Best philosophy of science books according to redditors

We found 1,533 Reddit comments discussing the best philosophy of science books. We ranked the 420 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

Next page

Top Reddit comments about History & Philosophy of Science:

u/[deleted] · 483 pointsr/atheism

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan.

This book talks down pseudoscience respectably, and first gets the reader agreeing with him before switching over to the topic of religion. I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/matt2001 · 193 pointsr/Futurology

I recommend this book:

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

It helps in understanding why we have become tribal on this issue. It was by design.
Fun fact: 25% of Americans still don't believe that smoking is harmful to health. This technique of instilling doubt is terribly effective.

u/ItsNotMineISwear · 156 pointsr/trees

I know trees loves to praise Sagan for his pro-cannabis stance (and they should, Mr. X is a great read), but really, watch/read Cosmos, read his other books (Demon Haunted World is great. Highly recommended). His love of cannabis is an afterthought compared to his love of science and critical thinking.

u/ProfessorStokes · 128 pointsr/KotakuInAction

We're at war with antihumanism and the postmodernist reasoning behind such ideas as New Historicism. This is something that knows no political affiliation. As documented in Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt's Higher Superstition, this sort of nihilistic anti-science full of foregone conclusions and closed circular thinking has spread to the Intelligent Design debate, business classes, the academic left, it's everywhere. It's an attack on the entire foundations of science and post-Enlightenment knowledge. I presume most of us at least appreciate the benefits of science and value their own human agency, which antihumanism says doesn't exist. We're supposedly unthinking products of our media and culture.

According to Christina Hoff Sommers herself in Who Stole Feminism?, Michel Foucault is the one of the most cited philosophers in what she describes as 'gender feminism'. Both Foucault and Jacques Derrida in particular are responsible for a good chunk of the philosophical game that allows one to find hauntings and signs of malice in any facet of life you'd care to look in.

To understand what postmodernist thought is like, try to imagine a world where all of the following is true:

  • There existed a force before any of us were alive that has shaped our consensus on reality. Nothing we say, think or create escapes this force's influence. In postmodern feminism: patriarchy, eco-activists: the petrochemical conspiracy -- whatever you want, this is generic!

  • In light of this force, reality itself is an illusion created by consensus. There is no 'real world', there's just everyone's individual interpretations of it and we'll never understand the intersection of everyone's interpretations, so give up on truth already! Things do not exist unless we agree that they do! The oppressors benefited by this force do not have the right to define reality for the oppressed! In practice: There's no truth, only points of view and I insist you treat my narrative as the actual truth, since it's just as good as yours or science's or anyone's!

  • Science itself is tainted by this outside force, it is a socially constructed system that is attempting to define reality by oppression. Science attempts to preserve the culture it was created from, made up of dead white Christian European men. It doesn't discover facts about reality, it invents them with arcane language games and consensus. Translation: Your science is no good here, because it's tainted! So there!

  • In fact, words have no meaning. They're all socially constructed and agreed upon. Nothing is actually definable, everything is all made up. In practice: We don't have to define nor stick to anyone's definition of 'harassment', 'threats' or whatever, we can just use whatever word we feel will get the reaction we want from others. If we feel it's 'harassment', then it is.

  • There is no possibility to know the author or their intentions, all that exists is work or 'text'. On its surface it looks like a way of saying 'Attack the message, not the messenger', which would almost seem reasonable if it were not being used to justify everything else and deflect questions such as 'How can you be conveying these ideas to me, even though you yourself are part of this tainted culture? Aren't you also tainted?'. It reframes the conversation back to crazyland.

    These ideas come with the authoritarianism built-in, after all, it's all about consensus of narratives and supporting the group's narratives over all others.

    I do want to stress that while people will argue these points, not everyone who does will actually be true believers in them. I sincerely doubt a number of people at Gawker are true believing postmodernists, they just love the perfect clickbait philosophy for their clickbait journalism. True believers do exist however and their lives must be truly frightening to them.

    There's plenty of more of this fatalistic sophistry if you go digging through postmodernist thought. Foucault makes it a point to attack the history of psychology and mental health (such as this video - where in the same breath, he also decries scientific falsifiability), to define it as a system of oppression and control. While there's some unfortunate historical truth to this assertion, this is also another means of neatly avoiding the subject of reality and truth by defining the topic of 'sanity' off-limits, as well.

    They use techniques influenced by Derrida's idea of 'deconstruction', a throwback to 12th century scholasticism where scholars are essentially divining the truth based upon their own personal interpretations of text, except now with postmodern interpretation, they're completely unfettered by rules or rationality. If you want to force a text to imply some sort of weird pun and then use that as part of a greater argument to call someone a shitlord, go for it. If you want to select a completely unrelated work and then contrast them to find cherry-picked meaning and treat it like a smoking gun, knock yourself out. Much like Zombo.com, the only limit here is yourself.

    While not everyone in the SJW camp may apply or use all the lines of thought I mentioned above, the spirit of postmodernism is mixing and matching and you're sure to find at least a few of these assaults on logic, the most famous being: We just assume going into it that 'patriarchy' as the postmodernist defines it, is real, a systematic conspiracy into every facet of life and that's not up for debate nor can it be probed except through language itself and criticism.

    Most of the other ideas are just ways of making this a closed system that cannot be contested and tools you can use to scream whatever today's variation of 'bourgeois!' is, be it 'misogynist!' or worse. Whatever that person feels is appropriate. They have 'proof', after all, and it starts with their feelings.

    The Thick of It has a scene that I think perfectly captures the essence of postmodern politics:

    > Hugh Abbot: So what are we gonna do now?

    > Malcolm Tucker: You're gonna completely reverse your position.

    > Hugh Abbot: Hang on a second... Malcolm... That's not gonna be easy. That's gonna be quite hard.

    > Malcolm Tucker: Well, the announcement you didn't make today - you did.

    > Hugh Abbot: No, I didn't. And there were television cameras there while I was not doing it.

    > Malcolm Tucker: Fuck them.

    > Hugh Abbot: I'm not sure what level of reality I'm supposed to be operating on.

    > Malcolm Tucker: Look, this is what they run with. I tell them that you said it, they believe that you said it. They don't REALLY believe that you said it, they know that you never said it, but it's in their interest to say that you said it, because if they don't say that you said it, they're not gonna get what you say tomorrow or the next day, when I decide to tell them what it is you're saying.

    This is what our problem is.

    For extra points of view on the subject:

  • Chomsky on Science and Postmodernism

  • Richard Dawkins on Post Modernism Invading Science

  • How to Deconstruct Almost Anything: My Postmodern Adventure by Chip Morningstar

    Edit: Had to add the Chip Morninstar doc, it's a fun one. It also mentions how Wired #1 in 1993 already had an SJW meltdown over a harmless prank. This has been a problem brewing for a while.

u/rddman · 114 pointsr/science

It is systemic

Merchants of Doubt

How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt

http://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

u/Pelusteriano · 81 pointsr/biology

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

u/cincilator · 66 pointsr/TheMotte

This might be a good place for me to review Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt. It is a slam against Postmodernism of their day written by two STEMlord lefty academics. Original 1994 edition of that book inspired Sokal Hoax, and the 1998 edition I've read was revised in light of that. And I must say that the book is interesting in multiple ways.

What really stuck me is that both Paul Gross and Norman Levitt considered themselves solid leftists (Sokal still does, for that matter). And I don't think any of the book's critics have ever managed to successfully undermine their lefty credentials. Which makes it clear that the leftism shifted CONSIDERABLY in the last 25 years or so. For one, both authors thought that feminism of their time had more or less accomplished all valid goals and already overshot -- the book says academic hiring was even then biased against males.

So, 25 years ago (and probably just 5 years ago) in America it was possible to be a leftist in good standing even if you were critical of many feminist claims. It was enough to profess egalitarianism in the workplace and to be okay with abortion. Mainstream leftism was mostly about being anti-war, anti-creationism, anti-fatcat and MLK-style colorblind anti-racist. I am not sure what has happened, but downfall of evangelicals made anti-creationism superfluous which maybe then mandated strengthening of other commitments. (RaggedJackScarlet contrasts old and new leftism here)

Another interesting thing is that the authors more or less agree with Peterson and with his "Cultural Marxism" narrative even if they never use those exact words. Like him, they see the rise of postmodernism as the natural consequence of diminishing prospects of leftist activism in the eighties and nineties. Unions fell apart; there was no Vietnam war any more to motivate anti-war protests; Soviet Union fell apart and its massive crimes were finally indisputably revealed to the world. The only refuge was in academia and in abstruse theories:

> The dream of a unified, militant left with a widespread constituency belongs once more to the realm of wistful speculation. The civil rights movement that once stirred the conscience of the nation and seemed the rightful heir to everything noble in American tradition has devolved into a morass of bitter resentments, susceptible to tribalistic fantasies and demagoguery, but unable to formulate coherent goals or effective strategies. True, the women’s movement retains wide support, if one’s criterion is support for such key doctrines as reproductive rights and equal status in the workplace. But there is a sharp gradient separating mainstream feminism of this sort from the acute and apocalyptic oppositionism of “academic” feminism. [...] The Marxist tradition has deliquesced into a mere oppositional posture decorated with a traditional lexicon but severed, apparently forever, from the struggles of an organized or organizable working class. The left, in sum, is at the moment the surviving squad of theoreticians of a nonexistent mass movement.

> Nonetheless, the radical style of the sixties left traces that persist. First, there is the enduring relation between left-intellectuals and American universities. The campus constitutes the only environment in which recent radicalism became naturalized. Even as leftist rhetoric denounced higher education as the breeding ground for unquestioning servants of the bourgeoisie, leftist intellectuals, almost inadvertently, were forming a network of personal and professional ties with the institutions themselves. The scholarly community was the inevitable refuge to which activism retreated as its concrete political possibilities melted away.

> [...]

> This fact—this naturalization of the left as a well-dug-in sector of the university community—presents us with a considerable puzzle in view of the isolation and neutering of significant left-wing sentiment in the world of “real” politics. There is no strong—or even anemic—left-wing constituency out there standing godfather to the academic careers of its theorists.

They thought that even seemingly noble goals of PoMo theory were mostly result of this resentment:

> the aroma of sour grapes is in the air. The urge to redeem slides easily into an eagerness to debunk for the sake of debunking. New candidates for veneration—writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, historical figures, non-Western “ways of knowing”—are put forward not for what they are but for what they are not—white, European, male.

It seems to me that American left underwent some kind of evaporative cooling wherein in the 80's and 90's many abandoned it and only most fanatical remained who then sank deep into Theory. Now that the left has somewhat recovered due to 2008 recession and Bush incompetence, it still carries those distortions caused by lost decades.

What is also interesting is how theoreticians twenty years ago were far more willing to attack scientific method directly as hopelessly biased and tainted by colonialism, patriarchy and other sins. They really believed that it was necessary to invent "other ways of knowing" to escape shackles of western science. Various pseudisciences peddled under "Afrocentrism" banner were especially shocking to read about.

So I suppose that it is a sign of progress that modern critics no longer attack scientific method itself as evil and sexist but only scientific establishment as such. 25 years ago they said "we need to destroy science as it is" and now it is "we need more women doing science as it is." Whatever you think, the latter is much less dangerous for science itself --even if it might be at times unfair to individual scientists who might be unfairly accused of sexism now and then.

Authors can also grasp that tribalism promoted by PoMo theories is actually bad:

>As we write, we are confronted with the spectacle of a revived ethnic tribalism in Europe, where Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Moslems rape and murder one another in the charnel house of the former Yugoslavia[...] The murderous hatreds that rend Northern Ireland no longer seem anomalous. Elsewhere, the racial and religious chauvinism that pits Sikh against Hindu against Moslem, Sinhalese against Tamil, Arab Sudanese against black Sudanese goes on unabated. We might expect the humanitarian conscience to be especially aware, in such a time, of the horrors lurking in tribalism.

> Yet in the decidedly less lethal venue of academic life, we find that tribalism, in one form or another, is the most-favored project of leftist ideologues, who appear to have abandoned, for the moment, the universalism that once shone through even the dreariest left-wing cant. The “politics of identity” is now sanctified on the campus. Increasingly, many groups are held to deserve their own separate and inviolable space.

As a resident of the Balkans, I am stumped how no one else on the left sees this any more. You guys are chugging mercury thinking it'll cure you.

All in all I find it incredible how much left has shifted. Class issues were still fairly important to authors and they are obviously displeased that some abstruse theory overrode "real" concerns. And "Cultural Marxism" was at least by some seen as legitimate explanation of what went wrong. The left also once stood for universalism and could articulate why tribalism was bad. No more.

EDIT: added portion on tribalism

EDIT2: added portion on evaporative cooling

u/astroNerf · 54 pointsr/TrueAtheism

It's not a book but is instead a series of videos, but might be really useful. Why I am no longer a Christian. It's long, but worth it. Covers a lot of bases.

A good book not on atheism per se but a book on critical thinking and skepticism: The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. There are some chapters that touch on religion specifically but it treats religion and superstition more or less equally, and provides a really good foundation for people who care that their beliefs are true - it's the sort of thing you'll want to read if you want to be better-equipped to determine whether something is bullshit or not. You can usually find this at most used bookstores.

A lot of atheists would tell you though: the bible. Really! Read it cover to cover, like you would any other book. There's probably a lot of stuff in there you'll never see in church or Sunday school.

