WEBVTT 00:21.684 --> 00:22.024 Test 1-2. 00:22.264 --> 00:22.744 Test 1-2. 00:22.804 --> 00:24.565 Should be live. 01:04.765 --> 01:06.746 Good morning, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. 01:06.786 --> 01:11.507 Uncertainty 101, part two, starting understanding how science is broken. 01:11.567 --> 01:17.609 I'm going to switch right away to the video because I think I want to just get started right away. 01:17.669 --> 01:20.670 This is the second video from Mr. Briggs. 01:24.056 --> 01:25.956 Hello ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jonathan Couey. 01:25.976 --> 01:27.257 This is GigaOM Biological. 01:27.317 --> 01:28.597 We are doing Uncertainty 101. 01:29.137 --> 01:43.480 It's kind of a probability class that's loosely designed around the book Probability Theory by Jaynes, but it's also gonna use some stuff out of the book Uncertainty by William Briggs, and that is our tutor for this class. 01:43.560 --> 01:45.220 It is his class that I am auditing. 01:45.720 --> 01:50.841 You can find it on his sub stack, and so don't think that this is my work, this is me just 01:52.021 --> 02:00.229 giving you an excuse to audit his work, and we're doing it together so that you don't have to feel so silly about not understanding all the math that I won't also understand. 02:01.210 --> 02:04.453 Let's make sure that we understand where we are. 02:04.473 --> 02:15.744 We did Uncertainty 101, and basically what we talked about yesterday, rather Tuesday, was that if we have something that's uncertain, then there also must be certainty. 02:17.239 --> 02:28.991 And so the pursuit of that certainty or quantifying our likelihood of being certain about something is essentially what probability is attempted to be used for in science. 02:29.071 --> 02:31.253 Logic is not the finest type of thought. 02:32.276 --> 02:34.516 It's in induction, right? 02:35.157 --> 02:38.317 Philosophy of science is quantifying uncertainty. 02:38.357 --> 02:39.718 This is what they're trying to do. 02:40.718 --> 02:50.080 So if the basic notation is what we basically learned last time, and A in this notation is just a proposition like rain is wet. 02:51.360 --> 02:56.681 And so A, therefore A is just the most basic notation about how you know something. 02:56.781 --> 03:00.742 A is wet, rain is wet, and therefore A is rain is wet. 03:01.983 --> 03:17.730 Now the logic comes in when you start to put a subjectively chosen proposition as a consequence of another maybe subjectively chosen proposition. 03:17.770 --> 03:27.434 So if A, then B, and then do logic on this, there is the possibility of you starting to make assumptions based on assumptions, or in essence, 03:28.507 --> 03:33.488 executing logic on things and assuming that that logic makes these assumptions true. 03:34.288 --> 03:38.009 When in reality, those assumptions are subjectively chosen at the very beginning. 03:38.989 --> 03:42.150 And so if you do science this way, you can get lost very quickly. 03:43.030 --> 03:49.231 And so of course we haven't, that's not the perfect explanation for the first class, but it's just where my notes sit. 03:50.092 --> 03:51.932 And I thought I would try to bring you up to speed. 03:51.972 --> 03:56.853 And then now I can feel free to, um, 03:58.373 --> 04:05.703 to set this over here and turn this on and then I can get Matt talking, which is what I want. 04:05.723 --> 04:06.905 So let's listen. 04:08.194 --> 04:13.835 All right, my friends, welcome back to our class on certainty and probability theory. 04:14.536 --> 04:17.476 Last week, we started off with James. 04:17.516 --> 04:20.077 We started off with James, his book, Probability Theory. 04:20.117 --> 04:37.121 We got a full three pages into the book by examining, in a loose fashion, some very elementary ideas of logic, which I told you some people take as the epitome of all thinking, which I don't believe is true. 04:39.091 --> 04:43.452 And I'm going to start proving that to you today. 04:43.892 --> 04:49.654 We're gonna use my book today, Uncertainty, and I'm gonna have an excerpt of this stuff, the material that you'll need. 04:50.214 --> 04:51.815 It'll be on the blog post. 04:51.855 --> 05:00.738 It's either at my site, WM Briggs, I don't know where you're seeing this video, but it'll be on my site, wmbriggs.com or wmbriggs.substack.com. 05:01.698 --> 05:05.039 I'm gonna start off in chapter one in my book, which is about 05:06.149 --> 05:06.449 Truth. 05:06.529 --> 05:11.932 We talked about truth a little bit last week and uncertainty and so forth, but I didn't define any of those things. 05:13.172 --> 05:15.293 And we need to understand exactly what they are. 05:15.373 --> 05:17.654 So this is the title of today's lesson. 05:18.515 --> 05:21.816 The Most Infamous Question Ever Asked. 05:22.617 --> 05:27.879 And it was asked not because the speaker or the questioner did not know the answer. 05:27.939 --> 05:28.640 He surely did. 05:28.680 --> 05:30.420 He had truth right in front of him. 05:31.021 --> 05:33.382 It's because he did not want to believe 05:34.803 --> 05:38.244 the result of his cogitations or his deductions and so forth. 05:38.264 --> 05:39.505 So we have to talk about that. 05:39.845 --> 05:43.826 That's going to lead us to the topic of the subject of necessary and conditional truths and so on. 05:44.586 --> 05:50.188 Now, we have to separate, we have to, we seriously have to separate academia. 05:52.508 --> 05:54.069 Here's a mathematical equation for you. 06:04.207 --> 06:10.529 Academia certainly does not equal, mathematical symbol for you, does not equal science or knowledge. 06:11.189 --> 06:16.651 Now for a long time there was a strong positive correlation. 06:16.691 --> 06:25.133 We'll talk about correlation and its sense of causality or non-causality when we get to that a long time from now. 06:26.277 --> 06:32.921 But there was a positive correlation between academia and science and academia and knowledge. 06:33.902 --> 06:34.882 That's out the window now. 06:35.303 --> 06:36.924 The correlation is now negative. 06:38.345 --> 06:40.066 And Alan Saber, you've seen this video. 06:40.486 --> 06:41.767 I'll probably put a link up to it. 06:41.787 --> 06:44.248 You've seen the video in which he is discussing 06:45.909 --> 06:55.052 deficient thought of graduates of university, of academia, who are out in the field and he wants to discuss what works. 06:56.353 --> 07:01.174 Why does this land keep its water and why does this land lose its water and so forth? 07:01.574 --> 07:06.616 And he says the students literally will not believe anything unless it's in a peer-reviewed paper. 07:07.216 --> 07:19.303 Well, peer review, again, was one of those concepts that had a positive correlation with knowledge and truth, which has now turned either no correlation and even some fields a negative correlation. 07:19.843 --> 07:22.345 So we need to make sure we're not understanding academia. 07:22.665 --> 07:24.266 We're not trying to understand papers. 07:24.306 --> 07:29.269 We're not trying to understand the behavior of scientists now, because in science, in academia, 07:31.815 --> 07:38.159 What counts, of course, is bringing in money, prestige, but they also love to solve puzzles for themselves. 07:38.199 --> 07:39.200 So I'm gonna read you this quote. 07:40.681 --> 07:43.803 And they love skepticism, particularly in philosophy and so forth. 07:44.103 --> 07:52.789 They like to create these puzzles, they call them problems, and then try to solve them, solve these questions that don't need solving. 