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Comment Feyerabend is not a typical philosopher of science (Score 1) 630

I'm a paid philosopher, and I didn't see this mentioned so I thought I'd make it clear: Feyerabend is not a typical philosopher of science. The vast majority of philosophers of science (in the majority "analytic" tradition, anyway) take real science and its successes very seriously. Feyerabend was a deliberate provocateur, and it isn't even clear how seriously he took his own arguments; some suspect he was just pushing devil's advocacy to see how far it would go.

For those who think there is no place where philosophy can inform science, you should let the rest of us know how you already solved problems crucial to science, like the nature of measurement, why we pick simpler theories (and how precisely you measure simplicity), the line between science and pseudo-science (it is not "falsification" - at least, not straightforwardly), the apparently privileged direction of time, the source and nature of physical laws and causation, the nature of explanation, etc. We poor struggling philosophers would really like to know.

Comment Just avoid Dots Gloves (Score 5, Informative) 140

Just please don't buy Dots Gloves. I was excited about them, bought them months ago based on their slick marketing, and finally got them delivered a couple weeks ago - they looked nothing like the ads. They were a pair of the cheapest, thinnest wool gloves you can imagine, with some conductive thread clumsily sewn over the very tips of the thumb and first two fingers. Horrible, horrible, horrible - so bad I've been looking for opportunities to give them bad word of mouth for it.

Education

Louisiana, Intelligent Design, and Science Classes 989

rollcall writes "The Livingston, Louisiana public school district is considering introducing intelligent design into its science curriculum. During the board's meeting Thursday, several board members expressed an interest in the teaching of creationism. 'Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed "critical thinking and creationism" in science classes. Board Member David Tate quickly responded: "We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can't we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?" Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, "I agree...you don't have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom."'"

Comment Re:Rubber-banding (Score 1) 404

Like handicapping in golf (and bowling and chess and go ...), I think one way to balance the reward of achievement against the desire for a consistently challenging but not-too-challenging game is to have a rating system, perhaps with exciting tier levels in the ratings with some bling attached. Rating is often done against real humans, of course (like Mario Kart online), but for some reason rarely against AI opponents.

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