Col’s Rational World

“Understanding Science” – Lecture 2 – Bayes’ Theorem

I’ve just uploaded the second in my lecture series called “Understanding Science”. This one is on the topic of Bayes’ Theorem.

Many people have never heard of this fundamentally important rule, yet it lies at the very core of our understanding of evidence and probability. In fact, I would say it’s probably the most important equation in all of physics.

The lecture should be accessible by anyone interested enough to learn. And I really think it’s important. I’ll start working on lecture 3 (on the subject of the Scientific Method) very soon.

Psychic Detective Nonsense

So I note with interest (thanks to my convenient Perl script that emails me on occasion to let me know) that the Psychic detective has updated their website again, and I thought it might be a good idea to review their predictions for 2011. On visiting the page (http://the-psychic-detective.com/Psychic-Predictions.htm) I couldn’t help but notice that the predictions are actually for the period 2010 – 2012. So I thought what I would do is go back and see what had been predicted by the beginning of 2011 and see how accurate it all was. Which all sounded like a good idea.

Except there wasn’t anything.

One of the benefits of having a script that checks the website on a regular basis and caches it after every change is that you have a free time-machine, and you can check when changes happened. And it so happens that the psychic detective didn’t exactly put up their 2010 – 2012 predictions at the beginning of 2010. Or even 2011. No, it turns out that those predictions were first posted for public perusal on … 18th September 2011.

Yes, that’s right, they were posted almost 21 months into a 36 month prediction period. Or well over half way through it. If you read down, they try to claim that the predictions were gathered over the year 2010, and presumably apply to the period 2010-2012. If you watch over the next year, though, I’m sure this will gradually be reworded to make it look that the predictions were made years ago. Oh, and they will remove the false ones.

Unsurprisingly, they are moderately accurate (though some comments are still mystifying and absurd.) The usual stuff – financial collapse, bankruptcies, etc. Though I’m interested that they think that the dollar will collapse by the end of 2012. I don’t see that priced into the mid-term bond rates yet, but let’s give it time…

And then, at the bottom… yes, a link through to Natural News, well known nexus of quackery and nonsense. Altogether a page chock full of stupid.

“Understanding Science” Lectures

Hi all,

I’ve just uploaded the first of my new series of lectures called “Understanding Science”.

Lecture 1 – Proof

This one is on the concept of Proof, including an attempt to show what “certainty” implies in science. My aim is to develop this series into a mini lecture course that gives anyone the background they need to see why pseudoscientific claims are so awful

Let me know what you think. It’s a pretty long one because I wanted to be as thorough as I could be. I hope I’ve pitched it at the right level.

Also, in other news: Yay for the government!. (And I never thought I would ever say that).

New Year Updates

Hi all,

This is a brief New Year update to let you know about a few things that I’m working on, which will become available here soon.

Presentations – I’m working on a new presentation series called “Understanding Science”. The idea is to explain the process of science, starting by looking at what it means to “prove” something, and moving on to looking at evidence, Bayes’ Theorem, and some other fundamentally important issues. It’s aimed at non-experts, so should be understandable to all. I’ve made some progress on this recently, so I hope to get the first presentation out within the next month. Maybe sooner.

OldOnes2 – The new version of my galactic conquest game, completely rewritten with a new graphics engine in #, is almost ready for its first alpha release. I’ve been spending a huge amount of time on this game recently, and when it’s done I’ll have loads more time to spend on my presentations. More information about OldOnes2 on the OldOnes2 Project Website.

Memoriser – I wrote a small application to help me memorise Key-Value pairs (such as capital cities etc.). It’s very very basic, but you can get hold of it here: Memoriser.zip (14k)

Bunnies explain atheism

This is awesome.

If someone knows who made it please let me know, because I can’t find out.

This is exactly how philosophical debaters like William Lane Craig make me feel. It’s like they’re clinging on to some ridiculously tenuous deity-shaped corner within the entire philosophical space, and then claiming that this tiny sliver of uncertainty therefore justifies the much more specific, wide-ranging and disprovable beliefs that they chose to hold for entirely irrational reasons.

Fabulous.

Presentations Page Updated

I have updated the presentations page with links to the new YouTube presentations, and the PowerPoint slides and Rich Text versions of the transcripts. Please feel free to use them yourself, with proper acknowledgement of course.

The Final Presentation!

That’s it, I just posted the 25th and final presentation in my series on science and creationism, analysing the slide presentations of Young Earth Creationist Kent Hovind.

You can find it here:

Presentation 25 : Miscellaneous

It’s been a strange project – I originally started this because I wanted to update my slides and produce a really rigorous takedown of all of Hovind’s arguments, but after a few presentations it became so obvious to me that the arguments just didn’t deserve it – most of them were so obviously wrong, and could be shown to be wrong with just a cursory glance, that I almost felt like I was wasting my time and that I ought to instead spend more effort putting together really decent educational presentations on central topics from my own point of view.

But I’d set it as a goal to complete this series, so I persevered. And here we are. I’m going to update my Presentations page in the next few days to point at the new slides, and the transcripts that I’ve been preparing (sorry that it’s taken so long to do this!). And then I’m going to start planning my next presentation series. I think it’s going to be on the topic of scientific method. I’m beginning to realise that Creationism is just an unworthy target – those who believe it are so far away from rationality that they aren’t going to be swayed by any rational argument. As Sam Harris once said, “If someone doesn’t believe in evidence, what evidence can you give them to show them that they’re wrong?”

So my new presentations will be aimed at getting people thinking in a more scientific way. They’ll be attempting to put a stop to nonsense that lies much closer to the everyday world around us – absurdities like homeopathy and other ‘alternative’ medicines, and general antipathy towards scientific progress.

So I hope you enjoyed the presentations, and watch this space for more!

Presentation 24 done – almost there!

I’m so very nearly done with my presentation series on science and creationism.

Please take a look at Presentation 24 : Morality.

There’s only one left! I’m going to start covering topics in more detail (after a short break) so I’m taking suggestions for the first topics to cover. My current plans are:

• Logical fallacies
• Scientific method
• Bayes’ Theorem

Another presentation

I’ve just uploaded the 23rd presentation of my series on science and creationism.

Presentation 23 : Education

New Presentation Uploaded

I’ve got another presentation done, on the subject of Longevity. How did Noah live to 950 years old?

Presentation 22 : Longevity