled Math is Useless, then follows up with reader reactions. I’m definitely on the side of this guy:
Scientists making use of philosophy
March 15, 2012 By 8 Comments
A few months ago, on my old blog, I did a “so what do people want me to write about?” thread, and got one request I wasn’t sure how to respond to at first: “I’d like to see the proper relationship between science and philosophy.” The problem with trying to answer this question is that [...]
In defense of evolutionary psychology, part 2: adaptationism and the reason human brains are so big
March 13, 2012 By 12 Comments
So in the first post of this series, I quoted the editors of The Adapted Mind as saying in effect that we can assume complex features of the human mind are evolutionary adaptations. And I know this is going to get them accused by some people of “adaptationism,” which is the alleged vice of assuming [...]
In defense of evolutionary psychology, part 1: introduction and the pleistocene
March 9, 2012 By 15 Comments
Within the skeptic/atheist/rationalist internets, there seems to be a rather striking divide between folks who take for granted the basic ideas of evolutionary psychology and drop off-hand references to Steven Pinker and Cosmides and Tooby, and folks who disagree and drop off-hand references to the fact that evolutionary psychology is evil. I’m very much in [...]
The more you know about science, the more likely you are to have accurate scientific views
March 7, 2012 By 7 Comments
Duh. But unfortunately, sometimes people deny the obvious. Russell Blackford links to this piece adapted from Chris Mooney’s new book, saying, “this article is rather interesting. I wonder whether it signals a return to form.” Mmm… interesting, yes, but the piece still includes the kind of bad arguments Mooney has become infamous for. The core [...]
Best sources for getting informed about global warming?
March 7, 2012 By 17 Comments
I’m thinking of doing a series of blog posts on global warming. Part of the reason is this: If someone tells me they don’t believe in evolution, it’s easy for me to tell them where to start their reading. I tell them to read Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth, Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution [...]
Arguments we shouldn’t be having
March 6, 2012 By 9 Comments
So a few days ago Natalie Reed wrote this great post titled “God Does Not Love Trans People.” Then our friend Be Scofield posted a totally missing the point response. I’m going to start by quoting the paragraph from Natalie that Scofield quoted from, only quoting the entire thing rather than just part of it. [...]
The fine-tuning argument and the simulation argument
February 15, 2012 By 18 Comments
Probably the worst feature of the “fine-tuning argument” (mentioned last week) is that it’s always presented as an argument for the existence of God, which it plainly isn’t. It’s just an argument for some kind of designer or other. And “some kind of designer or other” might not be anything at all like God as [...]
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