07:53.670 --> 07:55.291 So this is a long time ago. 07:55.331 --> 07:59.454 This was six years ago or more than that, maybe close to 70, 80 years ago. 08:00.074 --> 08:00.455 He wrote, 08:01.275 --> 08:10.682 And he was exasperated even then over the pretended puzzlement that academics have over what truth is or whether truth exists and so forth. 08:11.243 --> 08:18.909 He said the Academy in its dread, superstition, and dogmatic reaction has been oriented purposely towards skepticism. 08:19.844 --> 08:40.608 and that a conclusion is admired in proportion as it is skeptical, that a jejune argument for skepticism will be admitted where a scrupulous defense of knowledge is derided or ignored, that an affirmative theory is a mere annoyance to be stabbed down as quickly as possible to a normal level of denial and defeat. 08:40.668 --> 08:45.049 Well, that's the way it is in academia. 08:45.069 --> 08:47.610 That's not the way it is for us, okay? 08:49.164 --> 08:53.828 We're not trying to shore up any kind of academic sense right here. 08:53.848 --> 08:56.270 We're trying to get at truth. 08:56.770 --> 08:58.292 And truth obviously exists. 08:58.592 --> 09:02.015 Some people will say, they'll say this, they will say this. 09:06.518 --> 09:06.899 True. 09:09.941 --> 09:14.205 Truth does not exist. 09:15.586 --> 09:16.587 They will say it is true. 09:17.067 --> 09:17.988 Truth does not exist. 09:18.615 --> 09:21.799 Jay, thank you very much for the idea about caffeine. 09:21.879 --> 09:22.760 It is not working. 09:25.784 --> 09:27.726 My screen still falls asleep, everybody. 09:28.046 --> 09:33.313 The problem is, long ago, this dumb laptop of mine, it had a problem. 09:33.373 --> 09:33.633 It was... 09:36.152 --> 09:38.653 using too much power when the lid was closed and so forth. 09:38.673 --> 09:41.835 So I went in and monkeyed with the BIOS to make sure it shut itself off. 09:42.495 --> 09:44.276 And now it's shutting itself off. 09:44.696 --> 09:48.798 And I have to go back in and unmonkey it, but I haven't done that yet. 09:48.858 --> 09:51.280 So I have to keep popping over to that stupid computer. 09:52.240 --> 10:00.524 Anyway, they won't say it in quite this form, but they'll say, well, they'll write long papers in order to try to tell you that truth does not exist. 10:01.005 --> 10:03.146 Or they will say, you know, it is certain. 10:04.333 --> 10:06.594 there is no truth, which is another way of saying it. 10:06.914 --> 10:15.138 But we're interested in truth and we're interested more, obviously we're always aiming for truth, our intellects are aiming towards truth. 10:15.918 --> 10:19.040 But there's a lot of things in which we have uncertainty. 10:19.980 --> 10:26.003 Uncertainty and probability necessarily point towards truth. 10:27.110 --> 10:29.672 We're uncertain about a truth. 10:30.452 --> 10:34.055 We're uncertain about a proposition that may be true or false. 10:34.515 --> 10:37.357 If we knew it was true or false, we would say it's true or false. 10:37.878 --> 10:39.199 But we don't, we're uncertain. 10:39.719 --> 10:44.422 But in order to have uncertainty, we need to have an underlying truth. 10:44.442 --> 10:46.304 So truth certainly exists for us. 10:47.506 --> 10:51.028 So we're not going to, we're not going to fart with that kind of thing too long. 10:52.288 --> 10:54.449 And the best definition, what do you want a definition? 10:54.489 --> 10:55.510 We're going to have a definition. 10:55.570 --> 11:04.754 Your common sense definition is probably good enough for most of this class, but we'll go back to Aristotle, rightly called the philosopher by the scholastics. 11:05.814 --> 11:07.515 We'll also call him the philosopher. 11:08.115 --> 11:12.057 Aristotle's definition, to say of what is, that it is not, 11:13.300 --> 11:24.586 or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true. 11:25.066 --> 11:25.647 Simple as that. 11:26.107 --> 11:32.070 Naturally, academics came along later and they have to give a label for this, very common sense view. 11:32.470 --> 11:35.372 They call it the correspondence theory of truth. 11:35.872 --> 11:37.433 Well, we can eliminate that theory. 11:37.733 --> 11:39.594 It doesn't make any sense because 11:42.413 --> 11:53.540 All theories are judged by this sort of dichotomy of true or false, the Aristotelian division of things in true or false. 11:53.740 --> 12:02.445 And there's even a mathematics, they have this, there's a subject called logic, which is treated with the true false binary, if you like. 12:04.949 --> 12:15.351 But they have all kinds of other logics where they invoke different numbers of conditions, not just true, false, but there could be three, there could be four, there could be more. 12:16.211 --> 12:31.374 But it's funny, in all the proofs of all these kinds of things, in order to prove these theorems about this and that, that correspond to all these things, they still use the binary true or false theory to prove these theories within these multivalued 12:31.974 --> 12:33.155 Logic sort of thing. 12:33.195 --> 12:34.795 So no matter what we can't escape it. 12:34.815 --> 12:39.157 All right I'm not going to go on and on about that any more than that. 12:39.217 --> 12:53.204 I think that's Exactly what it is and we're going to talk about eventually Realism we're going to hold with the philosophy of moderate realism, which is to say the external world exists and 12:54.218 --> 12:55.561 and we could know things about it. 12:56.282 --> 12:57.204 It's as simple as that. 12:57.284 --> 13:01.131 All scientists are realists in this way. 13:02.998 --> 13:05.579 But there's all kind of shades to that, which we'll get to. 13:05.919 --> 13:07.659 We don't need any more than that today. 13:09.200 --> 13:10.600 And so here he is. 13:11.220 --> 13:17.642 In mathematics, though, there is the idea of nominalism, that people believe that numbers are just creations. 13:19.743 --> 13:24.584 Our theorems are just creations, just products, like an artistic fever dream, if you like. 13:25.134 --> 13:27.481 And so in case he doesn't go there, I want to read this part. 13:27.541 --> 13:31.492 So modern realism is the common sense position that there are there exist. 13:31.833 --> 13:32.816 This is where I'm reading from. 13:34.266 --> 13:45.069 There exist real things and that there is an existence independent of our minds, that an external world is out there and that we can know it, and that we can know things that they are in themselves, to coin a phrase. 13:45.829 --> 13:52.691 Moderate realism holds that greenness exists apart from or in addition to individual green things. 13:53.451 --> 13:55.572 Exists in an intellectual idea, that is. 13:55.672 --> 14:00.273 Realism says that the idea of color exists independent of individual colored things. 14:01.073 --> 14:09.826 Mathematicians are realists when they insist all triangles have three straight sides and an interior sum of angles of 180 degrees. 14:09.987 --> 14:14.974 Individual approximations to or implementations of triangles also exist. 14:15.731 --> 14:20.994 But given the way the world is, all are imperfect representations of the universal ideal. 14:21.074 --> 14:21.875 Try drawing one. 14:22.595 --> 14:25.597 Catness exists, and so do individual cats. 14:26.117 --> 14:30.159 We can tell cats from dogs because we know the nature or essence of both. 14:30.780 --> 14:38.324 Knifeness exists, as do individual knives, even though it's not always clear if a given object is a knife or only acts like one. 14:39.701 --> 14:51.543 I think this is a really wonderful paragraph to try and get at the philosophical basis for understanding and how then probability is applied to realistic 14:52.557 --> 14:56.820 probabilities or not realistic probabilities of knowing things. 