Edit: I have to plug The Sagan Series. Some of the videos touch on religion but most are more in a humanistic vein. They are really well-put-together by /u/rgower and there are some ideas in there that might give you things to think about.

u/ThrowAwayMathPerson · 47 pointsr/videos

Haha. If only. In reality, it's so much worse. We can only hold so much information, and the "resolution" (depth/granularity) of our understanding diminishes over time. Throughout history people could contend with increases in the complexity of the collective human understanding of the world, but the breadth of the information available in any given society was so small that it was manageable. Furthermore, their forms of government relied more on a class of experts for governance and statemenship.

​

Now everyone is involved in governance through voting, and the world is so complex that one individual cannot be expected to have a functional understanding of more than a tiny portion of it. This fundamentally changes how a society can, and should, organize. Should we all have opinions on the finer points of climate change without being experts in it? Should we be voting for people based on their specific policies related to climate change without that understanding? Can we just rely on endorsements from relevant experts? What happens when some of those experts decide they are willing to sellout to the opposition? This: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

​

The first step in solving a problem is admitting there is a problem. The second step is defining that problem. The third is designing a plan. The fourth is executing that plan, and the last is maintaining/updating that plan. We are still stuck on the first step, but we are trying to patch the leaking boat in the meantime, while claiming it solves the design flaws that led to the leaks. Let's not confuse the holes with the design flaws.

u/NukeThePope · 45 pointsr/atheism

My recommendations:

u/voy3voda · 41 pointsr/Kappa

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." - Carl Sagan

Do Stephen a solid and read A Brief History of Time. And never forget the importance of knowledge. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan is another great one.
RIP Stephen Hawking, one of the truest niggas who ever walked the face of the earth.

u/killroy200 · 41 pointsr/environment

For those who haven't read it Naomi Oreskes et. al.'s Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming does a fantastic job of laying all of these tactics and campaigns out.

u/avant-garde_funhouse · 40 pointsr/samharris

The analogy dig bugged me too, but not just because of the hypocrisy. Douglas Hofstadter (who is an intellectual heavyweight to say the least) has argued extensively for the position that analogy is the fundamental core of all thinking. If someone like Hofstadter calls analogy the "fuel and fire of thinking" I would listen to him before I would an economist turned cartoonist...

u/imVINCE · 38 pointsr/NoStupidQuestions

This actually began during the Cold War; the 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative (the "Star Wars" program) under Reagan was a plan to build a network of satellites designed to down incoming ICBMs.

The scientific community was opposed to the project. It was impossible to test (how do you test a system designed to shoot down ALL of a nuclear arsenal without firing an entire nuclear arsenal at yourself?), it was extraordinarily costly, and it would result in the weaponization of space.

The Reagan administration decided to get "its own scientists" to convince Congress to fund the project. They basically hired a bunch of PhD shills to argue that the scientific community was politicized, communist-leaning liberals and that the SDI project was scientifically sound. This led to discussions of "nuclear winter" which gave Carl Sagan his platform.

Fast forward a few years, and the same "scientists" hired by the Reagan administration were hired to argue that acid rain was not a major environmental problem.

Later, that same group was arguing that second-hand smoke was not harmful.

Next, they argued that smoking itself was not harmful.

Today, those same people are leading campaigns of disinformation attempting to discredit the science surrounding climate change.

If you'd like to learn more about the history of scientific disinformation in conservative America

u/fresnik · 36 pointsr/TrueAtheism

I cannot recommend Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark enough. Some parts of it may be a bit dated, but the chapter entitled "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" is timeless and it may be exactly what you're looking for.

u/Ibrey · 35 pointsr/askphilosophy

I think you will learn the most by reading five textbooks, such as A History of Philosophy, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; or something like Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, and An Introduction to Political Philosophy.

If what you have in mind is more of a "Great Books" program to get your feet wet with some classic works that are not too difficult, you could do a lot worse than:

  • Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, often published together under the title The Trial and Death of Socrates. Socrates is so important that we lump together all Greek philosophers before him as "the Presocratics," and this cycle of dialogues is a great window on who he was and what he is famous for.
  • The Basic Works of Aristotle. "The philosopher of common sense" is not a particularly easy read. Cicero compared his writing style to "a flowing river of gold," but all the works he prepared for publication are gone, and what we have is an unauthorised collection of lecture notes written in a terse, cramped style that admits of multiple interpretations. Even so, one can find in Aristotle a very attractive system of metaphysics and ethics which played a major role in the history of philosophy, and holds up well even today.
  • René Descartes, Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy, not so much because modern philosophers have widely followed his particular positions (they haven't) but because he set the agenda, in a way, with his introduction of methodological scepticism.
  • David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I think Elizabeth Anscombe had it right in judging Hume a "mere brilliant sophist", in that his arguments are ultimately flawed, but there is great insight to be derived from teasing out why they are wrong.
  • If I can cheat just a little more, I will lump together three short, important treatises on ethics: Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Anscombe's paper "Modern Moral Philosophy".
u/_your_face · 29 pointsr/secretsanta

Presents she received

  • Zombie Plush from THink Geek
  • Carl Sagan Book

    Her reactions?

    Exhibit A:

    >Who the fuck do you think you are addressing, you moronic bastards? I didn't ask for a thing, I expected nothing, a lovely postcard of where they are from would have been nice or a homemade card - I have to deal with death in some form every fucking day, I do not need demons and zombies and reminders of inhumanity in my goddamned presence - Perhaps some prepubescent little boy would have wet dreams over this package but given that you call someone a "twat", I am guessing you are a boy anyway - I was completely approproiate, I didn't want the effort to just be trashed, I want the sender to have it and enjoy it and that is why I am trying to get his correct info so I know where to send it - Otherwise it goes in the incinerator, are you too fucking dense to get that, you motherfucking cocksucking dickwad - I got your manners right here, little.... and I do mean "little" in the most generous sense of proportions, "man".
u/Havitech · 28 pointsr/skeptic

This is probably a long shot, but if you can convince them to thoughtfully read an entire book, buy them a copy of The Demon-Haunted World.

u/Reputedly · 25 pointsr/Foodforthought
  1. The Bible: Eh. I can sort of get behind this, but not for the reason he gives. The Bible's just really culturally important. I also wouldn't bother reading all of it. When I reread the Bible it's normally just Genesis, Exodus, the Gospels, and Eccelesiastes. A lot of it (especially Leviticus) is just tedious. The prophets are fun but I wouldn't call them essential.

  2. The System of the World: Newton intentionally wrote the Principia to make it inaccessible to layman and dabblers. I really don't think you should be recommending a book like this to people who aren't specialists. Sagan's A Demon Haunted World will probably fulfill the stated purpose Tyson sets out better.

  3. On the Origin of Species: A good book that's held up remarkably well, but a more recent book of evolution might be better. The Extended Phenotype or The Selfish Gene would both probably do a better job.

  4. Gulliver's Travels: This is a great book. I support this recommendation.

  5. Age of Reason: Haven't read it. I like Paine otherwise though. No comment.

  6. The Wealth of Nations: Similar to On the Origin of Species. It's still a great read that's held up really well and offers an interesting historical perspective. That said, economic theory has made some pretty important advancements in two centuries (the Marginal Revolution, Keynes, etc). Still, if you want to stick to the time you'll probably get more out of reading Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy.

  7. The Art of War: Very good book. I have nothing to add.

  8. The Prince: Same as the above. Fantastic book.
u/anastas · 22 pointsr/askscience

My main hobby is reading textbooks, so I decided to go beyond the scope of the question posed. I took a look at what I have on my shelves in order to recommend particularly good or standard books that I think could characterize large portions of an undergraduate degree and perhaps the beginnings of a graduate degree in the main fields that interest me, plus some personal favorites.

Neuroscience: Theoretical Neuroscience is a good book for the field of that name, though it does require background knowledge in neuroscience (for which, as others mentioned, Kandel's text is excellent, not to mention that it alone can cover the majority of an undergraduate degree in neuroscience if corequisite classes such as biology and chemistry are momentarily ignored) and in differential equations. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology were used in my classes on cognition and learning/memory and I enjoyed both; though they tend to choose breadth over depth, all references are research papers and thus one can easily choose to go more in depth in any relevant topics by consulting these books' bibliographies.

General chemistry, organic chemistry/synthesis: I liked Linus Pauling's General Chemistry more than whatever my school gave us for general chemistry. I liked this undergraduate organic chemistry book, though I should say that I have little exposure to other organic chemistry books, and I found Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis to be very informative and useful. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take instrumental/analytical/inorganic/physical chemistry and so have no idea what to recommend there.

Biochemistry: Lehninger is the standard text, though it's rather expensive. I have limited exposure here.

Mathematics: When I was younger (i.e. before having learned calculus), I found the four-volume The World of Mathematics great for introducing me to a lot of new concepts and branches of mathematics and for inspiring interest; I would strongly recommend this collection to anyone interested in mathematics and especially to people considering choosing to major in math as an undergrad. I found the trio of Spivak's Calculus (which Amazon says is now unfortunately out of print), Stewart's Calculus (standard text), and Kline's Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach to be a good combination of rigor, practical application, and physical intuition, respectively, for calculus. My school used Marsden and Hoffman's Elementary Classical Analysis for introductory analysis (which is the field that develops and proves the calculus taught in high school), but I liked Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (nicknamed "Baby Rudin") better. I haven't worked my way though Munkres' Topology yet, but it's great so far and is often recommended as a standard beginning toplogy text. I haven't found books on differential equations or on linear algebra that I've really liked. I randomly came across Quine's Set Theory and its Logic, which I thought was an excellent introduction to set theory. Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica is a very famous text, but I haven't gotten hold of a copy yet. Lang's Algebra is an excellent abstract algebra textbook, though it's rather sophisticated and I've gotten through only a small portion of it as I don't plan on getting a PhD in that subject.

Computer Science: For artificial intelligence and related areas, Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach's text is a standard and good text, and I also liked Introduction to Information Retrieval (which is available online by chapter and entirely). For processor design, I found Computer Organization and Design to be a good introduction. I don't have any recommendations for specific programming languages as I find self-teaching to be most important there, nor do I know of any data structures books that I found to be memorable (not that I've really looked, given the wealth of information online). Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is considered to be a gold standard text for algorithms, but I haven't secured a copy yet.

Physics: For basic undergraduate physics (mechanics, e&m, and a smattering of other subjects), I liked Fundamentals of Physics. I liked Rindler's Essential Relativity and Messiah's Quantum Mechanics much better than whatever books my school used. I appreciated the exposition and style of Rindler's text. I understand that some of the later chapters of Messiah's text are now obsolete, but the rest of the book is good enough for you to not need to reference many other books. I have little exposure to books on other areas of physics and am sure that there are many others in this subreddit that can give excellent recommendations.

Other: I liked Early Theories of the Universe to be good light historical reading. I also think that everyone should read Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

u/ravich2-7183 · 22 pointsr/artificial

Hofstadter has expanded that idea into a 500+ pg book, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel & Fire of Thinking.

This view also seems to be gaining a foothold in the computer vision community. I recall a recent talk by a UC Berkeley professor specializing in CV, Alyosha Efros, IIRC, the main theme of which was: Ask not "what is this?", ask "what is this like?"

BTW, Bongard problems seem like a far better test for intelligence than the vague Turing test.

u/mhornberger · 22 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

Will believers see the value of a position that starts off with "of course there is no God!" (1:15 or so) and then just uses church as a community center, or a place with decent art and music? Are believers willing to move beyond doctrine and dogma?

I like de Botton's work in general, though I haven't read this particular book. But in this Ted talk I think he's arguing against a straw man version of atheism. Very few atheists rail against every single thing from religion.

Many atheists like cathedrals and religious art, music, and literature. I'm fine with engaging the KJV as literature. But how many believers are? I've had believers actually repudiate even the moral content of the New Testament, if it is to be divorced from the supernatural authority of God.

What's interesting too is the mindset he's trying to persuade atheists to embrace is the one believers frequently accuse us of already having. They already think we follow Dawkins or Harris like secular popes. They think we believe in evolution or materialism as a secular dogma that we can't question.

Looking at the dictionary definition of sermon, "a talk on a religious or moral subject," we already have those. There are many great talks by Christopher Hitchens, Neil deGrasse Tyson and many others, entreating listeners to embrace a secular worldview. Look up "Skepticon" on Youtube. Talk after talk advocating for the superiority, even the moral superiority, of a secular worldview. Those are sermons. We already hand out copies of Sagan's Demon-Haunted World with hushed assurances of "read this--it changed my life." Sagan called science "informed worship."

We already have this stuff. What believers actually want is basically for non-believers to stop being critical of religion. Believers want atheists to be more "moderate" (by which they mean, respectful of religion, or just silent) but they themselves would reject almost every remedy de Botton offers. Most prominently, starting off with the position of "of course there's no God." Is that really the truce being offered?

u/iCanon · 22 pointsr/atheism

Don't suggest a book you haven't read. If you pick your books you should read them first then give them to your mom. I recommend two books in this order. First, Second.

u/weaselword · 18 pointsr/TheMotte

A high-profile prize like the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Sciences is not just about the accomplishments of the recipient; it signals what is valued in economics community. The prize committee considers not only the contributions of the nominees to economics as a field of inquiry, but also whether the economics community would benefit from a signal-boost for the approach that the nominees use, or the particular sub-field or topic the nominees research. If the prize was only awarded for big ideas and grand narratives, that would signal that those are the only kinds of contributions that really matter to economics--or, alternatively, that the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Sciences is really a niche prize dedicated to a small subset of what the economics community cares about.

