good question

The Edge Foundation is a public idea crucible with the purpose of promoting "inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society." Each year they ask a very serious question and ask leading minds to answer it. The question for 2008 is this:

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?

165 very smart people from around the world have answered. You can read their answers here.

quote of the day

Get me off of Wikipedia. I spent hours tonight learning from my new favorite philosopher, Heraclitus, who invented the concept of logos (see the Gospel of John, line 1) and contributed to the idea of panentheism, a most hopeful ideology. He was an originator of process philosophy (i.e understanding the universality of change) and was, consequently, an early dialectic philosopher (in which opposing views are to be continually synthesized). All that aside (as if), I liked this:

"By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty famine. All things change. Air penetrates the lump of myrrh, until the joining bodies die and rise again in smoke called incense."

Non Causa Pro Causa

I've posted something like this before, but The Taxonomy of Logical Fallacies is a fascinating voyage into the thicket of errors in reasoning. It's actually quite helpful if you can learn to recognize the all-too-common ones. For example, the "Masked Man" fallacy is one that occurs frequently in jury trials. The formula is where a = b, and C is believed to be a, C is also (and erroneously) believed to be b. The popular example is this:

• The masked man is Mr. Hyde.
  
• The witness believes that the masked man committed the crime.
  
• Therefore, the witness believes that Mr. Hyde committed the crime.

For one trying to convince you (erroneously or not) that Mr. Hyde committed the crime, this inference is highly desirable. The opponent would need to expose the fallacy by proving that there could have been another masked man on the scene. Understanding this distinction can be crucial.

Other fallacies aren't necessarily logical per se. Another common one is the "Appeal to Nature" fallacy which plays on the (natural) supposition that anything natural is good and anything unnatural is bad. The best example is on food labels. Everything is "all-natural" these days, even though it is clear that the word natural has a very specific meaning when it appears on a label. It think it's safe to say that most of these fallacies appear in or on advertisements every day of our lives. Read the list, get hip. Or better yet, buy a book:

Earth to pup to Earth

We've all been there.

Life v2.0

old & busted: The Ten Commandments

new hotness: Ten Commandments for Living a Bold Life

This sentence is false.

Wonderful list of paradoxes on wikipedia.