14:57.020 --> 14:58.621 So that's really where we are with this. 14:59.221 --> 15:00.022 I know it's hard. 15:00.142 --> 15:01.183 I know it's hard for me. 15:02.123 --> 15:04.345 But we're going to get through it and we're going to keep doing it. 15:04.365 --> 15:06.306 Maybe we have to do it again, but we're going to keep working. 15:06.486 --> 15:07.747 Don't hold with nominalism. 15:07.807 --> 15:09.448 I hold also in mathematics. 15:09.708 --> 15:13.631 There's an Aristotelian sort of realistic approach to mathematics too. 15:13.671 --> 15:14.511 It's not as well known. 15:14.531 --> 15:16.693 There's sort of a platonic version, which is similar. 15:17.413 --> 15:23.137 that a lot of mathematicians hold, that hold numbers are real, and they exist in some kind of Empyrean. 15:24.718 --> 15:25.879 That's almost right. 15:25.939 --> 15:29.301 I think the Aristotelian version is better, in which we'll get to. 15:29.641 --> 15:31.722 Jim Franklin's got a great book on that. 15:31.842 --> 15:34.584 I don't know where it is, at the tip of my fingers. 15:34.624 --> 15:36.085 But James Franklin, you look it up. 15:36.145 --> 15:40.448 The Aristotelian Philosophy of Mathematics, or something like this. 15:41.519 --> 15:43.000 All right, well, there are truths. 15:44.260 --> 15:47.842 That much I think is probably agreed to by all of you. 15:48.042 --> 15:49.183 But can we know truths? 15:50.144 --> 15:51.064 And I say, yes. 15:52.064 --> 15:54.866 If you disagree, you agree. 15:55.786 --> 15:59.568 If you say it is certain, I know it's a fact, we can't know any facts. 15:59.849 --> 16:03.190 Well, you've just created a fact which you say you know. 16:03.590 --> 16:05.612 So you have contradicted yourself. 16:05.632 --> 16:07.312 So yes, we can know truths. 16:07.693 --> 16:08.193 And in fact, 16:11.579 --> 16:23.448 Ladies and gentlemen, it is official on November 3rd, like it or not, Giga Home Biological is going to do a live live stream at the local community center in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania on November 3rd. 16:23.468 --> 16:27.571 I just got official word that the reservation was accepted. 16:27.631 --> 16:29.013 That means I have the whole place. 16:29.733 --> 16:31.674 We have enough room for 250 people. 16:31.714 --> 16:32.974 I'm going to be live on stage. 16:33.014 --> 16:35.976 I'm going to do a live stream right after the Brownstone event. 16:36.836 --> 16:47.181 And I want everybody that wants to come to be there, to meet in person, to start to network, and just to generally celebrate how much ass we've kicked over the last four years. 16:47.741 --> 16:51.803 So November 3rd, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, from 2 p.m. 16:51.843 --> 16:52.643 to 6 p.m. 16:52.783 --> 16:54.224 on Sunday, November 3rd. 16:54.384 --> 16:56.685 Be there, be square, and let's get back to class. 16:59.221 --> 17:01.623 In philosophy, usually, we keep this word. 17:02.563 --> 17:03.364 Look at this dumb thing. 17:04.904 --> 17:06.505 He keeps going to sleep. 17:06.666 --> 17:07.406 I'm staring at it. 17:07.426 --> 17:08.767 When it happens, I can catch it. 17:08.867 --> 17:10.528 But if I'm not, it does this. 17:11.789 --> 17:14.190 We can only know what is true. 17:15.611 --> 17:16.732 We can know what is true. 17:17.152 --> 17:18.853 But we can, of course, we can believe anything. 17:18.873 --> 17:19.833 And we'll get to that. 17:19.853 --> 17:21.975 That's just one of my tag phrases. 17:23.283 --> 17:26.484 All right, so we're talking about epistemology. 17:26.524 --> 17:36.307 We want to get into epistemology because we want to understand how we know things, what we can know, because if we're aiming after truth, we don't always hit it. 17:36.767 --> 17:38.068 That much is obvious enough. 17:38.448 --> 17:42.269 And we're going to use probability, not always in its quantified form. 17:42.309 --> 17:49.232 Not all probability we'll see can be quantified, but a lot of it can, and that helps us understand exactly what probability is. 17:49.312 --> 17:49.972 Last week we 17:50.512 --> 17:56.094 We looked at logic, and we use logic to prove that probability is a branch of logic. 17:56.134 --> 17:59.556 And we'll do more in-depth proofs of that when we get to it. 18:01.457 --> 18:01.797 All right. 18:03.871 --> 18:05.373 You know, it's not possible to doubt. 18:05.713 --> 18:06.474 It's not possible. 18:07.035 --> 18:13.203 We're not going to go into this too much because none of us, I think most of my audience don't follow this line of thought. 18:13.223 --> 18:20.793 But I have a nice little quote in here from David Stove too about how we all can't be hallucinating or illusions or anything like that. 18:20.833 --> 18:22.255 It's just not logically possible. 18:22.702 --> 18:25.863 Now, I wanted to comment on something that's in the chat. 18:26.523 --> 18:43.168 It is possible that the first stream that I did that was two hours long, the biology 101 underscore two, was too long for my own server to fully transcode before I started this one, which is actually a good test for the server to see how it works. 18:43.828 --> 18:50.390 But that might be why the traditional address to this live stream has changed because it may have assigned a new one because I 18:51.050 --> 18:52.631 the other one was still being transcoded. 18:52.671 --> 18:56.213 I don't know, but anyway, I'm glad to hear the report that I'm live on both of those. 18:56.914 --> 19:00.536 If anyone else wants to confirm that, where you're watching and that I'm live, that would be great. 19:00.956 --> 19:06.500 All doubt terminates in, you know, our sense impressions. 19:07.321 --> 19:19.969 Peter Krupp, this is Peter Krupp, the philosopher Peter Krupp, he says, as Aristotle showed, again Aristotle, all backward doubt terminates in two places, psychological and indubitable immediate sense experience, 19:21.024 --> 19:43.103 and logically indubitable first principles such as x is not not x or not x the principle of non-contradiction well what is the principle of non-contradiction this is a good one to start with A is going to be some proposition as we had last time 19:50.011 --> 19:53.518 cannot both be simultaneously true. 19:54.380 --> 19:56.684 Either A is true or not A is true. 19:57.452 --> 20:01.695 They can't be based on the same evidence, based on the same evidence. 20:01.755 --> 20:02.535 Aha, what's that mean? 20:02.575 --> 20:03.896 Well, we'll come to that in just a second. 20:04.236 --> 20:07.418 They cannot, based on the same evidence, be simultaneously true. 20:08.039 --> 20:09.640 It is not possible to doubt this. 20:09.920 --> 20:18.906 It is not possible to doubt the principle of non-contradiction, that something can be known to be true and also known to be false at the same time. 20:19.506 --> 20:23.989 You can claim, a lot of people claim that they believe that this is doubtful. 20:25.728 --> 20:27.489 But nobody really believes it in real life. 20:27.549 --> 20:30.851 It's just one of these academic problems that people create for themselves. 20:33.593 --> 20:45.101 You ask a professor who doubts about truth and then tell him his parking pass has expired and it can no longer be used, and you'll suddenly learn from this skeptic just exactly what truth is. 20:46.182 --> 20:48.143 Well, the principle of non-contradiction. 