I agree with you that some of the most influential economists are the ones who presented big ideas and grand narratives. Big ideas and grand narratives give a framing to an otherwise too complex world, so if along comes a well-expounded grand narrative with a core big idea at just the right time, it can take over the world--even if it's demonstrably wrong. (See: Karl Marx, "Das Kapital".)

Speaking of Karl Marx: Despite the massive misery that his works supported in the 20th century, I agree with those who say that he was actually a pretty good sociologist. He masterfully described the misery that permeated the factories of his day, and he presented a framework that attempts to explain its causes. His weakness, both as an economist and as a sociologist, is that HE DIDN'T TEST HIS THEORIES WITH A FREAKING RCT.

Sorry for finger yelling. I guess I am still raw about Karl Marx, having lived under communism.

My point is that causal relationships that appear obvious, aren't. This observation underlies the entirety of social sciences. It is also very difficult to demonstrate causal relationships. While it's possible to do so without intervention, the approach requires one to already have a good model to account for confounders, and of course measurements of all the confounders. RCTs don't. That's why they are still regarded as the gold standard of demonstrating causality.

u/lepton0 · 16 pointsr/skeptic

How about Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World. It's a good primer on skepticism. He debunks various pseudoscience, offers a skeptic's toolkit to help differentiate what is probably true from what is probably false, has his famous "dragon in my garage" analogy.

u/LeChuckly · 16 pointsr/skeptic

> No, there's big money and has been for almost two decades in climate / environment related businesses and organizations.

If you think the money moving in the alternative energy industry is in any way comparable to the money moving in the fossil fuel sector - boy do I have an investment opportunity for you.

>I didn’t use the term scientists because there are quite a few scientists doing the real science

Correct. 97% of all climate change research (that is - papers published in peer reviewed journals) supports that climate change is happening and is driven by human activity.

>but there's also a lot of people (some with degrees, some without) that are sensationalizing the situation out of fear and/or personal gain motives.

That's as may be - but still - consider how much money someone like Al Gore stands to make off of his climate change movie - then go hop over and look at Exxon's quarterly profit statement.

There are solar systems between those two numbers.

Finally - many of the people disparaging the climate science are recycled actors from the tobacco industry's fight against regulation 60s-80s. Merchants of Doubt is an excellent, well sourced book that lays out the strategy and personalities behind climate change denial. One of the tactics that "experts" on the side of the Tobacco companies used was claiming that anti-smoking groups were personally profiting from legislation aimed at discouraging tobacco use.

This movie has already played once.

u/mc10000 · 15 pointsr/science

I was fully intent on going to college at Cornell solely to follow this man... and then he died.. :.(


That sounds lke alot of material that he put in "The Demon Haunted World"

u/MrHappyMan · 14 pointsr/atheism

Demon Haunted World and The Varieties of Scientific Experience both by Carl Sagan. You're going to need something softly softly that at the same time packs a punch. Anything by the 'new atheists' will be deemed offensive to their sensibilities not to mention the mere name of Dawkins or Hitch may turn them off before you've even gotten a chance in. Sagan is a fucking poet. You'll do more damage with him than anyone else.

u/ChemicalSerenity · 14 pointsr/atheism

I'd recommend The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It's not a book about atheism per se, more a work about how to approach life from a position of skeptical inquiry... and examines at what happens when people don't take a skeptical approach to the things they're taught in life and the problems that can raise.

u/MorbidPenguin · 14 pointsr/GradSchool

Off the top of my head, I would recommend The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn and The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

The former is an excellent summary/treatise of how science works and what brings scientific revolutions about. The latter is an excellent intro to critical thinking. It's quite anti-religious, though, so that may turn you off.

u/aPinkFloyd · 14 pointsr/exmormon

Lots of love for you, here are some thoughts of mine...

  • it is a mistake to believe that you should be asking the question "What is the purpose of my life?" it's not a question you ask, IT IS A QUESTION YOU ANSWER! and you answer it by living your life as ONLY you can, having the adventure that is your life experience, discovering the magical miracle that is ONLY YOU in all of this vast universe!

  • After losing Mormonism and the understanding of the universe that goes with it, I find myself an atheist, which has made this little journey of life INFINITELY more precious to me. It's all and everything we have! (as far as we know).

  • I have pulled in many helpful, empowering, peaceful ideas from Buddhism, Philosophy, Science that has helped me start to form a new, optimistic, and amazingly open minded new world-view. I no longer have to believe anything that doesn't make sense, I get to believe only sweet things now, and that is SO nice.

    Here are some resources that I have been really grateful for on my journey, which I am 12 months into...

    The Obstacle is the Way

    The Daily Stoic this is my new "daily bible" I read a page every morning

    Secular Buddhism podcast

    Waking Up podcast

    End of Faith

    The Demon Haunted World

    Philosophize This! podcast OR Partially Examined Life podcast

    I wish you the very best in your journey, be patient with yourself, you have EVERY reason to be! Start filling your mind with powerful positive ideas, keep the ones that help you find your way, set aside the ones that don't.

    And remember, you are young and free and the possibilities of what your life can become are boundless!
u/davidkscot · 14 pointsr/atheism

If you can, have a look through the reading / video lists from the resources on the right of this sub.

Two I'd recommend are:

  • Why I am no longer a Christian (YouTube video series) it's a fairly in depth look at how any why the author's beliefs changed which is very relate-able.

  • The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, you can easily find the book on amazon or an audio version via YouTube, it's not specifically about religions, but it's about how we can reliably think about what is real.

    Whatever happens I'd encourage you to explore what you believe and why, but bear in mind it's a process that can take a while. This isn't a bad thing, so don't be discouraged if you don't find answers straight away.
u/Daemonax · 13 pointsr/atheism

Oh I should have mentioned, this story comes from his book "The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark".

I often say it is the best book I've ever read. http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/Fuzzy_Thoughts · 13 pointsr/mormon

Have you read The Ethics of Belief by William K. Clifford? You would probably really enjoy it.

EDIT: This is a debate that could go in variety of directions, by the way. Here is some literature and key points on the subject. William James famously responded to Clifford's essay above with a piece titled The Will to Believe. This really is an incredibly interesting topic of discussion that usually ends up getting down to the questions: "What is justified belief?" and "What constitutes a basic belief?"

EDIT 2: You should read Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World if you're interested in this sort of discussion as well. That book changed my life.

u/ofthe5thkind · 13 pointsr/Paranormal

I applaud your skepticism! I do take issue with a few statements:

>My younger brother (19), however, is a hardcore skeptic. He claims to have seen a cup levitate and move in front of him in the bathroom one night, and [...] I know that he is definitely not the type of person to do any investigating whatsoever and will just automatically assume that it was a ghost.

Your brother is not a skeptic.

>I always ridicule him for his insane belief.

That's not very nice.

>As an atheist, I can't help but look down upon people who hold religious beliefs because it all seems so absurd to me.

That doesn't help foster communication. I think you might benefit greatly from this half-hour talk from "bad astronomer" Phil Plait. The general idea behind the talk is: when have you ever changed your beliefs just because someone told you that they were stupid? Instead of helping your case, you are hurting it. You'll only cause them to reinforce their beliefs, even if your confirmed evidence directly disproves their beliefs.

>me being the logical person I am, I choose the side of "you're crazy and you imagined it", while he takes the "it was definitely a ghost" side.

You two should work on your communication, because this approach is going to go nowhere.

>It took my brother a little longer to come around to the fact that there is no god.

It is not a fact that there is no god.

>I consider myself atheist while I consider him to be agnostic.

It's a common misconception, but that's not how it works.

If you found confirmation bias [edit: interesting] (and all of the other names we have for the ways our brains will innately fool us), I'd highly recommend that you read Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark. I would suggest that you read it first, in private. Then I would suggest lending it to your brother to read, and asking him to recommend that you read a book of his recommendation. Afterwards, talk about your thoughts together.

Don't be mean to him, or dismissive. Sometimes, critical thinking has to be taught, or self-learned after experience. It's not a slight on my aunt's intelligence, for instance, that she believes that some forms of homeopathy is effective. I could tell her all day that we know that homeopathy doesn't work. I could give her thousands of pages of scientific journals explaining, in great and meticulous detail, why this is the case. She would likely dismiss "mainstream science," though, because it isn't supporting her worldview and/or belief system. That doesn't mean my aunt is a moron. It means, more than anything else, that she doesn't understand what a useful standard of evidence is in order to determine truths about our world.

>I don't believe in ghosts. Please tell me some experiences, give insight and opinions. Try to help me understand.

I've made similar posts searching for similar truths, like:

u/kaleidascope_eyes · 12 pointsr/politics

Sadly, all they need is one scientist willing to take the big payoff they're probably offering and everyone who doesn't want to believe in climate change will gladly eat that shit up. It's the same thing the tobacco industry did to try to undermine the very conclusive evidence that smoking causes lung cancer.

This book goes into a lot of interesting detail about it (not about Trump specifically obviously because this book came about before he was president): https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

u/spaceghoti · 11 pointsr/exchristian

I know /r/atheism has a bad reputation on reddit, although people who don't come by to troll typically find that reputation undeserved. But the reason I mention it is because they list some really good resources in their sidebar:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/recommended/reading

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/recommended/viewing

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/recommended/listening

Two resources I strongly recommend include Carl Sagan's book "A Demon-Haunted World" as a gentle primer on skeptical thinking and Evid3nc3's Youtube playlist on "Why I Am No Longer A Christian."

http://smile.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA0C3C1D163BE880A

u/Themoopanator123 · 11 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

As for your main question, Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith is definitely something you want to read. Godfrey-Smith's general work focuses on philosophy of biology as a subset of philosophy of science which may be particularly interesting to you. Theory and Reality itself deals with a wide range of issues. From epistemic, to methodological, to historical, to sociological. The only stuff it doesn't really touch on are the metaphysical issues in philosophy of science. But even if that's what you're looking for, the book's content will be indispensable to you in developing a baseline knowledge about philosophy of science which you can bring to the table when reading more specific literature that you're interested in. It's broad approach is also just a good way to discover said interests.

As for your bonus question, the answer really turns somewhat on what you mean by "testable" but especially on what you mean by "useless". Useless in terms of what? Forming justified beliefs? Or for instrumental applications? Or something else?

Given this uncertainty, two positions come to mind: verificationism about meaning and Popper's falsificationism. But I might be able to give you something better if you could answer my above questions.

Hope that's helpful!

u/dogdiarrhea · 11 pointsr/Physics

Carroll

Carroll, course notes (free, I think it may be a preprint of the book)

Schutz

Wald

MTW (Some call it the GR bible)

They're all great books, Schutz I think is the most novice friendly but I believe they all cover tensor calculus and differential geometry in some detail.

u/grothendieck · 11 pointsr/math
u/kent_eh · 11 pointsr/TrueAtheism

It sounds like you two are discussing the basics of epistemology.


>I told her that I would have to think about it, but that you can't be scared to learn about things that disagree with your beliefs. I told her that a lot of times it feels bad to have your beliefs challenged, and that this can cause you to avoid learning things that you don't like or immediately discounting them.

That's a very good place to start.

>At this point she basically said "Yeah you have to make sure you aren't just accepting something because it agrees with what you already think."



She seems to have discovered confirmation bias on her own. Well done her!

Maybe introduce her to some information on critical thinking.


Given her parents and your desire not to ruffle their feathers too muck, I'd avoid The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True for now. Maybe have a copy at your place that she might accidentally find on your bookshelf?

Perhaps The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark would be a good choice?

u/RealityApologist · 10 pointsr/askphilosophy

Well this thread title drew me like a hunk of iron to the world's biggest magnet.

The short answer to the title question is "no, except maybe in some very trivial sense." The longer answer is, well, complicated. Before I ramble a little bit, let me say that we should distinguish between the rhetorical and (for lack of a better word) "metaphysical" interpretations of this question. In many cases, the language used to describe some theory, problem, proposal, or whatever is indeed unnecessarily complicated in a way that makes it difficult to communicate (some parts of the humanities and social sciences are particularly bad offenders here). That is indeed a problem, and we should strive to communicate our ideas in the simplest language that's appropriate for the audience we're talking to. I take your friend's thesis to be a bit more substantive than that, though: he's claiming something like "all big messy systems are really just lots of small simple systems, and we can learn everything we need to know about the world by looking at the small simple systems." That's the viewpoint that I think is mistaken.

I think it's really important to distinguish between complicated and complex, both in the context of this discussion and in general. Lots of things are complicated in the sense of being big, having lots of moving parts, difficult to understand, or exhibiting nuanced behavior. A box of air at thermodynamic equilibrium is complicated: it has lots of parts, and they're all moving around with respect to one another. Not all complicated systems are also complex systems, though, and understanding what "complex" means turns out to be really tricky.

Here are some comparisons that seem intuitively true: a dog’s brain is more complex than an ant’s brain, and a human’s brain is more complex still. The Earth’s ecosystem is complex, and rapidly became significantly more complex during and after the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. The Internet as it exists today is more complex than ARPANET—the Internet’s progenitor—was when it was first constructed. A Mozart violin concerto is more complex than a folk tune like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The shape of Ireland’s coastline is more complex than the shape described by the equation x2 + y2 = 1. The economy of the United States in 2016 is more complex than the economy of pre-Industrial Europe. All these cases are relatively uncontroversial. What quantity is actually being tracked here, though? Is it the same quantity in all these cases? That is, is the sense in which a human brain is more complex than an ant brain the same sense in which a Mozart concerto is more complex than a folk tune?

