River ,'Ariel'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
tommyrot's link a while back gave me instant allergies.
Bones: So glad that Booth got his crap together. Also ack on the shaken baby stuff!
Justice: This show's ok, but I feel like SpyDaddy is yelling all the time. Don't know that I like that.
Also.... MUSHROOM MUSHROOM. t /earworm
Jesse, I'll get back to you when I've caught up on the whole thing. I think it's a dumb idea, but not because it can't work (though if it's based on Hempel's Paradox, well, does it even have to?) but because it looks no better than the normal way.
msbelle I am so happy for you! October is so soon! Yay yay yay!
Jesse, I'll get back to you when I've caught up on the whole thing.
No need -- I don't actually care.
It follows that every observation of something which is not black and also not a raven is evidence that ravens are black. This is patently absurd.
I don't think that this is absurd. Perhaps it illustrates the difference between formal logic and the way that science works in the real world. We can never really prove that all ravens are black, because we can never find all ravens. Each additional black raven provides very little additional evidence. Sometimes it is more efficient to look for birds that resemble ravens in all other respects but are not black, and see if any of them are ravens. Unlike formal logical conclusions, the conclusions of empirical science are always provisional. Nothing is ever proven for all time. It's just a matter of putting a hypothesis at risk in as many creative ways as you can think of. Sometimes going at it backwards can help.
Nothing is ever proven for all time
Do you still call it a proof?
Do you still call it a proof?
No, it's just evidence for one view or another.
So is it a fallacy or not a fallacy? Or is it a fallacy to think it's a fallacy?
The way I had heard it (that if you want to prove that all ravens are black you could travel the world seeking out all the ravens you could, or you could sit in your study drinking gin and tonics and noting all the non-black non-ravens you could see, either way was fine) didn't imply that it was a fallacy, just non-intuitive.
Sad that I have no gin nor tonic just now. I can occasionally see ravens in my yard, though. No writing desk, alas.
I think mixing boolean logic and evidence is just asking for trouble, despite how much I like them both. Me, I'd just write "black" into the raven definition and be done with it.
Jesse, I get the article up until the estimation of population paragraph quoted. For intersections and preventing database surfing, it seems fair enough.
Michelle Trachtenberg's all grown up. At least a bit.