20:49.264 --> 20:50.264 That's an easy one to see. 20:52.694 --> 20:54.175 We need to get a little bit deeper into it. 20:54.756 --> 20:58.459 So now we're going to talk about something I think is extremely important. 21:00.421 --> 21:01.381 Extremely important. 21:02.262 --> 21:07.046 One of the most important things we could do because it's going to turn out all knowledge is conditional. 21:08.387 --> 21:10.009 All probability is conditional. 21:10.769 --> 21:13.512 And so that leads to the 21:17.058 --> 21:20.760 And what he means in his book, he says it very well. 21:20.820 --> 21:25.743 In one sentence, he just says it, that all truths are based on assumptions that underlie them. 21:25.763 --> 21:26.144 Where is it? 21:43.373 --> 21:44.394 Come on, where did I read it? 21:44.614 --> 21:45.835 I just read it, darn it. 21:55.324 --> 22:19.709 When we say the latter is necessarily true is never meant to imply that the proposition is true in or because of some theory the proposition is necessarily true for reasons in the proposition itself and The evidence which supports it the proposition is not true in or because of a theory and it is true because it is true That wasn't the quite the part I wanted to read but I do know I'll find it in a second I'm just gonna hit play and then I'll look for it in the 22:20.435 --> 22:26.577 that there are necessary and conditional truths and necessary and conditional probabilities. 22:26.617 --> 22:27.497 So let me write that up. 22:39.660 --> 22:42.621 A necessary truth is a truth that 22:44.775 --> 22:46.456 cannot be disbelieved. 22:46.857 --> 22:53.361 A necessary truth is a truth that is true because the way things are are the way things are. 22:54.182 --> 22:59.826 The way the Lord created the universe, or if you don't believe in that, it's the way the universe is and it cannot be doubted. 22:59.846 --> 23:01.027 There are necessary truths. 23:01.047 --> 23:05.750 There's a fund of them in mathematics, as probably most people would agree. 23:05.990 --> 23:20.118 And this is very important because a lot of paparian science and a lot of the things that happen in biology are based on the idea that every proposition is subject to uncertainty, that we can never know something for certain. 23:20.998 --> 23:30.604 That is the principle by which paparian reiteration of testing of hypotheses has ruined science, that we can know nothing for certain. 23:31.482 --> 23:32.585 And of course we can. 23:33.106 --> 23:39.341 Of course we can know something for certain, to the best of our knowledge, to the best of our observations. 23:40.882 --> 23:47.448 We can also know something is false given the data or the observations or the experience that we've had. 23:47.908 --> 23:48.869 And that's the point. 23:49.289 --> 23:57.376 Science has instilled in us the idea that nothing can ever be proved because nothing, things can only be falsified. 23:57.516 --> 24:09.106 And then the falsification is never 100, that's what this is about and why we need to get to David Stowe's destruction of Popper and his contemporaries. 24:10.811 --> 24:11.831 That's where we're going here. 24:12.752 --> 24:15.753 Conditional truths, however, are even more common. 24:15.773 --> 24:19.315 There's an infinite variety of these, and we use these in every day. 24:19.355 --> 24:24.137 So let me give you a good example, just to make sure that dumb thing stays away. 24:24.337 --> 24:26.499 Let's use a logical argument like we had last week. 24:26.879 --> 24:37.824 If we have f, x, y, z are natural numbers, and we have, make sure I quote myself right, 24:44.844 --> 24:46.705 You can give that to me if you want. 24:48.566 --> 24:49.666 Or did you open some already? 24:50.227 --> 24:52.868 OK, so here's our list of premises. 24:53.368 --> 24:57.210 Always remember, we always have our premises on top. 24:59.111 --> 24:59.831 We're accepting this. 24:59.871 --> 25:02.492 We're accepting that x, y, and z are just some natural numbers. 25:02.772 --> 25:13.417 We're accepting that x is larger than y. We're accepting that y is larger or greater than z. And from this, we can conclude with certainty that x is greater than z. 25:15.993 --> 25:17.256 This is a conditional truth. 25:17.858 --> 25:22.028 It is conditional on these premises. 25:23.635 --> 25:28.116 It's conditional on these premises, and if we remove some of these premises, it's no longer going to be the case. 25:28.136 --> 25:38.139 For instance, we can't just take two numbers, x and z, any two numbers everywhere in the world, and have that x is greater than z. It's not going to happen, always. 25:38.479 --> 25:41.140 So this is a conditional truth. 25:41.540 --> 25:43.600 It's conditional on these premises. 25:44.521 --> 25:47.561 And if we change some of these premises, why then we have 25:51.294 --> 25:52.535 we have a different conclusion. 25:52.815 --> 25:54.116 The conclusion may be false. 25:54.176 --> 25:55.557 The conclusion may be uncertain. 25:55.577 --> 25:57.879 The conclusion may be anything if we change these premises. 25:58.459 --> 26:10.227 Make sure you see that, like it or not, what he is still doing is he's teaching us the notation of Bayesian logic and Bayesian probability right now. 26:10.287 --> 26:12.569 This line still means therefore, right? 26:12.609 --> 26:19.074 So if x, y, and z are numbers, and x is greater than y, and y is greater than z, then 26:21.488 --> 26:30.457 Therefore, x will be greater than z. This is not true for all numbers, as he said, but given these premises, then this is a conclusion. 26:31.898 --> 26:34.461 If you change the premises, you change the conclusion, right? 26:34.481 --> 26:35.622 That's a conditional truth. 26:36.368 --> 26:49.578 Now, the principle of non-contradiction, which we did, a proposition cannot be true and false simultaneously based on the same evidence, conditioned on the same evidence, given the same premises, accepting the same assumptions. 26:49.879 --> 26:52.180 All of those are the same way of saying the same thing. 26:52.950 --> 26:59.832 So now that starts, like all arguments start, which we're going to learn in more detail. 26:59.852 --> 27:11.494 I'm not going to go on and on about it today, but we're going to learn in more detail when we talk about intuition and intellection and induction, that all arguments are conditional. 27:12.194 --> 27:14.315 They may come down to sense impression. 27:14.355 --> 27:18.156 They may start at sense impressions, but those sense impressions, 27:20.357 --> 27:27.479 and the logic we use to build them together, to come to universal beliefs and logic and so forth, and to come to necessary truths. 27:30.139 --> 27:33.740 Those things, we have to understand how they come about. 27:33.780 --> 27:37.341 We have to understand how they're a higher form of thinking, the logic and all that. 27:37.401 --> 27:38.641 We will come to that. 27:39.061 --> 27:41.542 So for right now, we're just going to press on. 27:43.222 --> 27:49.664 Now there's lots of, I'll give you one quick example, just one quick example before we, 27:51.929 --> 27:55.170 Little self-addressed stamped envelope from Josh in California. 27:55.250 --> 27:57.271 One which you know, just to give you a little teaser. 27:57.351 --> 27:58.172 Gonna send some stuff. 27:58.192 --> 28:00.873 For all numbers, for all numbers, all natural numbers. 28:00.973 --> 28:02.593 Stuff will be in the mail in a day. 28:03.534 --> 28:05.795 Self-addressed stamped envelope will be filled. 