These questions are extremely non-trivial to answer, and a very large number of whole books have been written on the subject already; so far, there's no universally accepted consensus of what makes complex systems special, or how to measure complexity in the natural world. There is, however, a growing consensus that P.W. Anderson was correct when he wrote in 1972 that "more is different": in many cases, systems consisting of a large number of relatively simple components interacting in relatively simple ways can display surprising, novel behavior. That's characteristic of complex systems: they behave in ways that we wouldn't expect them to (or even be able to deduce) based on an examination of their constituent parts in isolation from one another.

Complex systems often show interesting patterns of behavior that cut across scales of analysis, with their dynamics at one scale constraining the dynamics at other scales (and vice-versa). This sort of "multiscale variety" has been used to develop a mathematical theory of strong emergence, demonstrating how it can be the case that more is different. I've called this quality "dynamical complexity," and defined it as a measure of the "pattern richness" of a particular physical system: one system is more dynamically complex than another if (and only if) it occupies a point in configuration space that is at the intersection of regions of interest to more special sciences. For instance, a system for which the patterns of economics, psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics are predictively useful is more dynamically complex than one for which only the patterns of chemistry and physics are predictively useful.

The notion of dynamical complexity is supposed to correspond with (and give a physical interpretation for) the formalism of effective complexity, which is an information-theoretic concept developed by Murray Gell-Mann at the Santa Fe Institute. Effective complexity is grounded in the notion of algorithmic information content, and tracks the "amount of randomness" in a string, and how any non-randomness--information--was produced. A key feature of dynamical complexity is that the total "information content" of a physical system--the total number of interesting patterns in its behavior--may be perspectival, and thus depend on how we choose to individuate systems from their environment, and how we demarcate collections of microstates of the system into "relevantly similar" macrostates. Those choices are pragmatic, value-driven, and lack clear and uncontroversial "best answers" in many cases, contributing to the challenge of studying complex systems.

As an example, consider the task of predicting the future of the global climate. What are the criteria by which we divide the possible futures of the global climate into macrostates such that those macrostates are relevant for the kinds of decisions we need to make? That is, how might we individuate the global climate system so that we can notice the patterns that might help us predict the outcome of various climate policies? The answer to this question depends in part upon what we consider valuable; if we want to maximize long-term economic growth for human society, for instance, our set of macrostates will likely look very different than it would if we wanted to simply ensure that the average global temperature remained below a particular value. Both of those in turn may differ significantly from a set of macrostates informed by a desire to maximize available agricultural land. These different ways of carving possible future states up into distinctive macrostates do not involve changes to the underlying equations of motion describing how the system moves through its state space, nor does the microstructure of the system provide an obvious and uncontroversial answer to the question of which individuation we should choose. There is no clearly "best way" to go about answering this question.

Compare that project to modeling the box of gas I mentioned earlier and you can start to see why modeling complex systems is so difficult, and why complex systems are fundamentally different. In the case of the gas, there are a relatively small number of ways to individuate the system such that the state space we end up with is dynamically interesting (e.g. Newtonian air molecules, thermodynamic states, quantum mechanical fluctuations). In the case of the global climate, there are a tremendous number of potentially interesting individuations, each associated with its own collection of models. The difference between the two systems is not merely one of degree; they are difference in kind, and must be approached with that in mind.

In some cases, this may involve rather large changes in the way we think about the practice of science. As /u/Bonitatis notes below, many of the big unsolved problems in science are those which appear to "transcend" traditional disciplines; they involve drawing conclusions from our knowledge of economics, physics, psychology, political science, biology, and so on. This is because many of the big unsolved problems we're concerned with now involve the study of systems which are highly dynamically complex: things like the global economy, the climate, the brain, and so on. The view that we should (or even can) approach them as mere aggregates of simple systems is, I think, naive and deeply mistaken; moreover, it's likely to actually stymie scientific progress, since insisting on "tractability" or analytically closed models will often lead us to neglect important features of the natural world for the sake of defending those intuitive values.

u/ROM_Bombadil · 10 pointsr/Christianity

I agree that some sort of reason is required to make a leap of faith, but I still call it a leap because such a reason would be more social/psychological (What is my motivation to do this?) or aesthetic (does this provide a more elegant perspective of the universe) but since neither of those are based on logic or induction, I can't really call them rational reasons. They're simply explanatory reasons.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, my personal epistimology here is highly influenced by Concluding Unscientific Postscript and Philosophical Fragments (Kierkegaard) as well as the Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.

u/_Dimension · 10 pointsr/inthemorning

I don't speak well. Everyone has faults. Yours just happens to be science education.

You publicly criticize everyone and everything during the show. But are incredibly thin skinned when people criticize you. Are you a douche to the people you criticize?

I think you are incredibly insightful at times, while incredibly thickheaded at others.

You need to accept sometimes you are wrong and freely admit it. It isn't an attack if you are wrong about something. It doesn't mean I am any less of a fan. It just means you're human.

If you want to get started learning about science, can I recommend two things? Cosmos and Demon Haunted World.

u/markth_wi · 10 pointsr/booksuggestions

I can think of a few

u/TyrosineJim · 10 pointsr/ireland

The scientifically literate get tired.

If you are actually interested in the study of consciousness and not just trolling watch this or any psychology text book (NCBI bookshelf is free).

If you want to know why people believe in weird shit like flat earth, bigfoot, atlantis, or the that entire mental health establishment is in a conspiracy against the pineal gland and DMT "spirit mollicule"check out Demon Haunted World world by Carl Sagan.

u/Joe_Sm · 10 pointsr/exmormon

You need to give your mom a copy of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.

u/Just_Treading_Water · 10 pointsr/technology

There is no actual debate among climate scientists regarding the human-driven nature of climate change.

Recently there was a meta-study done (where a group of scientists go over all the recent published research to look for trends and connect the dots from different studies in order to get a look at the big picture) that looked at over 4000 recent climate science papers the result is the often cited 97% consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change.

A followup to this meta-study was recently done where the studies of the dissenting opinions were looked at and the vast majority of them were found to have been cherry picking data or flawed with other serious methodological problems. None of them were repeatable, meaning they don't really count as science.

Using your crime scene analogy, it isn't really like there is a shitty prosecutor that just can't make it's case - because the case it made. It's like a case where the prosecutor calls in every single expert on the subject and they explain exactly what is going on and why and how the models they are using of man-made climate change actually have been predicting average temperatures from 1900 on (no other model does without cherry picking data points), and then the defense calls in a handful of clowns with no expertise in the area who put on a smoke and mirrors show to confuse the jury. The jury ends up thinking both sides they've heard are equally valid (because for far too long the media has been giving alternate time to "both sides of the debate" - regardless that the other side in this case are generally not climate scientists) and can't make up their minds and acquit.

Check out the documentary (or book) "Merchants of Doubt", you'll find it is the same handful of "scientists" who make a huge amount of money sowing doubt and discord about everything from harmful effects of tobacco to climate science.

Here is a handy reference list with the crap that global warming skeptics say versus what the actual science says regarding the myth they are spouting.

u/philb0t5000 · 9 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

I highly recommend "Theory and Reality" by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Another great text is "What is This Thing Called Science?" by A.F. Chalmers. As a book with primary readings my favorite thus far is "Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues" edited by Martin Curd and J.A. Cover. The Curd & Cover book is a tad expensive, but it is worth every penny. There are about 50 primary texts with commentary, and introductions to each main section.

Some other books that may be of help and/or of interest after a basic foundation is set are: "Philosophy of Biology" by Elliot Sober; "Quantum Reality" by Nick Herbert; "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn; "Sex and Death" by Kim Sterelny and Paul E. Griffiths; "Progress and It's Problems" by Larry Laudan; "The Empirical Stance" by Bas C. Van Fraassen; and "The Rise of Scientific Philosophy" by Hans Reichenbach. I welcome others to suggest more or to critique the ones I chose to highlight as too difficult or not worth the time.

Edit: Formatting and a comma.

u/kickstand · 9 pointsr/photography

The golden ratio is based on mathematics, so whatever validity it has should be universal.

u/mishagale · 9 pointsr/actualconspiracies

The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway.

Documenting the role of certain scientists in conspiring to obscure the facts about various issues such as the health effects of smoking, climate change, acid rain, and the Strategic Defence Initiative.

u/pa7x1 · 9 pointsr/bestof

Here is a quick overview of the biggest flaws. This post by itself won't serve to explain in detail how Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR) work but hopefully should be enough to help you understand in what way what OP posted is bullshit and provide you some references to dig deeper if you are interested.

> I don't know the specific equation, though it is logarithmic so you have to be pretty far along the curve (much faster than we can travel even with long term nuke bomblet propulsion) to even be noticeable in casual observation.

Time dilation is not logarithmic, it is given by the gamma factor which takes the form 1 / sqrt(1-β^2 ), where β is just the speed of the moving target as a fraction of the speed of light.

>As far as time displacement, I think for all practical purposes, space displacement and time displacement are basically the same thing.

Well... no. Time and space "displacements" are not interchangeable for all purposes neither practical nor theoretical. In fact they are very different in SR and GR, time differences e.g. (t_1 - t_2)^2 are negative in relativity and space differences (s_1 - s_2)^2 are positive, if this doesn't tell you anything by itself try to find 2 numbers whose difference squared is negative. This difference is so important that by itself and assuming spacetime is flat you can derive all of SR.

So with that sentence he not only shows absolutely no understanding of relativity he also killed the only thing that makes Special Relativity different from Galilean relativity.

>In fact, a 'wormhole drive', or gate would effectively be the same as a time dilation drive, in that the mass of the wormhole provides the energy for the Einstein-Rosen bridge, which warps space in such a way that no time passes experientally for the passengers.

No idea what a "time dilation drive" but it is absolutely false that observers crossing and a wormhole don't experience time. In relativity you experience time, all the time at the same rate you are experiencing it right now. It's everyone else who you see experience time at different rates depending on their relative motion with respect to you (hence the name relativity). The best way to understand it is by thinking that everything moves through spacetime at the same speed (the speed of light), when you don't move through space you use all your speed moving forward in time , when something moves with respect to you through space they use a bit of their speed moving through space and the rest moving through time (total adding to the speed of light). Time dilation is just a consequence of this, you see them from your perspective use less speed to move through time.

From your perspective you are always stationary to yourself and you always see the passage of time at the same rate, the same rate you are experiencing it right now.

And the rest of his comment goes on with a very poor understanding of SR and GR.

If you want to dig deeper the wiki articles on SR and GR are actually a great source to start with and they come with graphics and animations that can help a lot visualizing the funky geometry.

Start with this one and follow the rabbit hole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

For a formal understanding of Special Relativity you don't need much math, a first year course on linear algebra is enough. This book will take you from the very basics to more advanced topics: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/special-relativity/BDBCE66BDA2159DEF8226F8EE210AA8C

General Relativity requires a lot more math background, specifically differential geometry. A very nice book on the subject is Wald's General Relativity: https://www.amazon.com/General-Relativity-Robert-M-Wald/dp/0226870332

u/BeringStraitNephite · 9 pointsr/philosophy

I was trapped in a cult called Mormonism. This magazine taught me much about critical thinking and I escaped :

https://www.csicop.org/si

And this :

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805070893/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_XHXIAbHYPT1YR

And this:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345409469/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_7JXIAbH1KZTJH

u/succhialce · 9 pointsr/TrueAtheism

This is eloquently put. To add to the point of learning from freethinkers I would like to recommend some reading material. First, I would advise becoming familiar with skepticism. The ideal text for this is The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. In order to educate yourself on comparative religion (as far as monotheism is concerned) I would recommend A History of God by Karen Armstrong. Third, specifically regarding Christianity and more specifically the NT I would go to Bart Ehrman. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Hope this helps anyone trying to inoculate themselves to misinformation.

u/fiendlittlewing · 9 pointsr/atheism

Try The Demon-Haunted World By Carl Sagan

u/Supervisor194 · 9 pointsr/exjw

Jehovah's Witnesses don't really believe in the concept of human nature. From dealings simple to complex, they refuse to believe that they are primates with millions of years of evolution behind them and that this legacy creates predispositions which cannot be denied. For example, they believe that expressions of sexuality are not encoded in our DNA, but a matter of righteous choice. They believe that as a brotherhood they have a bond which transcends human nature and that in "God's organization" you will find people who are more uniformly honest than "worldly" people.

This is pure unadulterated delusion.

Similarly, because of our evolutionary heritage, all humans - members of the Watchtower Society or not - are subject to the experiences that you describe here. People see weird shit, experience weird shit - all the fucking time. The Witnesses believe that all of it is demons, misleading the lost and attempting to frighten the flock, but that is simply their eschatological spin used to describe the same phenomenon everybody experiences.

Me, I'm with Carl Sagan on this one, whether the experience is JW or otherwise: we used to live in a world where we needed demons to explain the things we didn't understand. We no longer live in that world. All things have an explanation - even if we haven't discovered it yet.

By the way, drugs like Psilocybin and LSD allow you to understand just how much your reality is constructed by your mind. Personally, I think that once you really understand this, "paranormal" shit doesn't seem quite so out there anymore.

u/algo2 · 9 pointsr/atheism

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. It's a primer in critical thinking. Reading the bible cover-to-cover is useless if they don't have some basic understanding of or an ability for critical thinking. It's also very non-threatening for a religious person.

u/darthrevan · 9 pointsr/skeptic

>This is the silly idea that skepticism is about being open minded. It is not. Being open minded in scientific matters is not a good thing.

