Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts

Sunday, August 7, 2016

it is wrong


"It is wrong always, 

everywhere, and for anyone, 

to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."


Wednesday, April 24, 2013

war is obsolete


"It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth

at a higher standard of living than any have ever known.

It no longer has to be you or me.

Selfishness is unnecessary.

War is obsolete.

It is a matter of converting the high technology

from weaponry to livingry."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

Sunday, October 28, 2012

you will


"If you are pro-life then

you will protest to end all war

and you will vote to end executions

and you will help stop the arms industry

and you will stand on street corners passing out condoms

and you will demand that sex education be taught in our schools."

Friday, October 14, 2011

Sunday, July 31, 2011

conflict resolution


Conflict resolution is a wide range of methods of addressing sources of conflict - whether at the inter-personal level or between states - and of finding means of resolving a given conflict or of continuing it in less destructive forms than, say, armed conflict. Processes of conflict resolution generally include negotiation, mediation, diplomacy and creative peacebuilding. The term "conflict resolution" is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms dispute resolution or alternative dispute resolution. The processes of arbitration, litigation, and formal complaint processes through an ombudsman, are part of dispute resolution, and therefore they are also part of "conflict resolution." The concept of conflict resolution can also encompass the use of non-violent methods such as civil resistance (also often called nonviolent resistance) by a party to a conflict as a means of pursuing its goals, on the grounds that such means are more likely than armed struggle to lead to effective resolution of the conflict.

Five basic ways of addressing conflict were identified by Thomas and Kilmann in 1976:

Accommodation – surrender one's own needs and wishes to accommodate the other party.

Avoidance – avoid or postpone conflict by ignoring it, changing the subject, etc. Avoidance can be useful as a temporary measure to buy time or as an expedient means of dealing with very minor, non-recurring conflicts. In more severe cases, conflict avoidance can involve severing a relationship or leaving a group.

Collaboration – work together to find a mutually beneficial solution. While the Thomas-Kilmann grid views collaboration as the only win-win solution to conflict, collaboration can also be time-intensive and inappropriate when there is not enough trust, respect or communication among participants for collaboration to occur.

Compromise – bring the problem into the open and have the third person present. The aim of conflict resolution is to reach agreement and most often this will mean compromise.

Competition – assert one's viewpoint at the potential expense of another. It can be useful when achieving one's objectives outweighs one's concern for the relationship.

The Thomas Kilmann Instrument can be used to assess one's dominant style for addressing conflict. (read more)

Thursday, July 21, 2011

God's Equation


In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers are the numbers in the following integer sequence:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...

By definition, the first two Fibonacci numbers are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.

In mathematical terms, the sequence Fn of Fibonacci numbers is defined by the recurrence relation with seed values.

The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo of Pisa, who was known as Fibonacci. Fibonacci's 1202 book Liber Abaci introduced the sequence to Western European mathematics, although the sequence had been described earlier in Indian mathematics. (By modern convention, the sequence begins with F0 = 0. The Liber Abaci began the sequence with F1 = 1, omitting the initial 0, and the sequence is still written this way by some.)

Fibonacci numbers are closely related to Lucas numbers in that they are a complementary pair of Lucas sequences. They are intimately connected with the golden ratio, for example the closest rational approximations to the ratio are 2/1, 3/2, 5/3, 8/5, ... . Applications include computer algorithms such as the Fibonacci search technique and the Fibonacci heap data structure, and graphs called Fibonacci cubes used for interconnecting parallel and distributed systems. They also appear in biological settings, such as branching in trees, arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruit spouts of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone. (read more)

Friday, November 5, 2010

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Is God A Mathematician?


Albert Einstein once wondered: "How is it possible that mathematics, a product of human thought that is independent of experience, fits so excellently the objects of physical reality?" Indeed, Newton formulated a mathematical law of gravity which he himself could verify (given the observational results of his day) to an accuracy of no better than four percent. Yet, the law proved to be precise to better than one part in a million! How is that possible? Or take the example of knot theory – the mathematical theory of knots. It evolved as an obscure branch of pure mathematics. Amazingly, this abstract endeavor suddenly found extensive modern applications in topics ranging from the structure of the DNA to "string theory" – the candidate for an ultimate theory of the subatomic world.

And this is not all. The famous logician Bertrand Russell argued that logic and mathematics are really the same thing. "They differ as boy and man", he said, "logic is the youth of mathematics and mathematics is the manhood of logic." So how can we explain these incredible powers of mathematics? How come that stock option pricing and the agitated motion of pollen suspended in water can be described by the same mathematical equation?

At an even more fundamental level, are we merely discovering mathematics, just as astronomers discover previously unknown galaxies? Or, is mathematics simply a human invention? These (and many more) are the questions that Mario Livio is attempting to answer in "Is God A Mathematician?" The book reviews the ideas of great thinkers from Plato and Archimedes to Galileo and Descartes, and on to Russell and Gödel. It offers a lively and original discussion of topics ranging from cosmology to the cognitive sciences, and from mathematics to religion. The focus on the scientific and practical applications of the fascinating insights of great minds will appeal to a wide audience. (read more)