Change You Can Believe In
No joke. The blog has changed. It is now cleaner, more in line with the Substack mirror, some pages consolidated, making it easier to maintain, so I can do the class (see below).
The Week In Doom
I used to have a feature, running Saturdays (and when I also had a Sunday post on Summa Contra Gentiles; back then I rarely slept), called the Week In Doom. It was popular. There may still be interest in this, and I’m thinking of resurrecting it on Fridays. Which is always a day of lighter traffic.
Monday will be spoken for (see the next item), leaving Tuesday through Thursday for the usual articles. We’ll see how it works. As always, I welcome your tips.
Giving some sort of structure to the week makes it easier on me, and on readers, so that they will know what to skip. Most will want to skip the class.
Class
As long-time readers know, I was canceled—among other thought crimes, I refused to DIE—and am no longer allowed to corrupt the youth in formal classrooms. So I will rot minds of all ages online.
At long last, the class will begin. For now, I’m entitling it “Uncertainty & Probability Theory: The Logic of Science”, because I will rely on my book and ET Jayne’s, with David Stove’s The Rationality of Induction. Among many others.
If it had to put it in a category, I’d say it will be a course on the philosophy of science, with probability and statistics and other math thrown in.
I thought a long time about how best to do this class, and came to the conclusion that I have no idea. But in these circuitous thoughts, I realized that I was violating the Briggs Rule of Getting It Done, which is that the only way to get things done is to get them done. He who succeeds is at least he who tries.
So starting next Monday, and for Mondays to come, excepting holy days and the like, posts will be about the class. These will be videos.
I’ll do my best to put in words what I’ll say in videos, because I like many of you am not a fan of videos. Plus I haven’t a clue how to produce or edit them. Yet there will always be more in videos, including working through any math, asides and rollicking jokes I forgot to write down.
The class will not be for everyone, of course. Lessons will be short. It will start easy enough, even trivially, but it won’t stay easy. To get through both books in bite-sized lectures will take several years. But the Summa series took over nine years, and many stuck with it. (That was one book in four thick volumes.)
Yet I have to do it. Because one of my other thought crimes was not wanting to teach probability and statistics in what I consider the wrong way, which is the way you’ll get everywhere else. Frequentism is false, as we proved the other day (blog, Substack). Why should we addle minds with what is false because that is what is expected? Answer: we should not.
I’ll litter the internet by putting the videos on various sites. Links will be in posts. Likely as not, some sites will eventually cancel them. So again we’ll see what works. I already have a strike on YouTube after idiot censors there did not like a talk I gave at an ordinary science conference. “Medical misinformation”. Sheesh.
This Post Sponsored By You
There will be no charge for any of the classes, nor of any posts. As usual.
I shall continue to rely on the patronage of generous readers. All donations and subscriptions will go to feeding me and making my work available to all. When I thank donors I say that the sign is true: I am wholly independent. (I’d take money from Big Oil and other environmental rapists, but they never offer it.)
Libraries are also free to use, but paid for by the graciousness and altruism of others. I will trust in you, and in the Lord, to provide. If any donations come in for the class, the first ones will go toward a hard drive to store videos locally. Though I might also blow it on cigars and rotgut red (Aldis charges $3.49 a bottle). My wee little laptop won’t hold but a few videos.
Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. Or use the paid subscription at Substack. Cash App: $WilliamMBriggs. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank.
Reads like something I want to do. I'm 78+ yo and still like learning.
BTW. I survived Transphobic Visibility Day (Mar 31) in flying colors. What exactly is the meaning of Transphobic? I am definitely XY.
Speaking of cigars and rotgut....
Many years ago, a friend dumped his long-time girlfriend that everybody liked and started dating a girl none of us could stand. He eventually married her and much to our surprise, he's still firmly in that marital harness. She thinks that Obama/Hillary/Joe the Vegetable/DIE/LGBLTonRye/"Love Wins"/etc., is all just wonderful beyond words and is always dispensing unwanted advice about how the rest of us would be so much better off if we would just do what we are told.
A few years ago, I received a little inheritance from one of my uncles and in pondering what to do with it, I asked a couple friends for ideas about investments and other possible ways to preserve the money. I predictably got a few ideas that, like some of my better friends, while creative, were utterly useless.
A few weeks later, at a gathering of our little group, the above mentioned wife came up to me and started issuing lots of instructions as to exactly what I should do with the money. In a desperate and ill considered attempt to shut her up and make her go away, I interrupted her and told her that my plan was to blow the cash on hookers and beer and that so far, so good.
She hasn't said a word to me since.