Carl Sagan disagrees:

"If you're only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything. You become a crotchety misanthrope convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) Since major discoveries at the borderlines of science are rare, experience will tend to confirm your grumpiness. But every now and then a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you're too resolutely and uncompromisingly skeptical, you're going to miss (or resent) the transforming discoveries in science, and either way you will be obstructing understanding and progress. Mere skepticism is not enough." Source

u/aperijove · 8 pointsr/history

Apologies if it's been referenced already, I think I read the whole thread but am on mobile and didn't see it mentioned.

Carl Sagan wrote a superb book on this topic, This Demon Haunted World, Science as a candle in the dark. He talks about the perception of witches being a mass psychosis and gets into the corruption and politics of it. A superb book.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0345409469/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5eXACbBCC82C2

u/Dvout_agnostic · 8 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

I really don't have anything to say that's going to make you feel better immediately. I'd recommend

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

I grew up as a Catholic including catholic school through 12th grade. It's all lies. You're in the painful process of realizing it. It's not fun, especially when you realize people you love share in the lie and are happy to be lied to. There is no such thing as magic.

u/KerSan · 8 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

Start here.

Then go here.

When you're ready for the real thing, start reading this.

If you want to become an expert, go here.

Edit: Between steps 2 and 3, get a physics degree. You need to understand basically all of physics before you can understand anything properly in General Relativity. Sorry...

Edit 2: If you really want a full list of topics to understand before tackling general relativity, the bare minimum is special relativity (the easier bit) and tensor calculus on pseudo-Riemannian manifolds (extremely difficult). I'd strongly advise a deep understanding of differential equations in general, and continuum mechanics in particular. Some knowledge of statistical mechanics and the covariant formulation of electromagnetism would be pretty helpful too. It is also essential to realize that general relativity is still poorly understood by professionals, and almost certainly breaks down at large energy densities. I strongly advise just taking a look at the first two links I posted, since that will give you an excellent and non-dumbed-down flavour of general relativity.

u/PsychRabbit · 8 pointsr/science

There are two Carl Sagan books which I believe are more important than all of the others. The first, details how to look at the world skeptically, and the second, how to look at the world with all the wonder that Nature deserves.

u/LRE · 8 pointsr/exjw

Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).

The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).

Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.

Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.

Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.

After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.

Happy reading!

edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.

u/sheephunt2000 · 8 pointsr/math

Hey! This comment ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated, oops.

My all-time favs of these kinds of books definitely has to be Prime Obsession and Unknown Quantity by John Derbyshire - Prime Obsession covers the history behind one of the most famous unsolved problems in all of math - the Riemann hypothesis, and does it while actually diving into some of the actual theory behind it. Unknown Quantity is quite similar to Prime Obsession, except it's a more general overview of the history of algebra. They're also filled with lots of interesting footnotes. (Ignore his other, more questionable political books.)

In a similar vein, Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh also does this really well with Fermat's last theorem, an infamously hard problem that remained unsolved until 1995. The rest of his books are also excellent.

All of Ian Stewart's books are great too - my favs from him are Cabinet, Hoard, and Casebook which are each filled with lots of fun mathematical vignettes, stories, and problems, which you can pick or choose at your leisure.

When it comes to fiction, Edwin Abbott's Flatland is a classic parody of Victorian England and a visualization of what a 4th dimension would look like. (This one's in the public domain, too.) Strictly speaking, this doesn't have any equations in it, but you should definitely still read it for a good mental workout!

Lastly, the Math Girls series is a Japanese YA series all about interesting topics like Taylor series, recursive relations, Fermat's last theorem, and Godel's incompleteness theorems. (Yes, really!) Although the 3rd book actually has a pretty decent plot, they're not really that story or character driven. As an interesting and unique mathematical resource though, they're unmatched!

I'm sure there are lots of other great books I've missed, but as a high school student myself, I can say that these were the books that really introduced me to how crazy and interesting upper-level math could be, without getting too over my head. They're all highly recommended.

Good luck in your mathematical adventures, and have fun!

u/moreLytes · 8 pointsr/DebateReligion

This. People do not need to skate around discussions of causality because we have discovered ways to mitigate confounding. Specifically, causation can be pragmatically inferred from interrelationships between correlatative statistical networks, d-separation criteria, and counterfactual modeling. Further reading can be found here.

u/julia-sets · 8 pointsr/science

The "evidence" is in the studies behind this study. It's in the clinical trials and cohort studies using ERT that have shown that doing so ultimately reduces the chance of death. This study is only trying to show how an individual's choice to forgo a treatment that may have a small percentage of positive effect may be a far more important trend when extrapolated to a whole population.

But man, if there was one thing I'd love to drill into Reddit's head, it's that everyone here takes the whole "correlation != causation" thing too far. I get it, it's important to remember that correlation does not always imply causation, but in the absence of other explanations and with sufficient biological plausibility there's no reason to wholesale deny anything that doesn't have a perfect randomly controlled trial backing it (even beyond the point that there is no such thing as a perfect trial).

I wish that everyone could understand the Bradford Hill criteria and realize that there is a logical structure to defining causality in epidemiology and that the correlation they see is an important part of it. For me it seems too often that people are just so happy to recognize that a study may have limitations (is "just" correlation) that they don't take the time to understand whether or not those limitations are actually important.

I feel like we've been trapped by those Merchants of Doubt into subconsciously believing that we really do always need more information to decide anything. It's incredibly frustrating.

u/Dicknosed_Shitlicker · 8 pointsr/climate

I want to give another plug for Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway's Merchants of Doubt. Reading that, you realize it is the same exact set of people who were employed to manufacture doubt about tobacco, DDT, the ozone hole, and many other issues. It became their business model and it has worked.

u/nn123654 · 8 pointsr/PoliticalDiscussion

I certainly hope so but I guess I should show my work to get to why I think the GOP might try to do this.

To start with we need to look at his history regarding climate change, the single most obvious example of this viewpoint is his 2012 tweet stating "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
".

The opposition of climate change goes back the the better part of 25 years and has been primarily lead by conservative think tanks which help shape conservative policy and media coverage of the subject. The biggest of these groups are the Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Hartford Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). If you start to look at who appears on cable news shows and newspapers it is almost always someone from one of these groups that appear in opposition.

The book merchants of doubt does a fairly good job of describing the methodologies of these organizations many of which started out as PR firms for Tobacco companies. This academic paper also does a fairly good job of capturing trends related to this industry.

The primary reason I mention the last two paragraphs is not to debate your position but to explain why it is a key point of the GOP platform and how it is relevant to the Trump administration. Trump just named the leader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute as his nominee for head of the EPA. Pretty obviously it's clear that Myron Ebell will take steps to roll back any and all regulations on climate emissions.

As a result I expect fully expect him to roll back as many key provisions of major environmental legislation as possible such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act. I would not be surprised if there was a movement to repeal these laws and abolish the EPA entirely as advocated by prominent figures in the GOP including Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have said they wanted to do for years.

In Trump's recent statements on the transition and priorities for NASA he said:

> The new president-elect also has plans to abandon climate research, transfer Earth monitoring funding from NASA to NOAA, and strengthen the U.S. military’s stance in orbit.

This is consistent with what Ted Cruz has said on the subject which is:

> We must refocus our investment on the hard sciences, on getting men and women into space, on exploring low-Earth orbit and beyond, and not on political distractions that are extraneous to NASA’s mandate.

Given that it's been a classic GOP strategy to defund things that they don't like I don't see why they wouldn't do this with climate research. The Dickey Amendment has been incredibly effective in preventing anyone from challenging the NRA position on gun control by banning scientific research which may reach opposite findings.

Banning Climate Research would likely greatly damage the global science monitoring mission on climate change and make it much harder to convince other governments to act. This would be a great win for Trump as he could not only block climate change policy in the United States but also help block it throughout the world. If I were him and playing tactically I don't see why you wouldn't make this move.

If Trump's moves were all rhetoric as you suggest then I don't believe he would have made those choices and statements after the election.

> Contrary to most liberal opinion, most Republicans do not want to completely abandon Climate Change.

The GOP strategy until the 2008 election was to fight climate change. In 2012 it shifted to claiming "I'm not a scientist" and "I don't know" to deflect the question entirely. In 2016 the strategy has been to completely ignore and surpress the issue. I don't believe it was an accident that none of the GOP or presidential debates had the question of climate change in them.

They've instead worked to reframe it as a national security and energy issue shifting the blame to Obama's "War on Coal". From the GOP platform:

> Responsible production of America’s vast natural resources is necessary to achieve energy independence from foreign suppliers. Our energy policy should encourage investment, lower prices, and create jobs here at home. We support domestic energy production of clean coal and hydropower, as well as solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear power. And we support drilling for oil and natural gas in an environmentally responsible way. President Obama has pushed for overly restrictive EPA regulations that have cost American consumers and businesses tens of billions of dollars. Republicans have consistently voted for job creation in the energy sector through their support of the Keystone Pipeline and continued opposition to Obama’s “War on Coal.”

They not only want to completely abandon climate change, they already have.

Note to all the people down-voting because you disagree: don't. He's contributing to the discussion and answering the question. Down votes simply because you disagree aren't productive and are a violation of reddiquitte.

u/phxer · 8 pointsr/exmormon

Without addressing each issue point by point, I want to discuss the question of "why would Professor Muhlestein and other apologists come up with theories or conclusions which oppose all other scientific work on the matter?"

  • This video series has some of the best thoughts and sources exploring how and why a belief system creates biases against truth and a filter on reality. These are issues with the brain based on years of conditioning.

    Think about a guy like Muhlestein who spent his entire life believing and telling others that Mormonism is the only true way to live. He then spends years in school with the primary focus to understand Egyptology in order to defend TSCC. It is his own brain which may block out truth which is obvious to everyone else in his community and profession.

  • Secondly, apologists have a much lower burden. Their goal is simply to create doubt, just as a handful of scientists can weaken the public perception of smoking or global warming. This process is not new and has been done for years by apologists in other religions as well as political, and other issues.

    Egyptologists, outside of BYU pawns like Muhlestein, put their good names on the line to affirmatively state that their findings have revealed there is no possible way the book of Abraham is was it claims to be.

    The apologists only seek to poke holes and provide alternative theories, essentially creating doubt for TBMs to rely upon so that they can hope there is no affirmative proof that Joseph Smith was a fraud.

    Meanwhile, TSCC holds out the book of Abraham as scripture, yet takes no modern-day position on the matter of its translation. See Jeffrey Holland's response to the issue here
u/illgetup_andflyaway · 7 pointsr/NorthCarolina

> dark money funded think tank

US billionaires and Big Tobacco. Standard operating procedure for them. Check out Merchants of Doubt if you haven't

u/dargscisyhp · 7 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

I'd like to give you my two cents as well on how to proceed here. If nothing else, this will be a second opinion. If I could redo my physics education, this is how I'd want it done.

If you are truly wanting to learn these fields in depth I cannot stress how important it is to actually work problems out of these books, not just read them. There is a certain understanding that comes from struggling with problems that you just can't get by reading the material. On that note, I would recommend getting the Schaum's outline to whatever subject you are studying if you can find one. They are great books with hundreds of solved problems and sample problems for you to try with the answers in the back. When you get to the point you can't find Schaums anymore, I would recommend getting as many solutions manuals as possible. The problems will get very tough, and it's nice to verify that you did the problem correctly or are on the right track, or even just look over solutions to problems you decide not to try.

Basics

I second Stewart's Calculus cover to cover (except the final chapter on differential equations) and Halliday, Resnick and Walker's Fundamentals of Physics. Not all sections from HRW are necessary, but be sure you have the fundamentals of mechanics, electromagnetism, optics, and thermal physics down at the level of HRW.

Once you're done with this move on to studying differential equations. Many physics theorems are stated in terms of differential equations so really getting the hang of these is key to moving on. Differential equations are often taught as two separate classes, one covering ordinary differential equations and one covering partial differential equations. In my opinion, a good introductory textbook to ODEs is one by Morris Tenenbaum and Harry Pollard. That said, there is another book by V. I. Arnold that I would recommend you get as well. The Arnold book may be a bit more mathematical than you are looking for, but it was written as an introductory text to ODEs and you will have a deeper understanding of ODEs after reading it than your typical introductory textbook. This deeper understanding will be useful if you delve into the nitty-gritty parts of classical mechanics. For partial differential equations I recommend the book by Haberman. It will give you a good understanding of different methods you can use to solve PDEs, and is very much geared towards problem-solving.

From there, I would get a decent book on Linear Algebra. I used the one by Leon. I can't guarantee that it's the best book out there, but I think it will get the job done.

This should cover most of the mathematical training you need to move onto the intermediate level physics textbooks. There will be some things that are missing, but those are usually covered explicitly in the intermediate texts that use them (i.e. the Delta function). Still, if you're looking for a good mathematical reference, my recommendation is Lua. It may be a good idea to go over some basic complex analysis from this book, though it is not necessary to move on.

Intermediate

At this stage you need to do intermediate level classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and thermal physics at the very least. For electromagnetism, Griffiths hands down. In my opinion, the best pedagogical book for intermediate classical mechanics is Fowles and Cassidy. Once you've read these two books you will have a much deeper understanding of the stuff you learned in HRW. When you're going through the mechanics book pay particular attention to generalized coordinates and Lagrangians. Those become pretty central later on. There is also a very old book by Robert Becker that I think is great. It's problems are tough, and it goes into concepts that aren't typically covered much in depth in other intermediate mechanics books such as statics. I don't think you'll find a torrent for this, but it is 5 bucks on Amazon. That said, I don't think Becker is necessary. For quantum, I cannot recommend Zettili highly enough. Get this book. Tons of worked out examples. In my opinion, Zettili is the best quantum book out there at this level. Finally for thermal physics I would use Mandl. This book is merely sufficient, but I don't know of a book that I liked better.