28:06.735 --> 28:18.920 Then... For all natural numbers, if X equals Y, then Y equals X. 28:21.084 --> 28:22.105 It's obviously true, right? 28:22.125 --> 28:29.449 This is an axiom in arithmetic or basic mathematics from Pinot. 28:30.610 --> 28:31.491 It's a belief. 28:32.791 --> 28:36.654 You believe that this is true and it cannot be proved true. 28:37.799 --> 28:39.440 You cannot check this for every number. 28:40.000 --> 28:40.721 You cannot check. 28:40.961 --> 28:42.782 You could check it for a good number of numbers. 28:42.822 --> 28:43.443 You can go one. 28:43.483 --> 28:46.345 Yeah, that's true for one, two, three, four, and so on. 28:46.745 --> 28:49.707 You can go all the way up to, but you can't go out to infinity. 28:49.747 --> 28:50.487 Nobody can do this. 28:50.807 --> 28:52.188 We have to believe that this is true. 28:52.228 --> 28:53.089 It's obviously true. 28:53.169 --> 28:55.410 I think it's true, but you can't prove it's true. 28:55.450 --> 28:56.751 So empiricism is out. 28:59.113 --> 29:04.896 Dear Dr. Cooey, many thanks for specifically mentioning the murder and lies related to COVID treatments in the hospitals. 29:04.956 --> 29:27.870 My sister and brother-in-law spoke to my dad's hospital at the Moonship CHD vaxxed bus tour, and since seeing your show and the Housatonic show, specifically the Leslie Batts interview, my sister and I went through our dad's hospital records, and the oxygen treatment alone is enough to send someone's shivers down someone's spine. 29:29.144 --> 29:35.390 I'll share the details in an email or ask my sister to, as she's the storyteller, record keeper. 29:38.092 --> 29:47.941 I made these stars for you and your wife with mindful intention and love. 29:49.802 --> 29:51.484 I hope I'm not too late to get a sticker. 29:59.770 --> 30:01.752 They killed a lot of people with that oxygen. 30:03.134 --> 30:04.896 I'm gonna put something in the mail today, Jen. 30:08.260 --> 30:09.902 Wow, you live in Pittsburgh, Jen. 30:09.963 --> 30:13.207 I hope you're gonna come on the 3rd of November and we can meet in person. 30:14.829 --> 30:15.129 Wow. 30:16.090 --> 30:17.892 Just opening the mail while doing some... 30:19.144 --> 30:20.426 while doing some probability. 30:37.551 --> 30:41.494 There's our intellects, there's our intuition, there is our induction and action. 30:42.235 --> 30:45.317 And remember, induction is not of one kind. 30:45.638 --> 30:49.781 There's at least five, we'll get to them, different kinds of induction. 30:50.622 --> 30:53.744 So we need to be very careful about which kinds when we come to it. 30:53.764 --> 30:53.944 Okay. 30:55.926 --> 30:56.366 All right. 30:56.386 --> 31:04.493 Now, we need to understand how scientists talk and how they toss around theories and so forth. 31:05.126 --> 31:07.607 And I'm going to use another equation. 31:07.627 --> 31:10.148 I'm going to erase all of this. 31:10.168 --> 31:11.608 Some stuff coming to Susan. 31:11.868 --> 31:12.868 Got another envelope. 31:14.009 --> 31:15.629 Sending immediately. 31:16.689 --> 31:20.371 Again, talking about the difference between necessary and conditional truths. 31:21.031 --> 31:23.872 A necessary truth works like this. 31:25.612 --> 31:26.652 Necessary truth. 31:26.993 --> 31:28.333 Premises or arguments. 31:28.553 --> 31:29.793 Premises 1, premises 2, premises 3. 31:35.455 --> 31:38.538 We have all these different premises. 31:39.679 --> 31:50.310 Somebody just sent us a $200 gift certificate for Labor Day and from Omaha Steaks. 31:52.152 --> 31:57.958 And it's $200 worth of steaks, which is really, that's pretty crazy, Christy. 32:00.148 --> 32:03.991 Wow, thank you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much. 32:04.111 --> 32:07.633 My protein eating basketball playing sons will freak out. 32:08.414 --> 32:10.836 They've been complaining about the lack of steak. 32:12.637 --> 32:14.198 Wow, I don't know what to say, Christy. 32:16.139 --> 32:16.700 I wish I could. 32:18.348 --> 32:22.692 I wish my whole family could afford to go carnivore. 32:22.732 --> 32:23.232 Holy cow. 32:23.252 --> 32:25.774 Okay, so we're working on necessary truths here. 32:25.834 --> 32:27.215 Okay, premise, premise, premise. 32:27.235 --> 32:28.917 I'm going to go back a little bit because I missed that. 32:29.297 --> 32:30.738 Necessary and conditional truths. 32:31.399 --> 32:34.221 A necessary truth works like this. 32:34.241 --> 32:38.705 We have a bunch of premises or arguments. 32:38.925 --> 32:42.068 Premises 1, premises 2, premises 3. 32:45.831 --> 32:47.132 We have all these different premises. 32:48.470 --> 32:50.751 and of them, however many there are, in some conclusion. 32:51.211 --> 33:00.794 The conclusion is conditionally true based on these premises, given these premises, accepting these assumptions, however you want to say it. 33:01.034 --> 33:07.816 Now I want to be sure everybody that's paying attention here, especially those of you that said yesterday or Tuesday you were afraid of the math, 33:08.936 --> 33:17.804 Please understand that what I see here, I could be completely wrong, but what I see here is him dumbing this down for us to the point where I can even follow along. 33:18.285 --> 33:33.099 He's teaching us a notation, and this notation will of course get much more complicated when there's real math involved in these premises and real relationships involved with premises on premises to get down to this conclusion, but this is how science is done. 33:34.639 --> 33:44.584 He said this wasn't about academia, but it is the twisted version of this kind of reasoning that allows academia to use p-values to create the illusion of knowledge. 33:44.624 --> 33:46.045 And so that's why we're doing this. 33:46.585 --> 33:50.567 And that's why we are very blessed to have someone like William Briggs helping us. 33:52.048 --> 33:57.891 And to make it a necessary truth, each of these is also necessarily true. 33:58.591 --> 34:00.512 A necessary truth, a universal truth. 34:00.872 --> 34:02.753 This may be a sense impression. 34:02.773 --> 34:03.774 It might start out to be, 34:05.939 --> 34:13.361 x equals y, then y equals x. In fact, this is exactly how mathematical theorems are proved. 34:13.461 --> 34:14.741 We start with these axioms. 34:15.941 --> 34:28.144 Now you've got to be careful in math because some axioms are obviously universally true, necessarily true, and sometimes people will use the word to mean this is what I'm accepting, where they don't necessarily believe it. 34:28.184 --> 34:28.504 There are 34:31.533 --> 34:33.314 branches of mathematics in which they do that. 34:33.354 --> 34:35.456 We're not going to get into that kind of stuff for us today. 34:36.156 --> 34:58.713 We're saying, if this is a necessary truth, which I think it is, then we have another necessary truth, which we can supply, and we have three, four, five, we have n of them, and finally we deduce this conclusion, which is also a truth, and if all of these are necessary true, necessarily true, and the implicit premises that we have, there's always implicit premises, which 34:59.372 --> 35:13.506 tells us what the word if means, what the symbol x means, what the double horizontal lines mean, what this comma means, all that stuff, the definitions and the grammar and any other implicit premises we have tossed in there. 