All posts; Tags Include "Philosophy of Science"
- April 28, 2015
- 09:40 AM
- 393 views
Murder Your Darling Hypotheses But Do Not Bury Them
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
There is surprisingly little data on how and when scientists reject hypotheses, but John Fugelsang and Kevin Dunbar at Dartmouth conducted a rather unique study "Theory and data interactions of the scientific mind: Evidence from the molecular and the cognitive laboratory" in 2004 in which they researched researchers. They sat in at scientific laboratory meetings of three renowned molecular biology laboratories at carefully recorded how scientists presented their laboratory data and how........ Read more »
Fugelsang, J., Stein, C., Green, A., & Dunbar, K. (2004) Theory and Data Interactions of the Scientific Mind: Evidence From the Molecular and the Cognitive Laboratory. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 58(2), 86-95. DOI: 10.1037/h0085799
- March 28, 2015
- 11:00 AM
- 331 views
Misbeliefs, evolution and games: a positive case
by Sergio Graziosi in Evolutionary Games Group
A recurrent theme here in TheEGG is the limits and reliability of knowledge. These get explored from many directions: on epistemological grounds, from the philosophy of science angle, but also formally, through game theory and simulations. In this post, I will explore the topic of misbeliefs as adaptations. Misbeliefs will be intended as ideas about […]... Read more »
Kaznatcheev, A., Montrey, M., & Shultz, T.R. (2014) Evolving useful delusions: Subjectively rational selfishness leads to objectively irrational cooperation. Proceedings of the 36th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society. arXiv: 1405.0041v1
- March 16, 2015
- 11:45 PM
- 376 views
Pairing tools and problems: a lesson from the methods of mathematics and the Entscheidungsproblem
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Three weeks ago it was my lot to present at the weekly integrated mathematical oncology department meeting. Given the informal setting, I decided to grab one gimmick and run with it. I titled my talk: ‘2’. It was an overview of two recent projects that I’ve been working on: double public goods for acid mediated […]... Read more »
Kaznatcheev, A. (2013) Complexity of evolutionary equilibria in static fitness landscapes. arXiv. arXiv: 1308.5094v1
- February 28, 2015
- 09:15 AM
- 391 views
Five motivations for theoretical computer science
by Abel Molina in Evolutionary Games Group
There are some situations, perhaps lucky ones, where it is felt that an activity needs no external motivation or justification. For the rest, it can be helpful to think of what the task at hand can be useful for. This of course doesn’t answer the larger question of what is worth doing, since it just distributes […]... Read more »
Barton, N.H., Novak, S., & Paixão, T. (2014) Diverse forms of selection in evolution and computer science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(29), 10398-9. PMID: 25009183
- February 25, 2015
- 11:45 PM
- 401 views
Operationalizing replicator dynamics and partitioning fitness functions
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
As you know, dear regular reader, I have a rather uneasy relationship with reductionism, especially when doing mathematical modeling in biology. In mathematical oncology, for example, it seems that there is a hope that through our models we can bring a more rigorous mechanistic understanding of cancer, but at the same time there is the […]... Read more »
Archetti, M., Ferraro, D.A., & Christofori, G. (2015) Heterogeneity for IGF-II production maintained by public goods dynamics in neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(6), 1833-8. PMID: 25624490
- February 9, 2015
- 09:22 AM
- 363 views
Literature and Philosophy in the Laboratory Meeting
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Research institutions in the life sciences engage in two types of regular scientific meet-ups: scientific seminars and lab meetings. The structure of scientific seminars is fairly standard. Speakers give Powerpoint presentations (typically 45 to 55 minutes long) which provide the necessary scientific background, summarize their group's recent published scientific work and then (hopefully) present newer, unpublished data. Lab meetings are a rather different affair. The purpose of a lab meeti........ Read more »
Thomas Kuhn. (2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226458106.001.0001
- January 28, 2015
- 11:55 PM
- 345 views
Space and stochasticity in evolutionary games
