Flat earth conspiracy theorists have become a loud (if not very large) group since the turn of the millennium. While there are many specific arguments for a flat earth, which are not worth debunking here, all such arguments rely on an underlying principle that one’s senses are trustworthy and we should believe that things are…
Category: Science
Osteopathy’s public image in the wake of widespread medical misinformation
A few weeks ago (late summer 2023), YouTuber Owen Morgan published a video about Sherri Tenpenny, a former doctor whose testimony before the Ohio legislature about COVID-19 vaccines went viral in 2021. Notably, Tenpenny has claimed that the vaccine was making people magnetic, that this had something to do with 5G wireless communication, and also…
Naïve realism and American folk science
The following post is a critique of a particular class of worldviews and perspectives. What is naïve realism and what do I mean by folk science? Realism is a class of philosophical positions that assert the bona fide existence of certain objects, or that certain objects have certain discernible properties. The definition is vague because…
(A little bit of) the math of AI
Artificial intelligence is a vague term for computer applications that carry out some kind of decision making. In general, we’re more inclined to call something AI the more sophisticated and independent its decision making capabilities are. AI are usually designed for a single task or a small collection of related tasks. Many tasks we would…
There is a psychiatrist who believes in the evil eye (and what that can tell us about psychology)
The evil eye is a very ancient superstition. The basic idea is that looking upon another person with hatred or envy actually curses that person. Moreover, the beholder need not intend to cast a curse on their victim; rather, the curse is a natural consequence of the person’s emotionally charged gaze. The evil eye seems…
thoughts on mind 