35:13.526 --> 35:18.631 If all those are true, necessarily, then the conclusion is true. 35:19.574 --> 35:31.366 Now, scientists will have this habit of saying, well, we now know, you'll hear this all the time, even from people who don't know, they say, we now know, you know, I use the example of Flippenberger's theorem is true. 35:31.727 --> 35:34.009 Okay, well, here's Flippenberger's theorem. 35:34.770 --> 35:37.173 You can prove it by following these steps. 35:38.234 --> 35:38.574 Okay. 35:39.735 --> 35:41.677 There'll be somebody else who hears about this. 35:42.799 --> 35:44.701 And he says, yeah, I think these guys are right. 35:44.761 --> 35:46.783 I think Flippenberger's theorem is true. 35:47.023 --> 35:50.226 But he hasn't gone through these steps, and in fact, probably cannot. 35:50.707 --> 35:53.449 Not everybody, I can't do all these mathematical proofs. 35:53.509 --> 35:56.773 Who's got time to sit down and read all these mathematics? 35:56.993 --> 36:00.236 There's so many papers that come out nowadays, nobody can get through them all. 36:00.276 --> 36:00.957 It's impossible. 36:01.677 --> 36:02.738 It's just not possible. 36:02.758 --> 36:04.019 It's not physically possible. 36:04.420 --> 36:11.366 That's so weird about Rumble because I use the same link all the time on Rumble and I don't understand why sometimes it kicks off and sometimes it doesn't. 36:11.386 --> 36:18.412 I use the exact same code all the time and it worked for like a month and a half and then it didn't work for a few weeks and now it works again. 36:18.432 --> 36:18.812 I don't know. 36:18.832 --> 36:19.513 That's strange. 36:19.553 --> 36:20.414 I gotta look into that. 36:20.454 --> 36:21.555 He has this kind of a time. 36:21.955 --> 36:23.657 So somebody else may reason like this. 36:23.697 --> 36:27.100 Well, let's have a couple of other premises. 36:30.074 --> 36:30.974 to make an important point. 36:31.014 --> 36:42.418 This premise might be that I heard C is true from experts. 36:44.839 --> 36:50.461 And second premise is experts always right. 36:55.203 --> 36:58.784 We have the same proposition at the end here. 37:00.014 --> 37:03.396 We have, it's true, we've proved it's necessarily true. 37:03.436 --> 37:05.957 We're supposing we've proved this necessary truth. 37:06.597 --> 37:16.122 We have somebody over here who doesn't understand these premises over here, doesn't follow them, but he also believes because he has accepted these premises. 37:16.202 --> 37:19.444 I've heard that it was true because I heard it on NPR or something. 37:21.005 --> 37:26.007 And I think experts never lie or they're not wrong or they can't possibly be mistaken. 37:28.356 --> 37:32.877 To this fellow who thinks this, C is a conditional truth. 37:33.417 --> 37:35.798 It's a local truth, I should say. 37:36.178 --> 37:37.278 I'm giving him the wrong terms. 37:37.658 --> 37:40.039 I want to call this a local truth. 37:40.199 --> 37:41.359 All truths are conditional. 37:41.379 --> 37:42.379 This is a local truth. 37:44.420 --> 37:46.040 It's local based on these premises. 37:46.100 --> 37:49.481 Whereas over here, it's necessary. 37:51.022 --> 37:52.322 It's a necessary truth. 37:54.742 --> 37:56.463 So the same proposition. 37:57.759 --> 38:04.504 either be locally true or necessarily or universally true. 38:05.144 --> 38:07.346 So we don't know. 38:07.506 --> 38:10.768 We don't know until we examine the premises, until we examine the argument. 38:11.749 --> 38:14.351 Here's another thing that tells us. 38:16.472 --> 38:24.038 We do not know, when we're talking about knowledge and logic and so forth, why it is. 38:24.966 --> 38:26.467 that C is a necessary truth. 38:27.207 --> 38:29.049 We can explain it to ourselves. 38:29.929 --> 38:31.010 We can understand. 38:31.050 --> 38:34.552 We can say, we can come to an understanding why C is true. 38:35.493 --> 38:41.197 But we don't know why it is true, how it is true, what cause. 38:41.697 --> 38:42.778 This is another teaser. 38:43.018 --> 38:49.482 So for instance, pi equals 3.14 and an infinite number of numbers after that. 38:51.442 --> 38:53.804 There's all kind of formulas, which we'll get to. 38:54.644 --> 38:58.888 As a teaser, we'll give you some examples of these kind of formulas that we can come to pi. 38:59.268 --> 39:03.491 We can prove to ourselves the value in this same kind of way. 39:04.172 --> 39:14.800 But why pi has to be this value and not in the 18th billion digit, which is a seven, is instead of six? 39:15.120 --> 39:15.340 Why? 39:16.861 --> 39:17.162 Don't know. 39:17.799 --> 39:20.200 We don't know why it's the case, all right? 39:20.260 --> 39:26.181 We don't know why, you know, how this was, the universe was created such that this is the case. 39:26.981 --> 39:28.942 And so we have to be careful about this. 39:32.823 --> 39:34.944 We have to be very careful about this for the next reason. 39:36.104 --> 39:38.625 So let me, I trust that you have all this. 39:38.665 --> 39:39.645 I don't hear any questions. 39:40.322 --> 39:42.385 And I can't see anybody. 39:42.505 --> 39:48.132 It's funny that you mentioned that sooth spider because he said it earlier that somebody mentioned caffeine, but it wasn't helping him. 39:48.192 --> 39:49.914 So I think he tried to use that once. 39:51.116 --> 39:54.199 Nor can I see where somebody put the chalk. 39:55.020 --> 39:55.781 It's in your hand. 39:55.801 --> 39:55.842 Oh. 40:05.578 --> 40:08.099 Let's talk about how all this fits in with science. 40:08.159 --> 40:09.219 What's it have to do with science? 40:09.519 --> 40:11.800 There's all kind of propositions in science like this. 40:14.601 --> 40:15.842 Another letter from Brian. 40:16.142 --> 40:17.843 Always a nice letter from Brian. 40:18.383 --> 40:19.703 He sends a lot of nice stuff. 40:20.724 --> 40:26.966 Brian sent Alan Watts' books today, which are something that... Yeah. 40:27.546 --> 40:28.166 Thanks, Brian. 40:28.606 --> 40:29.367 I got them right here. 40:31.007 --> 40:32.008 Volumes 1 through 3. 40:34.389 --> 40:36.031 There's all kinds of propositions like this. 40:36.551 --> 40:41.035 The speed of light is C, the atomic weight of radium is R, whatever it is. 40:44.779 --> 40:52.906 Sometimes they'll call these things, some physicists will call these things, maybe radium's not, but the C definitely is, constants. 40:53.747 --> 40:54.808 Constants, nice. 40:58.972 --> 40:59.973 I think parameters, 41:03.885 --> 41:07.607 which is also in use, I think it's a better word. 41:08.127 --> 41:08.927 It's a parameter. 41:10.028 --> 41:30.658 We don't know why the speed of light is C. That is to say, there does not exist an argument with premises, premises one, that's necessarily true, premises two, and so on, that comes to, I'll call this proposition A. We can't deduce 41:32.810 --> 41:33.490 the speed of light. 41:34.351 --> 41:36.792 It's experimentally given. 41:37.512 --> 41:37.832 All right. 41:38.492 --> 41:41.494 So this is a contingent truth. 41:41.534 --> 41:43.275 This is another way to say these kind of things. 41:47.782 --> 41:51.225 It's contingent on the premises of the argument that we bring to them. 41:51.806 --> 41:53.668 We don't have a strict deduction of it. 41:53.828 --> 41:55.850 If we did, it would no longer be a parameter. 41:56.110 --> 42:01.595 For instance, there may be an argument that gives us the atomic weight of radium. 42:01.635 --> 42:09.763 The periodic table is such like this, and we can deduce elements that should be there, and that's how some elements were discovered, and all this kind of a thing. 42:11.181 --> 42:18.883 So, the idea in science is to try to remove as much contingency as possible. 