There is a huge portion of the US population who is extremely ignorant.
And advertisers love ignorance.

It all makes perfect sense, really

North America is full of crackpots that someone how believe whatever they think is true just because, no proof needed.

Evangelicism and the supposed moral majority (who constantly get caught have sex in public washrooms) has ruined the US in particular and pandering by political parties to these deluded people has given these people legitimacy. Its becoming a Christian fundamentalist state much like the ones in the Middle East controlled by Islam. Truth and facts no longer count. Just conviction.

I commend your country and its secularity, especially the fact Christmas and Holy Week are not recognized by the state. The way it should be otherwise you are supporting only one faction in your country which causes what you see in the Middle East and soon in the US.

As for third world status, thats a label conjured up by those who believe selling your soul for the almighty dollar is everything. Life is secondary.

Cheers.

So is gravity you silly twit…

By the way, I really, really like your blog here.

I live in the UK, and our TV is bad. We’re only catching up with the US criteria for bad TV, so I don’t really understand why the fact that some idiot on daytime TV (of any country) would cause you any concern.

If I spent my time worrying about the content of daytime TV shows, I wouldn’t have time to worry about the idiots who are really trying to ruin the world. She’s not exactly a decision-maker, after all.

If she had said that we should invade another country, and was in a position to make that decision, that would be another issue. But she’s just some TV show host. So it doesn’t matter.

Actually, there’s no *lower* limit to ignorance. It’s an unmeasured abyss.
There should, however, be a lower limit to the tolerance for ignorance.

bipolar2

Are we really mincing words on this more than, say, clarifying the scientific vs common use of “theory”, or debating the meanings of “liberal” and “conservative”, or explaining what is meant by “Creationist”? Or are we engaging in the process of exploring the word meaning to make sure we all understand your intended meaning?

> and my intent is simple enough: there is a difference between knowing something is true based on facts and evidence, and believing something is true based on faith.

Again, you are distinguishing knowledge from belief based upon the distinction of the source of information and the means of evaluating it.

> I never said belief is the opposite of fact; “belief” is the opposite of “knowledge”. Fantasy is the opposite of fact. “Believe” is the opposite of “know”.

The distinction is subtle, because you are linking the definition of knowledge to facts and the definition of belief to faith, which is taken to be not based upon facts, and therefore not measured for truth value. If it is measured for truth value (via evidence) and accepted, it is “knowledge” of facts. If it is not measured for truth value and accepted, it is faith, and therefore a belief. So knowledge is fact, but belief may be fact or fantasy.

I would say there is a difference between believing something is true based upon faith and believing something is true based upon evidence. The difference is in the justification for the belief, not the nature of the information.

But one could distinguish between factual claims and opinion claims. Then it would be fair to call knowledge a result of facts, and belief an result of opinions. Then it would be safe to say, for instance, “I know the Earth is round, and I believe round is better than flat.”

The bulge around the equator is apparently slightly more bulgy on the southern hemisphere than the northern hemisphere, and the south pole is slightly closer than the north pole. Thus indeed, a pear is the closest representation of that configuration. (Wide shallow lump vs tall narrow lump.) Except for the fact that the level of deviation from spherical for that effect is less than the deviation of the bulginess due to spinning. So my conclusion still stands:

It is a slightly squashed billiard ball with some scuffing on the surface finish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utnK4o-jvzk

The part that came to mind is from 2:10 to 3:50.

Ah, I see. For some reason I always found the method that relies on convergence of probabilities with evidence to be a tad unsatisfying. I think it’s the fact that there’s always a non-dogmatic (not 0 or 1) prior that can be used to reject any given amount of evidence for a proposition. So no amount of evidence could ever be enough to say that clinging to a false belief is irrational.

Surely, one could say someone who keeps changing their priors is being unfair, but how could we judge someone who merely sets his/her prior for some statement unrealistically low/high in the first place (e.g. 10^-(10^1000)) unless there’s some systematic way of determining them? Wouldn’t there be something epistemically wrong with this degree of stubbornness?

Not funny.

Interestingly, the only way that fails is if you set priors to zero or one, meaning that absolute certainty (dogmatism) breaks the procedure. How cool is that!

Dude. Decaff. It was parody.

>>> And you know absolutely zero about me,
>>> where I’m from or what I know.

I know everything about you because I CAN READ MINDS!!!! Woooooooooo! Ooooooeeeeeeeooooooooo!