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Two of my goals for TheEGG this year are to expand the line up of contributors and to extend the blog into a publicly accessible venue for active debate about preliminary, in-progress, and published projects; a window into the everyday challenges and miracles of research. Toward the first goal, we have new contributions from Jill […]... Read more »
Durrett, R., & Levin, S. (1994) The Importance of Being Discrete (and Spatial). Theoretical Population Biology, 46(3), 363-394. DOI: 10.1006/tpbi.1994.1032
- January 20, 2015
- 11:55 PM
- 328 views
Truthiness of irrelevant detail in explanations from neuroscience to mathematical models
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Truthiness is the truth that comes from the gut, not books. Truthiness is preferring propositions that one wishes to be true over those known to be true. Truthiness is a wonderful commentary on the state of politics and media by a fictional character determined to be the best at feeling the news at us. Truthiness […]... Read more »
Weisberg, D.S., Keil, F.C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J.R. (2008) The seductive allure of neuroscience explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470-7. PMID: 18004955
- January 12, 2015
- 10:30 PM
- 350 views
Cataloging a year of blogging: the philosophical turn
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Passion and motivation are strange and confusing facets of being. Many things about them feel paradoxical. For example, I really enjoy writing, categorizing, and — obviously, if you’ve read many of the introductory paragraphs on TheEGG — blabbing on far too long about myself. So you’d expect that I would have been extremely motivated to […]... Read more »
Kaznatcheev, A., Montrey, M., & Shultz, T.R. (2014) Evolving useful delusions: Subjectively rational selfishness leads to objectively irrational cooperation. Proceedings of the 36th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society. arXiv: 1405.0041v1
- October 5, 2014
- 11:45 PM
- 562 views
Models and metaphors we live by
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors we live by is a classic, that has had a huge influence on parts of linguistics and cognitive science, and some influence — although less so, in my opinion — on philosophy. It is structured around the thought that “[m]etaphor is one of our most important tools for trying […]... Read more »
Narayanan, S. (1997) Embodiment in language understanding: Sensory-motor representations for metaphoric reasoning about event descriptions. PhD Thesis (University of California, Berkeley). info:/
- September 1, 2014
- 11:15 PM
- 598 views
Falsifiability and Gandy’s variant of the Church-Turing thesis
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
In 1936, two years after Karl Popper published the first German version of The Logic of Scientific Discovery and introduced falsifiability; Alonzo Church, Alan Turing, and Emil Post each published independent papers on the Entscheidungsproblem and introducing the lambda calculus, Turing machines, and Post-Turing machines as mathematical models of computation. The years after saw many […]... Read more »
Gandy, R. (1980) Church's thesis and principles for mechanisms. Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, 123-148. DOI: 10.1016/S0049-237X(08)71257-6
- January 19, 2014
- 11:45 PM
- 1,157 views
Kooky history of the quantum mind: reviving realism
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
One of my hobbies in undergrad was to spend time reading and editing Wikipedia. Towards the end of my studies, I started to specialize in going through Wikipedia’s fat-tail, removing articles to non-notable individuals, and trying to counter pseudoscientists, kooks, and cranks. Trying to understand why people subscribe to pseudoscience; how to demarcate real and […]... Read more »
Howard, D. (1994) What Makes a Classical Concept Classical? Toward a Reconstruction of Niels Bohr’s Philosophy of Physics. Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy., 201-229. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8106-6_9
- December 31, 2013
- 04:45 PM
- 802 views
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Replication
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
In 1959 at the University of Cambridge, C.P. Snow delivered his (now infamous) Rede lecture on the Two Cultures of science and humanities (or his derogatory term for the latter — ‘literary intellectuals’). Although Snow was both a writer and a scientist, his lecture was largely anti-humanities. It is unclear if the divide between science […]... Read more »
Kempster, P.A. (2006) Looking for clues. Journal of Clinical Neuroscience, 13(2), 178-180. DOI: 10.1016/j.jocn.2005.03.021
- November 6, 2013
- 03:00 AM
- 892 views
Are all models wrong?
