Occam's razor

Believers vs non-believers "I’d shut down Apple" - Michael Dell, 1997. That line is from one of the most memorable quotes ever. Today Michael Dell said it was a misunderstood quote. Here’s the way I look at it. You have believers and non-believers. Believers will do whatever they can to make it work. If you want to make Apple great again, let’s get going. On the other hand, non-believers can’t imagine anything working. They see the downside. Startups exist in a world dominated by non-believers. I’m very happy to be working with founders to try the impossible. The odds and stats tell us that most startups won’t work out. But we are believers. And that’s what gets me up every morning. Reproducibility Aristotle′s conception about the knowledge of the individual being considered unscientific is due to lack of the field of statistics in his time, so he could not appeal to statistical averaging of the individual. History[edit] Boyle's air pump was, in terms of the 17th Century, a complicated and expensive scientific apparatus, making reproducibility of results difficult The first to stress the importance of reproducibility in science was the Irish chemist Robert Boyle, in England in the 17th century. The air pump, which in the 17th century was a complicated and expensive apparatus to build, also led to one of the first documented disputes over the reproducibility of a particular scientific phenomenon. Reproducible data[edit] Reproducibility is one component of the precision of a measurement or test method. Reproducibility is determined from controlled interlaboratory test programs or a Measurement systems analysis.[6][7] Reproducible research[edit] Noteworthy irreproducible results[edit]

Philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy has been a major influence in the development of 20th-century philosophy, especially existentialism and postmodernism. Kierkegaard was a 19th-century Danish philosopher who has been called the "Father of Existentialism".[1] His philosophy also influenced the development of existential psychology.[2] Kierkegaard criticized aspects of the philosophical systems that were brought on by philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel before him and the Danish Hegelians. He was also indirectly influenced by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.[3] He measured himself against the model of philosophy which he found in Socrates, which aims to draw one's attention not to explanatory systems, but rather to the issue of how one exists.[4] One of Kierkegaard's recurrent themes is the importance of subjectivity, which has to do with the way people relate themselves to (objective) truths. Note on pseudonyms[edit] Themes in his philosophy[edit] Alienation[edit] Death[edit]

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton PRS MP (/ˈnjuːtən/;[8] 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/7[1]) was an English physicist and mathematician (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"), first published in 1687, laid the foundations for classical mechanics. Newton made seminal contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Leibniz for the development of calculus. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour based on the observation that a prism decomposes white light into the many colours of the visible spectrum. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Life Early life Isaac Newton (Bolton, Sarah K. Middle years Mathematics Optics

woody Program Or Be Programmed On Thursday night I gave a talk at NYU Poly and in the Q&A a young man asked me for advice for "those who aren't technical". I said he should try to get technical. The next morning I met with a bunch of Sloan Business School students doing a trek through NYC. I don't mean that everyone should become a software engineer. Dennis Crowley claims to be a terrible programmer. Another great reason to "get technical" is so that you can work better with technical people. All of this is a big reason for our most recent investment, in Codecademy. I haven't written code professionally in twenty-five years. Our partner Andy wrote a great post on the USV blog announcing our investment in Codecademy. When human beings acquired language, we learned not just how to listen but how to speak.

Theory choice A main problem in the philosophy of science in the early 20th century, and under the impact of the new and controversial theories of relativity and quantum physics, came to involve how scientists should choose between competing theories. The classical answer would be to select the theory which was best verified, against which Karl Popper argued that competing theories should be subjected to comparative tests and the one chosen which survived the tests. If two theories could not, for practical reasons, be tested one should prefer the one with the highest degree of empirical content, said Popper in The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré instead, like many others, proposed simplicity as a criterion.[1] One should choose the mathematically simplest or most elegant approach. Popper's solution was subsequently criticized by Thomas S.

They're Made out of Meat by Terry Bisson "So ... what does the thinking?" "You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat." "Thinking meat! "Yes, thinking meat! "Omigod. "Thank you. "Omigod. "First it wants to talk to us. "We're supposed to talk to meat." "That's the idea. "They actually do talk, then. "Oh, yes. "I thought you just told me they used radio." "They do, but what do you think is on the radio? "Omigod. "Officially or unofficially?" "Both." "Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. "I was hoping you would say that." "It seems harsh, but there is a limit. "I agree one hundred percent. "Just one. "So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe." "That's it." "Cruel. "They'll be considered crackpots if they do. "A dream to meat! "And we marked the entire sector unoccupied." "Good. "They always come around." the end

Second law of thermodynamics The second law of thermodynamics states that every process occurring in nature proceeds in the sense in which the sum of the entropies of all bodies taking part in the process is increased. In the limit, i.e. for reversible processes, the sum of the entropies remains unchanged.[1][2][3] The second law is an empirical finding that has been accepted as an axiom of thermodynamic theory. Statistical thermodynamics, classical or quantum, explains the law. The second law has been expressed in many ways. Its first formulation is credited to the French scientist Sadi Carnot in 1824 (see Timeline of thermodynamics). Introduction[edit] The first law of thermodynamics provides the basic definition of thermodynamic energy, also called internal energy, associated with all thermodynamic systems, but unknown in classical mechanics, and states the rule of conservation of energy in nature.[4][5] For mathematical analysis of processes, entropy is introduced as follows. Various statements of the law[edit] Thus,