This is the bare minimum. However, if you find a particular subject interesting, delve into it at this point. If you want to learn Solid State physics there's Kittel. Want to do more Optics? How about Hecht. General relativity? Even that should be accessible with Schutz. Play around here before moving on. A lot of very fascinating things should be accessible to you, at least to a degree, at this point.

Advanced

Before moving on to physics, it is once again time to take up the mathematics. Pick up Arfken and Weber. It covers a great many topics. However, at times it is not the best pedagogical book so you may need some supplemental material on whatever it is you are studying. I would at least read the sections on coordinate transformations, vector analysis, tensors, complex analysis, Green's functions, and the various special functions. Some of this may be a bit of a review, but there are some things Arfken and Weber go into that I didn't see during my undergraduate education even with the topics that I was reviewing. Hell, it may be a good idea to go through the differential equations material in there as well. Again, you may need some supplemental material while doing this. For special functions, a great little book to go along with this is Lebedev.

Beyond this, I think every physicist at the bare minimum needs to take graduate level quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, electromagnetism, and statistical mechanics. For quantum, I recommend Cohen-Tannoudji. This is a great book. It's easy to understand, has many supplemental sections to help further your understanding, is pretty comprehensive, and has more worked examples than a vast majority of graduate text-books. That said, the problems in this book are LONG. Not horrendously hard, mind you, but they do take a long time.

Unfortunately, Cohen-Tannoudji is the only great graduate-level text I can think of. The textbooks in other subjects just don't measure up in my opinion. When you take Classical mechanics I would get Goldstein as a reference but a better book in my opinion is Jose/Saletan as it takes a geometrical approach to the subject from the very beginning. At some point I also think it's worth going through Arnold's treatise on Classical. It's very mathematical and very difficult, but I think once you make it through you will have as deep an understanding as you could hope for in the subject.

u/mirh · 7 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

This is my favorite book.

And why studying philosophy of science? Because science is the way you know things (or perhaps less rudely it's the best practice to do so)

And knowing things, how to say.. it is the key to everything? There's so much to it that any example would seem reductive.

u/SomeRandomMax · 7 pointsr/skeptic

This is sort of like linking to the Flat Earth Society as credible proof that the earth is flat. The fact that those people believe SRA is a real thing does not actually mean it is.

The evidence against SRA as a real, widespread phenomena is overwhelmingly against.

From Wikipedia:
> Initial publicity came via the book Michelle Remembers (1980), and was sustained and popularized throughout the decade by the McMartin preschool trial. Testimonials, symptom lists, rumors and techniques to investigate or uncover memories of SRA were disseminated through professional, popular and religious conferences, as well as through the attention of talk shows, sustaining and further spreading the moral panic throughout the United States and beyond. In some cases, allegations resulted in criminal trials with varying results; after seven years in court, the McMartin trial resulted in no convictions for any of the accused, while other cases resulted in lengthy sentences, some of which were later reversed. Scholarly interest in the topic slowly built, eventually resulting in the conclusion that the phenomenon was a moral panic, with little or no validity.

> Official investigations produced no evidence of widespread conspiracies or of the slaughter of thousands; only a small number of verified crimes have even remote similarities to tales of SRA. In the latter half of the 1990s, interest in SRA declined and skepticism became the default position, with very few researchers giving any credence to the existence of SRA.

Carl Sagan's outstanding book The Demon Haunted World also spends some time focusing on SRA and related theories, and shows how people can genuinely believe the memories are real, all while actually having no basis at all in reality. If you consider yourself a skeptic, I cannot recommend this book enough. If you don't consider yourself a skeptic I recommend it even more.

u/HardDiction · 7 pointsr/atheism

While you're at it, Demon Haunted World is incredible.

u/evdekiSex · 7 pointsr/exmuslim

Edit: please read this masterpiece and how “jinn” concept is taken advantage of in every primitive society to fool and milk the people : https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469


These are cheap tricks, lool.

Your mum has been talking to him for years probably. So he knows what she is doing on a daily basis, so he blurted it to gain your mother’s trust and, hence her money.

Even if he doesn’t know her daily habits, going out and cutting flowers is a common routine in your neighborhood, so he made an educated guess.

Here, I make one for you : “ did you feel a special feelings while you were masturbating today, it was because a jinn was observing behind you. I can stop him but you must send me money first”. See, I also have psychics powers!

So, that is a cheap trick, but what do you call this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6uj1ruTmGQ


Besides, if he has so stong psychic powers, he had better apply for this 1 million dollar award, nobody managed to claim for the last 50 years though:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

u/JustCallMeDave · 7 pointsr/DoesAnybodyElse

I remember reading a section in Carl Sagen's book The Demon Haunted World where he described it as a natural brain glitch that people often mistake as supernatural

u/RobbyDigital · 7 pointsr/milwaukee

My sister is easily fooled by stuff like this, so when I took her to Shakers, she wanted a reading. I got to sit in and listen. The "psychic" said that we were very lucky to find each other and that we make a great couple and will be very happy together. We never told her that we were brother & sister, and tried pretty hard to not laugh out loud. It was a good time, but please, do yourself a favor and read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

u/sketerpot · 7 pointsr/reddit.com

> After observing that the dowsing test errors didn't convince the dowsers that they were wrong, I wondered if Dawkins learned something from a scientific rational perspective about human nature. Perhaps his desire to see humans use rational thinking as their main, and maybe even only way of relating to the world is irrational given what this episode shows about human nature.

Humans are very prone to irrationality. This is no secret; reading through Carl Sagan's excellent book The Demon-Haunted World is enough to convince anyone. There are loads of ways that we can draw faulty conclusions, and the ways to guard against them -- the ways that have been empirically shown to maximize your chance of being right -- are not very intuitive to people who haven't heard about them.

But simply because rationality is very difficult for people does not make it a bad goal. Caring about people in some other country is difficult for almost everybody, as a consequence of human nature -- but wouldn't it be nice if more people gave a damn about, say, poor sanitation in rural India?

> If strict adherence to reason is essential to human survival, how did the species survive until the modern age?

Who said that strict adherence to reason is essential to human survival? I don't think I've ever heard Dawkins say something as blatantly indefensible as that without immediately retracting it.

> Dawkins finds superstition inimical to civilization. If so why have there been no superstitionless civilizations?

Because, while superstition harms civilization, it is not the absolute civilization killer you seem to think Dawkins believes it to be. And as mentioned above, superstition is very hard for most people to get rid of; is it any wonder that we've had a bunch of civilizations with loads of superstitious people in them?

It's telling that the more civilized areas tend to have less harmful superstitions. There are many things wrong with dousing and astrology, but I don't think either of them have said that you can gaim magical power by cutting off and eating someone's labia. That's a real superstition from northeast Congo.

> From my knowledge of history it seems that civilization and superstition may be two sides of the same coin. It may not be possible to have one without the other. At least to this date no one has succeeded in divorcing the two.

How does that follow? The fact that nobody has succeeded in divorcing superstition from civilization can easily be explained by the fact that nobody has succeeded in divorcing superstition from entire populations.

> Reason hasn't yet been shown to be the safe and effective red pill releasing people from the matrix of superstition. I think the dowsing test is a case in point.

Reason is the only really reliable prophylactic against superstition. Find me one person who has really embraced reason and is also superstitious, and I'll show you someone who will immediately disappear in a puff of logic.

Those dowsers weren't thinking reasonably. They were falling into classic patterns of irrational thinking, the kind that basic rationality training teaches people to recognize and guard against.

> Just for the record, I'm an atheist that tries to be free of superstition.

Cool, we may be able to come to an agreement at some point in this discussion!

u/ImperfectBayesian · 7 pointsr/Fitness

It does not, and the set of confounding variables in fitness is legion. The particular study you linked is a pure observational exercise that makes no attempt to deal with selection issues and the idea that one might find causality in the results is fantasy.

Consider checking out some causality literature, either the Ruben-Imbens thread or the Pearl devotees. Join us in believing nothing very few extant studies.

Or just read people like Andrew Gelman and dispense with learning about causality, there are ten dozen other reasons most published research findings are false.

Related.

u/OhTheHugeManatee · 6 pointsr/AskReddit

what? That will help you become an independent person, and probably a functional human being. It will not help your critical thinking. How many americans are out on their own, but still accept everything Fox News and the bible tell them?

Carl Sagan wrote an excellent book about critical thinking and skepticism. It's called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. He talks a bit in general about why we need critical thinking and science, then goes on to discuss a variety of amazing science and pseudoscience, applying critical thinking to each. It's an excellent introduction to critical thought, easy and interesting to read.

u/Snow_Mandalorian · 6 pointsr/askphilosophy

It's possible to bypass the "is it permissible?" question by pointing out that our use of language is thoroughly saturated with analogies and metaphors. So much so that it seems impossible to conceive of a way of thinking and talking that excludes metaphors as tools of the living language. This point has been pretty extensively argued in Doug Hofstatder's Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking.

Even if we could conceive of a metaphor-free language, that language would not be our own, so it may follow that the question of permissibility is bypassed on the grounds that there is no alternative.

u/voltimand · 6 pointsr/askphilosophy

Peter Godfrey-Smith's Theory and Reality is a classic introductory text to every major issue in contemporary philosophy of science, including scientific realism.

Of course, you can always check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on scientific realism, and then look at the bibliography!

u/J_VanVliet · 6 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

Start with Carl Sagan's -- " A Demon haunted world :Science as a Candle in the Dark"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469
a VERY good book

and a good start to learning
HOW TO THINK FOR ONES SELF

u/MIUfish · 6 pointsr/atheism
u/realbarryo420 · 6 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

I'd also recommend Merchants of Doubt, which isn't about the evidence of global warming per se but about how science, or at least the public face of science, has been and can be hijacked by political movements.

u/Trent1492 · 6 pointsr/science

This is so utterly false. There is still a ozone hole. And the same people who fought against banning CFC are the same one's who fought against acid rain regulation and now global warming.

u/TimeForAJingle · 6 pointsr/technology

If anyone has not read Fermat's Last Theorem, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy somewhere. It was a best-seller and is written such that a wide range of math backgrounds can follow it yet still find it mentally stimulating. I personally give it 10/10

At the end the author addresses Wiles finally conquering Fermat, and challenges the reader to make their own conclusion. An skeptic will undoubtedly conclude that Fermat made a trivial (and forgivable) error somewhere, therefore his math was indeed not a sufficiently rigorous proof. Whereas a reader that still has the twinkle in his eye for the wonders of math, knows that Fermat's original proof lies waiting for someone clever enough to find;)

u/Decium · 6 pointsr/atheism

With a statement like I recommend reading Carl Sagan's book Demon Haunted World as soon as possible. It goes into some detail about patterns and coincidences like those, along with debunking pseudoscience in general.

u/jell-o-him · 6 pointsr/exmormon

Some here will disagree, yet I think your cause is a noble one.

My suggestion would be to keep encouraging her to be a freethinker, question everything, and learn all she can about science. If she can be at a point where she understands that "science is more than a body of knowledge, it is a way of thinking" (Carl Sagan), if she can fall in love with the wonders of the creation of the universe and the evolution of life on this world, then you'll be done, as those things will show any thinking person the absurdity of religion as a moral compass.

If she likes to read, here are some books you might consider getting for her:

  • The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. An amazing argument for the use the scientific way of thinking in every aspect of our lives.

  • A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. How math and science can fully explain the creation of the universe, and a powerful argument against the universe needing a creator.

  • The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. The subtitle is The Evidence for Evolution. Meant as a book for readers your sister's age. Big plus is that if she likes it, she may want to read The God Delusion and/or The Magic of Reality.

    Edit: grammar
u/jdubb999 · 6 pointsr/exjw

There are no demons. I think at some point I want to make a freakin' documentary on the 1980s (which really started in the 70s) and this bullshit. The entire Western fundamentalist world was suffering from mass delusion in the 70s fueled by popular entertainment which led to even regular people, the court system, police, etc. to get caught up in the Satanic Panic of the 80s.

There were endless stories in the 70s/80s fueled by accounts not only in the main magazines, but the freaky ones were published in the Yearbooks. (Dress 'provocatively?' You'll be a target for the demons. Have rosary beads? One woman received 'apparitions and beatings' from the demons every Thursday night. (??!) Accounts of sorcerers sending demons to attack people studying, but shook with fear when he found out Jehovah was involved. This nonsense is from the 1970 Yearbook alone.)

Please read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/WiretapStudios · 5 pointsr/UFOs

ಠ_ಠ

He wrote a whole book explaining why things like ghosts, witches, UFO's, etc, are more or less just in the persons mind and not based on any real evidence. I'd trust his literal word over hearsay.

u/Galphanore · 5 pointsr/atheism
u/secretDissident · 5 pointsr/AskReddit
  • The God Delusion
  • The Demon-Haunted World

    This question comes up a lot. Start with these. But you must understand that atheism IS NOT a religion. It's not LIKE religion. It's the absense of religion. As is famously bandied about, atheism is a "religion" as much as "off" is a channel on your TV.
u/The_Wisenheimer · 5 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

It really does a good job of explaining why science and critical thinking are important to society and why it is dangerous to reject them or to be ignorant of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman.

It is a very witty and entertaining collection of Dr. Feynman's personal anecdotes and reminds us that scientists are people just like everyone else.

https://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Character/dp/0393316041/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1498402289&sr=1-1&keywords=surely+you%27re+joking+mr.+feynman

u/rah_rah_amun_rah · 5 pointsr/politics

​

>Because you sound like a middle schooler who tried weed for the first time, and gets the million dollar idea that all mind-altering drugs are good because you dissociated for an hour.

