There was another Broken Science event this past weekend in the Phoenix area. Yours Truly was there.
I gather the videos will be on line at some point, at the Broken Science YouTube channel, among other places. Meanwhile, here’s a summary.
Co-founder Emily Kaplan (who organized everything) opened the festivities giving us the state of affairs. Incidentally, she has many new short info videos on the YouTube channel.
Up next was co-founder Greg Glassman. He started with a lovely blow up photograph of the 1927 Solvay Conference, which is interesting in the history of science for many reasons. For us because it was there the idea that probability could be ontic—that it was a real physical thing—was solidified.
I followed up with a short speech on why I thought this was nuts, and the harms that have come from it. Both in physics and in all fields which use statistical models.
The first featured speaker, physicist Anthony (Anton) Garrett, gave us all background on these ideas. Anton had the distinct advantage of knowing and working with both ET Jaynes and David Stove. And if my memory is right (I am a terrible note taker) he also knew Richard Threlkeld Cox.
Cox was the physicist—and it seems to almost always be physicists who make the leaps in our understanding of probability—who derived probability from some simple, intuitive axioms. He showed that measures of belief that fit these axioms naturally lead to probability.
If you’ve ever seen Kolmogorov’s axiomatic approach to probability, you’ll get the same answer, excepting some technicalities not important to us. But it’s much clearer under Cox that all probabilities of propositions are conditional on the assumptions we make. I show in Uncertainty, you get that with Kolmogorov, too, but because he was much more concerned about mathematics, it’s harder to spot.
If you want to follow Cox’s proof, you can find a link to it at the BSI Critical Thinking Camp site. If you’ve seen any kind of functional analysis, you’ll find Cox’s treatment a breeze. If not, and for fun, here are his three axioms, modified (or rather abbreviated) from the Wokepedia entry (which is linked at BSI site):
“The plausibility of a proposition is a real number and is dependent on information we have related to the proposition.”
“Plausibilities should vary sensibly with the assessment of plausibilities in the model.”
” If the plausibility of a proposition can be derived in many ways, all the results must be equal.”
Naturally, there’s a lot of ankle biting over Cox’s proof, with many pointing out this or that condition, like the bit about “real” (meaning unreal) numbers, which makes it seem like it doesn’t work. Countering these are many others showing that, yes, indeed, it does work. I’m in this camp, of course, as was Jaynes and as is Anton. He has a New & Improved proof which fixes the complaints.
Incidentally, none of the complaints are valid if we start and stay with finite and discrete measures. It’s only going out to limits that things get weird. As they always do when infinities are involved. Because Infinity is a bizarre place. We can scarcely grasp the infinity of counting numbers (1,2,3,…) let alone “real” ones. So it’s no wonder that when we say we can quantify our uncertainty over numbers we can’t even fully grasp, disputes arise.
Next up was Gerd Gigerenzer, who is not only always worth reading, but is an absolute sweetheart. Several of his papers are at the BSI link, and must be read.
Like “Statistical Rituals: The Replication Delusion and How We Got There“. Couple of sentences from the Abstract will give you the flavor:
The “replication crisis” has been attributed to misguided external incentives gamed by researchers (the strategic-game hypothesis). Here, I want to draw attention to a complementary internal factor, namely, researchers’ widespread faith in a statistical ritual and associated delusions (the statistical-ritual hypothesis). The “null ritual,” unknown in statistics proper, eliminates judgment precisely at points where statistical theories demand it.
Greg put up this poster, which fleshes out the blush-inducing cringe of scientists chasing after wee Ps.
Now even though there is argument after argument, and demonstrations galore over a long, oh a very long, period, showing P-values should be thrown on the fire of failed ideas, they are still used.
In large part, as Gigerenzer showed us, ritual. Wee Ps are magic. They remove the need to think, a function which is always welcome.
In addition to the talks and very welcome camaraderie, we had many discussions, great food, better wine (too much!), a Mariachi band, and lovely warm sunshine.
More to come.
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So is it in Broken Science's remit to address the fraudulent "germ theory" and the smoke'n'mirrors sciences of virology and vaccinology. I see one of the BSI talks is on all-cause mortality which no doubt was prompted in response to the alleged covid pandemic but the all-cause mortality issue appears at the end of a long line of scientific frauds starting with the alleged phenomenon of viruses and then more specifically the sars-cov-2 virus.
I highly recommend Mike Stone's substack, mikestone.substack.com and website, www.viroliegy.com, subtitled, Exposing the lies of Germ Theory and virology using their own sources. I cited the paragraph below on FB yesterday to hardcore mainstreamers but may as well have said the moon is made of cheese.
https://viroliegy.com/2022/01/05/was-smallpox-really-eradicated/
While the WHO set off a global call to eradicate smallpox in 1958, the “poxviruses” apparently did not get the memo as another curious thing happened that year: the discovery of the monkeypox. This was a new disease eerily reminiscent of smallpox that supposedly only affected monkeys in captivity that were used for experimentation. However, twelve years after its discovery and a decade before the declaration of the defeat of smallpox, the monkeypox conveniently decided to jump from animal to man. Of course, the fact that this identical-to-smallpox-in-every-way “virus” jumped ship to infect humans at the height of the smallpox vaccination campaign is just a “coincidence.” Or could it be that the same symptoms of disease associated with smallpox were rebranded, relabeled, and sold as a new disease in order to give the appearance of a successful eradication campaign? They did it before with the chickenpox as I detailed here:
https://viroliegy.com/2022/01/03/did-william-heberden-distinguish-chickenpox-from-smallpox-in-1767/
How refreshing to see increasingly visible consciousness, after eternal observance, of how screwed up - for those that breath it - THE SYSTEM is. And at the same time being reminded at how stubborn and entrenched THE CULT nevertheless is.
THE TRUTH is marching on leaving behind ALL THOSE who are to afraid of THE LIGHT/LIFE!
SOLI DEO GLORIA!