More like this
Just a quick one today, as I get caught back up from Thanksgiving. We all know and love the very basic quadratic function. Any second-order polynomial will give you a nice little parabola, which of course is ubiquitous in physics. We all know what that looks like. But what if we're willing to…
When we think of numbers, our intuitive sense is to think of them in terms of
quantity: counting, measuring, or comparing quantities. And that's a good intuition for real numbers. But when you start working with more advanced math,
you find out that those numbers - the real numbers - are just a…
What are the real numbers?
Before I go into detail, I need to say up front that I hate the term
real number. It implies that other kinds of numbers are not real,
which is silly, annoying, and frustrating. But we're pretty much stuck with it.
There are a couple of ways of describing the real…
I like to ask people who believe in reality the following question: "What is the one single piece of evidence that convinces you that reality is real?" The answer is always easily debunked. For example:
"Evidence": Reality is real because I can sense the world around me.
Answer: Senses have been…
Not much to see there, it is in fact very typical of sasquatch advocates and cryptozoology in general. Selective citation of "expert" opinion, retrofitting observations to support to a preconceived conclusion (despite the authors admonishment of bias early in the piece), and ultimately avoiding obvious questions (such as why no body has shown up when people have supposedly been seeing these things since the mid 1800's).
That he cites the Patterson-Gimlin film is pathetic. The whole thing has been debunked for quite a while. And as for claims like this:
"While purported evidence for the supposed reality of sasquatch continues to attract strong criticism, more interesting in my view is that a number of academically qualified primatologists have recently gone on record in stating that the evidence for sasquatch is scientifically compelling."
Sorry, but some variation of this "many experts in field X find the evidence for Y compelling" argument appears on every woo website, from UFO mavens to ghost hunters to 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I can find an obscure PhD in some technical field that thinks that John Edward can talk to the dead, such a thing isn't impressive and certainly doesn't constitute evidence for the claim.