42:19.223 --> 42:27.586 In other words, to make these premises in our arguments as close as we can get them to necessary truths themselves. 42:28.266 --> 42:29.066 like mathematics. 42:29.467 --> 42:36.390 So that in mathematics we have all sorts of necessary truths as premises and we just build on that and we see what follows from it. 42:36.730 --> 42:38.051 In science we can't often do that. 42:38.091 --> 42:40.272 A lot of times it's just reliant on observation. 42:40.292 --> 42:42.113 We have these contingent operations. 42:42.793 --> 42:43.053 Okay. 42:43.113 --> 42:50.857 If I was going to ask Matt a question right now I would say that then do contingents, contingent truths have 42:53.803 --> 42:54.884 contingencies. 42:55.024 --> 43:01.467 So in other words, what somebody was saying in the chat is the speed of light contingent on what substance it's traveling through. 43:02.007 --> 43:11.191 And so then the speed of light is still not deduced, but it can be measured and it might be contingent on certain factors. 43:11.232 --> 43:15.273 And so then not having premises, but having contingencies. 43:15.334 --> 43:16.374 I wonder if he would say that. 43:16.534 --> 43:21.877 So the better the science is, the more the sounder it is, the less contingent it is. 43:22.765 --> 43:25.367 the more it's relying on necessary truths. 43:26.348 --> 43:27.849 The opposite is also true. 43:27.929 --> 43:47.966 The more contingent it is, like we're going to see with ad hoc probability models, which swamp certain fields like sociology, any of the so-called soft sciences, the cellar of science and so forth, 43:49.992 --> 43:59.557 So in other words, where he's going with this is that we don't have a deductive explanation for why the speed of light is the way it is. 44:00.217 --> 44:02.958 We just have to kind of use it as a contingent truth. 44:04.179 --> 44:16.825 But if a contingent truth of our science is created and used and perpetuated, that contingent truth could be used incorrectly, right? 44:16.845 --> 44:18.686 Because if it's not true, we have a problem. 44:20.095 --> 44:27.541 And ad hoc probability in academic science, especially in the soft sciences, is often used to create contingent truths. 44:27.862 --> 44:33.687 Or, even worse, experiments based on accepting or assuming conditioned truths. 44:33.747 --> 44:34.928 I think that's where we're going. 44:34.988 --> 44:35.468 Conditioned. 44:35.928 --> 44:37.170 Contingent, excuse me. 44:37.690 --> 44:38.651 Contingent truths. 44:40.663 --> 44:43.185 Well, they rely on all these ad hoc models. 44:43.225 --> 44:46.087 I'm not going to get, I don't want to insult anybody unnecessarily. 44:46.787 --> 44:49.069 Necessarily, I would like to insult a lot of people. 44:49.629 --> 44:51.210 But for right now, I'll just leave it as that. 44:51.290 --> 44:54.752 The more ad hoc we become, the more we just make up premises. 44:55.273 --> 44:57.834 I think the model is a normal model that looks like this. 44:57.894 --> 44:59.716 Well, that's highly contingent. 45:00.416 --> 45:01.577 and in no way certain. 45:02.278 --> 45:12.871 And so that we just, if we have a bunch of questionable, questionable one, questionable two, premises, questionable M, and we have some conclusion, call it B. 45:14.474 --> 45:16.895 I hope you can see that this is questionable, and this is questionable. 45:16.935 --> 45:19.335 We did this last week as the homework, and this is questionable. 45:19.655 --> 45:25.777 Well, then, this conclusion has to be even more questionable, because we're building question upon question upon question. 45:26.497 --> 45:32.439 Of course, it doesn't work that way in the university's PR office and so forth. 45:32.759 --> 45:39.581 This is presented as just as sound as a mathematical theorem or something like this, so we have to be very careful. 45:46.674 --> 45:48.895 I think I want to leave us with a quote. 45:49.415 --> 45:50.456 This is all we're going to do today. 45:50.476 --> 45:51.796 I want to talk about scientism. 45:53.557 --> 45:55.878 I'm going to talk about scientism again and again and again. 45:56.298 --> 45:58.519 We're not trying to be good academics here. 45:58.719 --> 46:01.801 We're not even trying to be good scientists per se. 46:02.081 --> 46:06.683 What we're trying to be is trying to be people who understand the way the world works. 46:07.443 --> 46:25.128 the best of our ability and what a fantastic statement we're not trying to be scientists here we're not trying to be academics we're just trying to be people that understand how our world works as best as possible what a spectacular statement that is today i want to talk about scientism 46:26.958 --> 46:29.281 I'm going to talk about scientism again and again and again. 46:29.701 --> 46:31.924 We're not trying to be good academics here. 46:32.104 --> 46:35.169 We're not even trying to be good scientists per se. 46:35.469 --> 46:40.095 What we're trying to be is trying to be people who understand the way the world works. 46:40.836 --> 46:47.160 to the best of our ability and not beholden to any given system or anything like this. 46:47.240 --> 46:50.803 We're trying to figure out what's going on, what truth is, okay? 46:51.023 --> 46:56.507 Or what things are, not what truth is so much as what things are true, what things are false, which are uncertain. 46:57.127 --> 46:57.387 Okay. 46:57.708 --> 46:58.308 There it is. 46:58.748 --> 47:00.049 We need to know what's true. 47:00.109 --> 47:03.071 We need to know what's false and we need to have what's uncertain. 47:03.171 --> 47:04.112 It's really wonderful. 47:05.133 --> 47:07.514 Jacques Brazant said that about scientism. 47:07.554 --> 47:09.375 He said, scientism is the fallacy 47:10.632 --> 47:16.233 Believing that the method of science must be used on all forms of experience and given time will settle every issue. 47:16.754 --> 47:19.754 That leads to different types of scientism which we'll talk about. 47:20.755 --> 47:29.737 But the most... So, Jacques Brazin said that about scientism, he said scientism is a fallacy. 47:31.025 --> 47:36.639 believing that the method of science must be used on all forms of experience and given time will settle every issue. 47:37.160 --> 47:40.127 That leads to different types of scientism which we'll talk about. 47:41.138 --> 47:44.360 But the most pleasing one to me is Pascal. 47:45.261 --> 47:46.182 This is Pascal. 47:46.302 --> 47:48.163 He said, and I'll leave you with this. 47:48.544 --> 47:49.804 I don't have a homework for you. 47:51.866 --> 47:57.770 Unless I can think one up, I'll put it on the blog in writing. 47:57.830 --> 48:01.333 I can't think of something except to read all this stuff. 48:01.693 --> 48:04.796 Read the material I'm going to give you because it's going to be crucial. 48:05.176 --> 48:06.177 We're going to go from here. 48:06.237 --> 48:07.478 We're going to talk about faith. 48:07.878 --> 48:10.120 We're gonna talk about the difference between belief 48:11.098 --> 48:15.881 and knowledge, and then we're going to go back to logic. 48:17.082 --> 48:29.451 We started with a teaser of logic, we talked about all this, now we have a firm foundation that yes, truth exists and so forth, and we're going to go back to logic, and then from there we're going to move on to probability. 48:29.491 --> 48:35.155 It's going to be a couple of weeks before we get to probability, that's the juiciest subject, but because it's so contentious, 48:36.499 --> 48:43.625 The foundations of probability and the interpretations of probability are so contentious, we need this absolutely firm foundation before we get there. 48:43.685 --> 48:47.709 So the things I say about it will be understandable in that context. 48:48.129 --> 48:49.951 Anyway, here's Pascal on scientism. 48:50.512 --> 48:52.093 He said, the world is a good judge of things. 48:53.574 --> 49:00.901 For in its natural ignorance, which is man's true state, the sciences have two extremes, which means. 49:01.977 --> 49:08.161 The first is a pure natural ignorance, which all men find themselves at birth, some a long time after. 49:08.701 --> 49:16.546 The other extreme is that reached by great intellects, who, having run through all that men can know, find they know nothing. 49:17.426 --> 49:20.028 And they come back again to the same ignorance from which they set out. 49:21.029 --> 49:24.250 But this is a learned ignorance, which is conscious of itself. 49:25.291 --> 49:31.155 Those between the two, which Pascal, he didn't invent the term midwit, 49:31.872 --> 49:34.213 But Pascal was the first who defined midwit. 49:34.253 --> 49:37.114 This is the definition of a midwit right here for you. 49:37.214 --> 49:38.595 So Pascal and midwittery. 49:39.075 --> 49:56.702 He said, those between the two extremes at birth and the conscious ignorance, the Socratian ignorance, if you like, those between these two who have departed from natural ignorance and not been able to reach the other have some smattering of some vain knowledge and pretend to be wise. 49:57.743 --> 50:00.924 These trouble the world and there are bad judges of everything. 50:02.597 --> 50:05.699 The people and the wise constitute the world. 50:07.260 --> 50:09.061 These despise it and are despised. 50:09.101 --> 50:12.843 They judge badly of everything, and the world rightly judges of them. 50:13.423 --> 50:14.384 All right, thanks for listening. 50:14.644 --> 50:18.266 Next week, on to faith and belief versus knowledge. 50:19.113 --> 50:19.573 See you next week. 50:20.153 --> 50:22.014 What an exciting end that was. 50:23.554 --> 50:25.095 What an interesting guy this is. 50:25.215 --> 50:26.515 Oh, no, no, don't shut that down. 50:26.575 --> 50:28.176 Just close this. 50:28.196 --> 50:29.316 What an interesting guy this is. 50:29.336 --> 50:34.338 You know, some person, crazy person, in the chat sent a flute. 50:34.498 --> 50:41.080 I don't know why you would send a guy like me a flute who's trying to figure out what instrument I'm supposed to play badly. 50:41.120 --> 50:44.001 But I've got drums, and I've got a piano, and now I've got a flute. 50:44.541 --> 50:46.961 And so I learned a couple of things about the flute. 50:47.001 --> 50:48.002 The first one is that, 50:49.582 --> 50:51.183 It's like blowing over a bottle, right? 50:54.205 --> 51:06.292 But what I didn't know about a flute before I started playing the flute that was sent to me in the mail is that a flute's octave register is completely dependent on your arbitrary. 51:06.332 --> 51:06.932 I didn't know that. 51:07.012 --> 51:12.615 In a saxophone, which I know how to play, it actually has an octave key and you push that key down and then you go up an octave. 51:12.655 --> 51:13.295 But the flute... 51:20.370 --> 51:21.671 is actually all with your lips. 51:21.731 --> 51:23.912 And the crazy part is I already kind of figured it out. 51:23.972 --> 51:27.934 So I just wanted to let the person know who sent the flute that I'm not wasting it. 51:28.074 --> 51:32.056 I'm actually, I wanted to play a flute before I played the saxophone. 51:32.076 --> 51:34.957 And my dad said that, you know, girls play the flute. 51:34.997 --> 51:38.999 So I didn't play the flute and now I have a flute and surprisingly I can play it. 51:39.019 --> 51:44.862 So anyway, thanks for sending it and helping me to clear my mind a little bit on something like music. 51:45.602 --> 51:47.503 And I really like learning new instruments. 51:47.543 --> 51:49.424 So this was like the best gift you could have given me. 51:49.904 --> 51:51.908 Thank you very much for joining me for this afternoon. 51:51.948 --> 52:00.085 I know this is not my wheelhouse and it's probably not as exciting maybe as hearing me yell at the slides that I've created, but I don't think... 52:01.187 --> 52:05.772 that's the way forward for us and it's definitely not the way forward for GigaOM Biological and my family. 52:05.792 --> 52:22.990 I need to figure out a way to create a living course in biology and a living course in uncertainty that will apply to biologists so that we can collectively have a way to introduce people to life sciences without them being bamboozled by 52:23.550 --> 52:35.300 the system of mythologies that was created in the 50s and the 60s and the 70s and the 80s by these same people that have tried to get us to coerce us into teaching pandemic biology to our kids. 52:35.320 --> 52:37.662 So thanks very much again for being here. 52:37.682 --> 52:41.445 I'm going to play the same song on the way out because that's how lame I am. 52:44.657 --> 52:46.919 It has been very, very fun to be here today. 52:46.939 --> 52:49.421 I'm glad that this is starting to build a little momentum. 52:49.442 --> 52:50.282 I'll be here tomorrow. 52:50.783 --> 52:55.467 Yesterday I was actually online with a guy by the name of Andrew4America. 52:56.208 --> 53:00.572 And Andrew4America and I had a three hour conversation that should be online soon. 53:00.612 --> 53:02.553 I did record it, so if I have to I'll put it up. 53:03.294 --> 53:10.262 And today, after the server is done transcoding this stream and the first one, then I'll upload the Levine show. 53:10.282 --> 53:16.088 And if you haven't seen the announcement on X because you're taking care of your consciousness and not going there anymore, 53:18.131 --> 53:30.960 Then have it be known that on the 16th of September at 8 o'clock Eastern Time, Denny Rancor and myself are going to join Jason Levine on his show and have a conversation. 53:31.181 --> 53:32.301 And I don't know what's going to happen. 53:32.341 --> 53:33.302 I don't know what will be said. 53:33.342 --> 53:34.363 Maybe it's a trap for me. 53:34.403 --> 53:35.464 Maybe it's a trap for Dennis. 53:36.785 --> 53:39.086 Maybe it's a trap for Denny or for Jason or for all of us. 53:39.126 --> 53:47.091 I don't know, but I'm gonna be there and I'm hoping that some progress will be made in getting people to talk about the murder and lies. 53:47.191 --> 53:48.692 So thanks very much for joining me. 53:49.232 --> 53:51.394 Mark Kulak will probably be on later this afternoon. 53:51.434 --> 53:52.994 Watch for his notification. 53:53.855 --> 54:03.101 And if you haven't already signed up as a follower for him on Twitch, please realize that Housatonic Live is now on Twitch and also the replays are on GigaOM. 54:03.802 --> 54:05.225 at stream.gigaohm.bio. 54:05.245 --> 54:07.230 If you like what you saw, please go to gigaohm.bio. 54:07.250 --> 54:07.591 Gigaohm! 54:09.884 --> 54:11.045 biological.com. 54:11.065 --> 54:14.028 I don't even know my own websites and find a way to support the stream. 54:14.448 --> 54:17.230 You can send mail to P.O. 54:17.270 --> 54:20.713 Box 802 Bethel Park, Pennsylvania 15102. 54:23.235 --> 54:30.001 And if you get lucky and the mail comes while I'm online, then I'll open it up and you'll see what you sent. 54:30.041 --> 54:33.985 And if it's a big puff of smoke or something like that, I guess it'll be online, too. 54:34.025 --> 54:35.005 Thanks very much for joining me. 54:35.026 --> 54:35.486 See you again tomorrow.