I'm actually sharing second-hand the scholarship of Timothy Leary, as well as Carl Sagan's writing in Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, which is a phenomenal book. The ideas are certainly not mine, though I do agree with them. I came across them because I was formerly a professor of rhetoric and composition and used counterculture as a topic of study for some of my classes and thus became interested in the psychedelic movement.

I've also never dissociated. Some people depersonalize while taking psychedelics, but I've never experienced that, either. Dissociation is more something you might expect from Ketamine or large doses of DXM. If anything, used responsibly by psychologically healthy people with fully formed brains, psychedelics connect you further with yourself and the world around you, not the other way around.

>Slowing down your synapses and making yourself see things in slow motion or fancy colors isn't going to make you or the population as a whole more enlightened.

This is just not how psychedelics work. Visuals are a very small aspect of the experience. They're also, by far, the most underwhelming aspect. Ideally, if you're doing psychedelics right, you never see anything that isn't there or doesn't really exist, you just notice details and patterns in things that are there everyday, but you usually don't notice.

But that's beside the point. The true value of the psychedelic experience is in the cognitive and emotional component.

Take the work or neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, for example, which demonstrates that brain activity in people tripping on psilocybin is roughly the same as that of mystics and religious clerics engaged in deep meditation or prayer. Or you could look at the various peer reviewed, scholarly studies that demonstrate the dramatic effects of psychedelics on prosocial behavior and psychological function.

If you think psychedelics are still fodder for basement dwelling hippie hangers-on who can't let go of the good old Haight-Ashbury days, you're just kind of behind the times. A lot has happened since then. You should catch up. It's interesting stuff.

>There have already been places where drugs were decriminalized entirely, like Portugal, where people actually started weaning themselves off of them and overall using psychedelics less because, believe it or not, constantly altering your mind with substances is unhealthy. As far as I understand the "euphoria" that was liberated there didn't cause a cultural renaissance either.

Portugal decriminalized drugs as a radical solution to their rampant issues with opioid addiction, but mostly to curb the country's HIV epidemic due to rampant IV drug use. It had basically nothing to do with psychedelics.

Simply put, psychedelics have never been particularly available or popular in Portugal, so to use them as your measuring stick is an odd choice. Portugal is better suited for an argument about relaxing drug laws to reduce overdoses and IV drug related diseases, as well as create better access to treatment options.

The example you're looking for would likely be the Haight-Ashbury in the 1960's, which was an absolute mess. But honestly, psychedelics weren't as much to blame for that as stimulants, opioids, PTSD, other forms mental illness, and the fact that most of the people in the Haight at the time were teenagers. Speaking contemporarily, San Francisco is the highest-ranking American city in terms of overall quality of life according to the Mercer Quality of Living Survey, so do with that what you will.

>All you're doing is highlighting how different attitudes towards substances here are, and how people could get hurt.

Look, I've studied this shit, both experientially and academically. You may not agree with me, and that's fine, but I really don't think I'm the one of the two of us who has weird, misguided ideas about psychedelics and how they work.

Psychedelics are not addictive, have incredibly high overdose thresholds that are nearly impossible to meet, and when used responsibly, have seriously positive applications in the psychological and social sciences, namely when used in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy in the care of trained professionals. The fact that you think this is middle-school philosophizing really says more about you than it does about me or psychedelics, namely that you don't know very much about psychedelics.

Lastly, here's a pro-tip for your cake day: when you go ad-hominem against someone with no substantive argument to follow, and they say, "Go on...", probably don't actually go on.

u/farmingdale · 5 pointsr/PanicHistory

Read the madness of crowds. Author really goes into depth on incidents in history. The section on inside jokes is funny as hell, amazing to see how long memes have been around for.

This book is also good: Demon Haunted world

u/ShavedRegressor · 5 pointsr/atheism

Alright then, how about Carl Sagan’s Demon Haunted World. The focus of the book is on a skeptical worldview. As examples of skepticism, it gently but thoroughly debunks a number of looney ideas, but doesn’t tackle religion head on.

u/cowgod42 · 5 pointsr/skeptic

I have been bothered by this kind of thing for years. I finally started to understand the mentality of these people when I read the amazing book, "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan. It looks at the history of this kind of irrational thinking, and shows in very interesting ways how reports of witches, demons, extraterrestrials, and so on are reflections of a similar way of thinking that apparently has occurred in various forms as far back as we have historical records. If you're bothered by these crazies like I am, you might want to check out this book.

u/markevens · 5 pointsr/atheism

If you are looking for a book, I'd recommend Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.

Also, get out in nature. There is something incredibly healthy and fulfilling by being quiet in nature.

u/sixbillionthsheep · 5 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

Theory and Reality : An Introduction to Philosophy of Science by Peter Godfrey-Smith at Harvard. Small and readable. Recommended by PoS academics I have met. PGS is a youngish guy and writes in an understandable fashion. Here is his Harvard website. Awesome reference in my view. Covers all the main issues. Podcast with him about PoS at Philosophy Talk.

u/rasungod0 · 5 pointsr/atheism

The Dragon in My Garage is an excerpt from a book called Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Its probably my favorite book.

u/frontseatdog · 5 pointsr/TrueAtheism

If you're not already familiar, I suggest you start with the Wikipedia article on a priori and a posteriori knowledge.

> I understand what he means by the love example in that, while love is a series of chemical reactions, you can't really scientifically measure how "in love someone is" or the nuances of those feelings. Does this apply to the concept of God also?

Not exactly. The closest analogy to the claim that a god exists would be the claim that love exists. How would you prove that love exists? First, you would have to clearly define what you mean by love.

If you define it such that it's an unfalsifiable proposition, then the search is over before it begins; unfalsifiable claims are effectively indistinguishable from false claims and are only treated as true (or possible) by the exercise of wishful thinking.

On the other hand, if you define love in a way that is testable then run your tests etc. Note that in this scenario, how "in love someone is" may well be measurable.

This is why it's important to address someone's god claim first by insisting that they provide a testable definition. Obviously theists reject this approach, as it lays bare the weakness of their reasoning. You typically get deflective responses like "Well how would you test for happiness, or love, or whatever (immaterial concept they grasp at)." Of course anything that exists, even if it only has a subjective existence in the mind of one individual, can (theoretically) be tested if it is defined properly. Another common response is "Everything is evidence for (their) god." This is basically presuppositionalism, or circular reasoning. Circular reasoning proves nothing. And then there's "My god can't be defined, because that would set limits on him and he's too awesome for limitations." This makes the claim incoherent, because the god's attributes are incoherent. Incoherence is nonsense, by definition.

If you haven't read it, Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World" is highly rated. I'm giving a copy to my youngest daughter.

u/DoctorBurger · 5 pointsr/skeptic

It also sounds like they would benefit from Sagan's book, The Demon Haunted World

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

u/mad_humanist · 5 pointsr/outside

You need to understand that this is fundamentally a role-playing game and most players adopt an in-depth multi-layered approach to their character and take on belief flaws for extra points else where in their build. In short much of what a character says to you is BS. So something like The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark might have been good.

u/evtedeschi3 · 5 pointsr/reddit.com

Downmod any math-phobic comments.

Besides, the poster, John Derbyshire, knows his math.

u/veryshuai · 5 pointsr/AskStatistics

*There is no way to determine causation from a single correlation without further assumptions. There is a large body of literature devoted to estimating causal relationships without experimental data. Here are a couple of standard textbooks in this literature.

u/oak45 · 5 pointsr/reddit.com

recommend - quite a big-picture interpretation of "history of the world"

u/Cutlasss · 5 pointsr/AskHistory

Only when they're being paid by corporate interests. See Merchants of Doubt

u/ItsAConspiracy · 5 pointsr/Futurology

Or see the book and documentary Merchants of Doubt.

u/K3wp · 5 pointsr/IAmA

Did you even watch the "Environmental Hysteria" episode? His conclusion was that "we don't know" re: global warming.

At the time that episode was filmed there was (and remains) a 100% scientific consensus that global warming is happening and humans are primarily the cause of it, which Penn would have known had he talked to a single climate scientist. Instead, he interviewed hippies and a Cato wonk. You remember Cato, right?

Anyways, you can believe whatever you want. I'm just pointing out that his anti-science views are in line with his corporate handlers, whom happen to spend lots of money spreading FUD about scientific research that exposes the risks of their products. This is all documented in Naomi Oreskes excellent book "Merchants of Doubt", which I will highly recommend:

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382123569&sr=8-1&keywords=merchants+of+doubt

It's interesting to note that Penn's position (i.e. "we don't know") is exactly the sort of spin practiced by the PR creeps that successfully prevented any meaningful regulation of the tobacco industry for decades. So there is no surprise Penn lied about the risks of second-hand smoke, either. Or that Cato (and P&T by proxy) received financial support from the tobacco industry:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute#Cato_and_the_tobacco_industry_-_on_Philip_Morris.2C_RJR_.22friends.22_lists

I'm so vocal (and pissed off) about this because this sort of "Bullshit" actually hurts people vs. harmless fads like Feng Shui or bottled water.

Btw, I know lots (too much really) about Penn. I've attended conferences with him (The Amazing Meeting) and even been to his home in Vegas. You should try taking your own advice as you (obviously) know nothing about me.

u/oldrob · 5 pointsr/math

Fermats Last Theorem by S Singh is a really good read

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Confounded-Greatest/dp/1841157910

u/xumun · 4 pointsr/politics
u/LordPants · 4 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan

This book focuses mostly on supernatural phenomena, like ghosts, ESP, alien abductions, etc., and not the more political issues you raised above, but it's also an excellent intro to how our brains work (not like you think they do) and critical thinking about objective truths. It focuses more on the question of why people believe these things, not specifically on debunking them, and a lot of that is applicable to the issues listed above.

u/ManInsideTheHelm · 4 pointsr/Physics

For anyone looking for beautiful formalism in classical mechanics, "Classical Mechanics" by Herbert Goldstein (link) is amazing. It paints the classical view of the world in such a clear cut way!

Even if it is not necessary for a modern physicist, it helps understand the scientific mindset pre-quantum and relativity frameworks. And some of the problems in the books are incredibly satisfying to solve.

u/thepastry · 4 pointsr/Physics

I just want to point out one thing that everyone seems to be glossing over: when people say that you'll need to review classical mechanics, they aren't talking only about Newtonian Mechanics. The standard treatment of Quantum Mechanics draws heavily from an alternative formulation of classical mechanics known as Hamiltonian Mechanics that I'm willing to bet you didn't cover in your physics education. This field is a bit of a beast in its own right (one of those that can pretty much get as complicated/mathematically taxing as you let it) and it certainly isn't necessary to become an expert in order to understand quantum mechanics. I'm at a bit of a loss to recommend a good textbook for an introduction to this subject, though. I used Taylor in my first course on the subject, but I don't really like that book. Goldstein is a wonderful book and widely considered to be the bible of classical mechanics, but can be a bit of a struggle.

Also, your math education may stand you in better stead than you think. Quantum mechanics done (IMHO) right is a very algebraic beast with all the nasty integrals saved for the end. You're certainly better off than someone with a background only in calculus. If you know calculus in 3 dimensions along with linear algebra, I'd say find a place to get a feel for Hamiltonian mechanics and dive right in to Griffiths or Shankar. (I've never read Shankar, so I can't speak to its quality directly, but I've heard only good things. Griffiths is quite understandable, though, and not at all terse.) If you find that you want a bit more detail on some of the topics in math that are glossed over in those treatments (like properties of Hilbert Space) I'd recommend asking r/math for a recommendation for a functional analysis textbook. (Warning:functional analysis is a bit of a mindfuck. I'd recommend taking these results on faith unless you're really curious.) You might also look into Eisberg and Resnick if you want a more historical/experimentally motivated treatment.

All in all, I think its doable. It is my firm belief that anyone can understand quantum mechanics (at least to the extent that anyone understands quantum mechanics) provided they put in the effort. It will be a fair amount of effort though. Above all, DO THE PROBLEMS! You can't actually learn physics without applying it. Also, you should be warned that no matter how deep you delve into the subject, there's always farther to go. That's the wonderful thing about physics: you can never know it all. There just comes a point where the questions you ask are current research questions.

Good Luck!

u/mattyville · 4 pointsr/Economics

Some of my favorite (non-textbook) economic books:

u/in_time_for_supper_x · 4 pointsr/atheism

A very good book that deals with this issue is The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.

Here's the blurb:

How can we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience and the testable hypotheses of science? Pulitzer Prize-winning author and distinguished astronomer Carl Sagan argues that scientific thinking is critical not only to the pursuit of truth but to the very well-being of our democratic institutions.

Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.

u/dangling_participles · 4 pointsr/exmormon

Perhaps it's time to move away from LDS specific arguments, and start questioning the God concept in general; especially as it relates to morality.

One argument I've always liked, is that even if there is a god, by far the strongest test of morality it could ask for is if a person will be moral while believing there is no such being, and no promise of reward or punishment.

If she is willing to read, I recommend the following:

u/jrh1984 · 4 pointsr/atheism
u/mrembo · 4 pointsr/exchristian

I just echo what etherias said 100%. Also, a great book that addresses a lot of that is The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It gets into that kind of superstitious stuff, conspiracy theories, etc. Not that they'd read it, most likely, but it'd probably resonate a lot with you!

u/hxcldy · 4 pointsr/science

FTFA:
>Rural Zanzibaris’ descriptions of the leopard and its habits are coloured by the widespread belief that a large number of these carnivores are kept by witches and sent by them to harm or otherwise harass villagers.