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
George E. P. Box is famous for the quote: “all models are wrong, but some are useful” (Box, 1979). A statement that many modelers swear by, often for the wrong reasons — usually they want preserve their pet models beyond the point of usefulness. It is also a statement that some popular conceptions of science […]... Read more »
Box, G. E. P. (1979) Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building. Robustness in statistics. info:/
- October 7, 2013
- 08:00 AM
- 1,326 views
The Only Good Dog is a Dead Dog: Why it Doesn't Make Sense to Kill Venomous Snakes in your Yard
by David Steen in Living Alongside Wildlife
We have often discussed here on this blog how and why killing snakes whenever and wherever you see one is a questionable land ethic. But, in the past I conceded that I understand why people would kill venomous snakes when they are found in their backyards because of the perceived threat to their families. Prompted by some comments left on a recent blog post, I’ve reflected on this a bit ... Read more »
N. Morandi, & J. Williams. (1997) Snakebite injuries: contributing factors and intentionality of exposure. Wilderness and Environmental Medicine, 152-155. DOI: 10.1580/1080-6032(1997)008[0152:SICFAI]2.3.CO;2
O'Neil ME, Mack KA, Gilchrist J, & Wozniak EJ. (2007) Snakebite injuries treated in United States emergency departments, 2001-2004. Wilderness , 18(4), 281-7. PMID: 18076294
H. M. Parrish. (1966) Incidence of Treated Snakebites in the United States. Public Health Rep, 81(3), 269-276. DOI: 10.2307/4592691
- September 12, 2013
- 05:57 PM
- 801 views
Use Imposter Syndrome to become an excellent grad student
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Let's talk about Aristotle for a minute.School of Athens Aristotle is the one in blue.Many people mis-attribute this quote to him:"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit." -Will DurantBut really this quote is from someone summarizing Aristotle. It's a great summary and it seems to say what Aristotle means, just more concisely. Aristotle does say:"For these reasons the virtues are not capacities either; for we are neither called good nor called bad, nor are ........ Read more »
Adam and Galinsky. (2012) Enclothed Cognition. Journal of experimental social psychology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.02.008
- June 26, 2013
- 04:30 AM
- 894 views
Monoids, weighted automata and algorithmic philosophy of science
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
If pressed to find a passion and unifying theme behind my interests, I would say that my goal is to emancipate theoretical computer science from the current tyranny of technology and engineering, and restore it to its original position of asking and helping find answers for fundamental questions in science and philosophy. I’ve already written […]... Read more »
Mohri, M. (2009) Weighted automata algorithms. Handbook of Weighted Automata, 213-254. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-01492-5_6
- June 5, 2013
- 08:30 PM
- 883 views
Machine learning and prediction without understanding
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
Big data is the buzzword du jour, permuting from machine learning to hadoop powered distributed computing, from giant scientific projects to individual social science studies, and from careful statistics to the witchcraft of web-analytics. As we are overcome by petabytes of data and as more of it becomes public, it is tempting for a would-be […]... Read more »
Chattopadhyay, Ishanu, Wen, Yicheng, & Ray, Asok. (2010) Pattern Classification In Symbolic Streams via Semantic Annihilation of Information. American Control Conference. arXiv: 1008.3667v1
- May 14, 2013
- 09:30 PM
- 731 views
Four color problem, odd Goldbach conjecture, and the curse of computing
by Artem Kaznatcheev in Evolutionary Games Group
For over twenty-three hundred years, at least since the publication of Euclid’s Elements, the conjecture and proof of new theorems has been the sine qua non of mathematics. The method of proof is at “the heart of mathematics, the royal road to creating analytical tools and catalyzing growth” (Rav, 1999; pg 6). Proofs are not […]... Read more »
Rav, Y. (1999) Why Do We Prove Theorems?. Philosophia Mathematica, 7(1), 5-41. DOI: 10.1093/philmat/7.1.5
- November 19, 2012
- 08:31 PM
- 618 views
Does “Statistical Significance” Imply “Actually Signifiant”?
by Jesse Marczyk in Pop Psychology
P-values below 0.05; the finding and reporting of these values might be considered the backbone of most psychological research. Conceptually, these values are supposed to represent the notion that, if the null hypothesis is true, the odds of observing some … Continue reading →... Read more »
Simmons, J., Nelson, L., & Simonsohn, U. (2011) False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417632
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