45 ideas
22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
19482 | Current physics says matter and antimatter should have reduced to light at the big bang [New Sci.] |
19483 | CP violation shows a decay imbalance in matter and antimatter, leading to matter's dominance [New Sci.] |
22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
19737 | A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.] |
22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
18284 | Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper] |
22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
19736 | Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.] |
22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
16419 | No one has yet devised a rationality test [New Sci.] |
22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
16417 | About a third of variation in human intelligence is environmental [New Sci.] |
16418 | People can be highly intelligent, yet very stupid [New Sci.] |
19484 | Psychologists measure personality along five dimensions [New Sci.] |
22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
19950 | Entropy is the only time-asymmetric law, so time may be linked to entropy [New Sci.] |
19478 | Light moves at a constant space-time speed, but its direction is in neither space nor time [New Sci.] |
19474 | Quantum states are measured by external time, of unknown origin [New Sci.] |
19473 | The Schrödinger equation describes the evolution of an object's wave function in Hilbert space [New Sci.] |
19953 | In string theory space-time has a grainy indivisible substructure [New Sci.] |
19476 | String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions [New Sci.] |
19954 | It is impossible for find a model of actuality among the innumerable models in string theory [New Sci.] |
19947 | Hilbert Space is an abstraction representing all possible states of a quantum system [New Sci.] |
19948 | Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.] |
19475 | Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.] |
19955 | Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.] |
19949 | Quantum theory relies on a clock outside the system - but where is it located? [New Sci.] |
19951 | Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.] |
19477 | General relativity predicts black holes, as former massive stars, and as galaxy centres [New Sci.] |
19952 | Black holes have entropy, but general relativity says they are unstructured, and lack entropy [New Sci.] |
16420 | 84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.] |
17604 | We are halfway to synthesising any molecule we want [New Sci.] |
17603 | Chemistry just needs the periodic table, and protons, electrons and neutrinos [New Sci.] |
22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |