-
Georgia Police Kill Diabetic Black Man After Family Calls 911 Requesting Ambulance
I don’t have anything to add to this, I just want to spread the awareness around. Alicia Herron, Roberson’s fiancé and girlfriend of 10 years, says she called 911 to request an ambulance for Roberson out of concern for his diabetic condition. But police arrived at their home instead. Arguably, a simple mistake on the part…
-
Data Underdetermines Our Hypotheses.
One of the big ideas to come out of Philosophy of Science is that of Underdetermination. The folk-science view of things is that if you have a collection of facts, then those facts (all neatly tied together) will point at a conclusion. It may be objected that this is an extremely viewpoint, and that’s also…
-
Book Reviews
I’ve decided to undertake some book reviews. My plan is evaluate the argumentation in the books. This means that I’ll largely be just taking their factual claims as a given (regardless of who ridiculous they are), to see if the conclusion of the book follows from the chapters that came before. In other words, I’ll…
-
An Open Letter to Mark Mercer and Saint Mary’s University
Dr. Mercer, I recently read your article in the UBC’s Ubyssey, and I have to admit: it raised some serious questions for me. I’ve spent some time thinking on them, so I hope that you’re not immediately dismissive. These questions pertain to your being a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy, and yet you fail to act…
-
What Zombie Movies Can Tell Us About Racism
A good buddy of mine, Ian Cromwell, has uploaded he did a talk a while back on racism in society, and how Zombie-ism (and zombie movies) can help us understand how we should deal with the problem as it occurs in the wild. It’s broken down over a couple of youtubes, and can be found…
-
Giving Back
Sometimes you read something so poorly written that it leaves you wondering ‘how the hell did this get published?’ But then you notice that it was in a business magazine, and all is explained. A recent example of this kind of drivel is “Give Back? Yes, It’s Time For The 99% To Give Back To…
-
Religion is the Cause of Terrible Behaviour
A fairly common theme in many atheist blogs is that religion is a causal factor in the various atrocities committed by people who are religious. JT Eberhard makes that point at the bottom of this post when he says (sarcastically): But Islam can’t be the cause of this barbaric behavior because the Koran has some…
-
Taking Advantage of Seeking a Better Life
There’s no limit to the number of ‘self-help’ gurus out there, who lay claim to all sorts of nonsense. At best, these people are deeply misguided about what it is they are doing. At worst, they are intentionally running scams and swindling people out of money. I want to focus on a particular example: Psychology…
-
The Death Penalty, The Economic Argument
This is the fourth (and final) part of a series, dealing with topics are normally informed by a religious point-of-view, but have somehow managed to leak into some secular world-views. They’ll be collected together under the arrogantly-titled ‘Conceits’ tag. I’ve dealt with The Deterrence Effect in Part 1 and Part 2 of this sub-series, and I also…
-
You can’t measure love
A thoroughly odd argument that gets sometimes trotted out falls along the following lines: Love is a real thing Science can’t measure love Therefore [insert nonsense here] is real This is typically brought to bear by someone whose interlocutor(s) is/are proposing an evidence-based view. While it seems that the “easy” option is to just laugh…