What kind of world?

Why, a demon-haunted one, of course.


u/BlazeOrangeDeer · 4 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is excellent reading. Although it's more pro-science than anti-religion, that's what's important anyway and it makes the atheist viewpoint clear.

u/nautimike · 4 pointsr/atheism

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. Its a very good book that mostly focuses on skepticism.

u/N8CCRG · 4 pointsr/DebateReligion

Recommended reading (though I understand if you don't... it's extremely counter to your point of view and you sound very set in it): http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

u/hydragorgon · 4 pointsr/conspiracy

I don't mean any disrespect, but I think Sagan is a gatekeeper. In "The Demon Haunted World', he tries to debunk almost every big conspiracy theory. His narrative is similar to the modern post-Campbell interpretation of myth. He also sites the discredited False Memory Syndrome Foundation in this book.

the book

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

a citation on the FMSF wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Memory_Syndrome_Foundation#cite_note-23

This book was used as a debunkers manual in the 90s, so I might have a chip on my shoulder. But I can't take Sagan any more seriously than Chomsky, Hitchens, Hawkings, or Oprah.

u/scottklarr · 4 pointsr/books
u/Gruzman · 4 pointsr/TumblrInAction

When talking about science it's best to have a decent knowledge of the philosophy of science, first. It doesn't help to be vague as to the intentions and criticisms of science and, most importantly from a SJW perspective, the values of scientists conducting research. The biggest push and pull in the debates over what constitutes the most "Scientific" type of knowledge revolves heavily around the menagerie of ideas sometimes called "object directedness" (i.e. we think about objects, thus creating a knowledge of them. that knowledge is constituted among other more biased thoughts or processes) or how we impose our beliefs on the objective world as we attempt to measure it.

If anyone here is serious about debating and taking down exact points within the Social Justice/Feminist critique of Science, I'd suggest buying/stealing/finding this book (Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues).

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Central-J-Cover/dp/0393971759

u/drunkentune · 4 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

If you want a good introductory text and have money to burn, check out Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues.

u/acidrain666 · 4 pointsr/secretsanta

ok i see you like philosophy so i would give you one of my favorite books , witch covers lots of good philosophical ideas and much more http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0552997048/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416775987&sr=1-1

seriously though this is a must read for someone like you :)

u/liquidpele · 3 pointsr/atheism

You're confusing certainty with evidence. Stop it.

I can have evidence that says it's unlikely a deity exists or that I have a soul, and this is indeed the case with most everything. Bringing up the fact that it's not a proven certainty is a misrepresentation about what science and knowledge in general represents.

Anyway, you've clearly already made up your mind so I'll just stop now, but will point you in a direction if you want to know more. Goodbye:

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/Labors_of_Niggales · 3 pointsr/books

I would either say A General Theory of Love or The Demon-Haunted World are books that I always recommend to people who want to expand themselves.

A General Theory of Love is the perfect message for those who think intelligence and self-mastery means an absence of emotions. For those of us who think being rational means not letting emotions into the decision making process, this book elucidates on why that is not healthy and also why you're probably lying to yourself if you think you are incapable of feeling emotions like "normal" people.

The Demon-Haunted World is a book for everybody. It is a philosophical book written by an astrophysicist using everyday language so nearly anybody can grasp its concepts. It brings the major philosophical question of why within the average person's conceptual grasp, without using any spiritual reasoning. I feel that when more people can contemplate that question, why, without immediately turning to the supernatural and shutting down the mundane, we will be a more level-headed species.

Eh, my two cents. ;-)

u/Up-The-Butt_Jesus · 3 pointsr/atheism

Yes you can. $11.56 and worth every penny. Check out Pale Blue Dot by Sagan as well. Here is an audiobook sample of Pale Blue Dot, read by Carl himself.

u/ethertrace · 3 pointsr/DebateAnAtheist

> seems like what my friend says is not based in reality.

I concur with your assessment.

Your friend is trapped in their own hall of mirrors.

Usually I don't agree with the perspective that "you can't argue someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into," but it seems valid in this case. They're going to have to have some sort of experience that changes the way they think at least a little bit before they're going to listen to anything you have to say. As of right now, as one might say in a martial arts movie, they are "not ready."

The two things that came to my mind when I read this were Richard Carrier's essay on Why I am Not a Christian, and Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. I actually recommend these as reading for you and not your friend. They would in all likelihood dismiss the texts out of hand, but I think you would really benefit from the material and be able to pull out ideas from them that will help you better communicate to your friend the problems with their way of thinking.

u/kylev · 3 pointsr/skeptic

This sort of false memory ("recovered") has been on my mind a bit lately. I'm finally getting around to reading Demon Haunted World and it brought back a bunch of stuff from my school days. There were chapel speakers (Christian school) that talked about Satanic cults sacrificing babies. I probably went through a big chunk of my life thinking that there really was a massive outbreak of Satanic rape happening.

u/jaciilyn · 3 pointsr/atheism

Former Methodist, that explored many other religions, then read The Demon-Haunted World and never looked back.

u/acetv · 3 pointsr/learnmath

Check out some pop math books.

John Derbyshire's Prime Obsession talks about today's most famous unsolved problem, both the history of and an un-rigorous not-in-depth discussion of the mathematical ideas.

There's also Keith Devlin's Mathematics: The New Golden Age, which, to quote redditor schnitzi, "provides an overview of most of the major discoveries in mathematics since 1960, across all subdisciplines, and isn't afraid to try to teach you the basics of them (unlike many similar books)."

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott is an interesting novel about dimension and immersion. An absolute classic, first published in 1884.

You should also check out the books on math history.

Journey Through Genius covers some of the major mathematical breakthroughs from the time of the Greeks to modern day. I enjoyed this one.

Derbyshire wrote one too called Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra which I've heard is good.

And finally, you should check out at least one book containing actual mathematics. For this I emphatically recommend Paul Halmos' Naive Set Theory. It is a small book, just 100 pages, absolutely bursting with mathematical insight and complexity. It is essentially a haiku on a subject that forms the theoretical foundation of all of today's mathematics (though it is slowly being usurped by category theory). After sufficient background material is introduced, the book covers the ever-important Axiom of Choice (remember the Banach-Tarski paradox?), along with its sisters, Zorn's Lemma and the Well Ordering Principle. After that it discusses cardinal numbers and the levels of infinity. The path he takes is absolutely beautiful and his experience and understanding virtually drips from the pages.

Oh yeah, there's an awesome reading list of books put out by the University of Cambridge that might be of interest too: PDF warning.

u/jimmy_rigger · 3 pointsr/math

Unknown Quantity by John Derbyshire.

EDIT: It deals specifically with algebraic notation. There's a great story on how we came to use "x", and it's mainly due to the French language.

u/mattylovesyou · 3 pointsr/Futurology

> The funny thing is, this is probably the exact same way the human brain works to think.

Not necessarily. Many believe it is though analogy, which Douglas Hofstadter (of G.E.B. fame) has been working on for decades. You can read more about his work and ideas on this subject in the book Surfaces and Essences.

u/topoi · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

It depends what you're trying to get out of it.

There are literally hundreds of introductory texts for first-order logic. Other posters can cover them. There's so much variety here that I would feel a bit silly recommending one.

For formal tools for philosophy, I would say David Papineau's Philosophical Devices. There's also Ted Sider's Logic for Philosophy but something about his style when it comes to formalism rubs me the wrong way, personally.

For a more mathematical approach to first-order logic, Peter Hinman's Fundamentals of Mathematical Logic springs to mind.

For a semi-mathematical text that is intermediate rather than introductory, Boolos, Burgess, and Jeffrey's Computability and Logic is the gold standard.

Finally, if you want to see some different ways of doing things, check out Graham Priest's An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic.

u/pgsr · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

This is a difficult topic because the subject matter of logic is contestable. For instance, is logic about the laws of thought or is it about language or is it about reality? If it is about language, then classical logic is highly dubious. In ordinary language, A does not characteristically imply A or B. Nor does A and not A characteristically imply B in ordinary language.

In answer to your question, it depends on what the subject matter of logic is, and what logic is under consideration. If you want to know more, I recommend studying classical logic (propositional and predicate logic) and then reading Graham Priest's An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic. http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Non-Classical-Logic-Introductions-Philosophy/dp/0521670268

u/crundar · 3 pointsr/logic

If inconsistent, paraconsistent, and otherwise Brazilian logics aren't already your bag, my usual recommendation is Priest's Introduction to Non-Classical Logic.

I would, of course, love to hear others' suggestions.

u/Michael_Stevens · 3 pointsr/IAmA

You've got to read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything

It's not just about one topic.. except for the topic of Bryson being a polymath in all the best ways.

u/lajoi · 3 pointsr/books

In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin is a good one. A little older, but he walks through arguments really well. He wrote a follow-up book title In Search of Schrodinger's Kittens, but I haven't read that one.

u/bovisrex · 3 pointsr/books

A physics-guru friend of mine recommends this three-pronged punch: In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, The Tao of Physics, and Autobiography of a Yogi. Haven't gotten to the third one yet myself, but the first two were quite excellent.

u/nitrogentriiodide · 3 pointsr/askscience

I know this isn't what you requested, but as a high schooler, I enjoyed In Search of Schödinger's Cat.

The top level presentations on QM are very light on math, and anything below that brings out heavy linear algebra, differential equations, calculus, etc. So you've probably got that top level covered, and now you need to start solving problems. You could get credit for your efforts by picking one of the undergrad versions of QM from the Chemistry and/or the Physics depts.

I took the chemistry route, so we used Atkins, Cohen-Tanoudji, etc. For all the classes that I took and TA'd, the professor might recommend a book, but rarely reference it.

u/T-HO-THA-MALE-HOOKER · 3 pointsr/PKA

i am reading these two books, http://www.amazon.com/In-Search-Schr%C3%B6dingers-Cat-Quantum/dp/0553342533 and http://www.amazon.com/Erwin-Schrodinger-Quantum-Revolution-Gribbin/dp/1118299264. i just ordered this book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983358931/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1KIF2Y9A1PQYE) like 3 days ago and am gonna start reading it soon. also i started playing wow in early sept so i will skim the official mop strat guide just as some extra help once in a while. in school we just finished catcher in the rye and its pretty cool and mind altering.

u/eek04 · 3 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion

If you want things that "click" for quantum mechanics, the following three popular books were helpful to me (as a layperson):

  • John Gribbin's two books In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality (1984) and Schrodinger's Kittens: And The Search For Reality (1995). These cover several different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, and many perspectives.
  • Richard Feyman's QED (1985). This (while not being explicit about it) is rooted in the multiple worlds interpretation (which supposedly fits with Feynman's favorite formalism.)

    I know QED have been recommended to people that "know the math" but can't make it click.

    I'm sure there exists newer popular books that would also be helpful; I'm just not familiar with them.
u/luminiferousethan_ · 3 pointsr/askscience

Quantum Mechanics is not really a subject that can be summed up in a reddit comment. The best way to learn about something is to read about it. Go to your local book shop or library and look for some books on the subject. I've read dozens of books on the subatomic and I still don't understand it fully. If you're aspiring to be a physicist, you should become reeeeeally familiar with reading.

Uncertainty is a good one that I've read. And another great one is In Search of Schrodinger's Cat

u/tip_ty · 3 pointsr/math

>Golden Ration, Phi

Warning: although I haven't read this book, a lot of golden ratio stuff veers into pseudoscience/numerology territory.

u/bertrand · 3 pointsr/philosophy

You can look at these for an examination of postmodernist authors on a case by case basis:

Higher Superstition

Fashionable Nonsense

The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy

u/hack_of_ya · 3 pointsr/space

Read about it and understand the science would be my tip.

And know that the fossil fuel industry has a campaign to spread any doubt they can about climate change science. They lose money if people divest from fossil fuels, and they know which tactics to use very well. They are using the exact same people who worked for the tobacco industry and said smoking doesn't cause cancer. These are lobbyists who just lie and lie for money and do not care how badly their lies hurt people. Everything is documented extensively in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

As a climate scientist, I can tell you I do not get paid much at all. And I do not get paid depending on what my results are. I and all my colleagues would be extremely happy if we discovered climate change wasn't as serious as it is. I am working in this field because I find it interesting, I like the scientific process, and I'm passionate about understanding climate change better so I can contribute to stopping what is arguably the most serious future threat to humans and our civilisation.

On climate change specifically: We have known there is a greenhouse effect since the 1800s. We know the Earth's climate changes at regular cycles, natural climate change. We know what causes it to change, like orbital changes and sun output. The climate responds to whatever is the dominant forcing, what's impacting it the most. We know natural causes can not explain the warming happening now. We can measure what's causing it, and it's very clear that it's predominantly greenhouse gases from humans: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

We know humans are releasing greenhouse gases, and we can identify individual particles to make sure they're not from natural sources.
We also know that Earth is in an interglacial with warm stable temperatures, and passed the warming peak of it a few thousand years ago, and should therefore now be slightly cooling over thousands of years as we go into a glacial period. We know that the rate of warming happening now does not happen when the climate changes naturally. It's way too fast to be natural.

A good resource for any question about climate change: https://skepticalscience.com/

At the same time, there are numerous studies on how many climate scientists who think humans are the cause and dominant driver. The number is usually around 97%.

u/colechristensen · 3 pointsr/math

Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick

http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick/dp/0140092501/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261454053&sr=1-5

A classic, one of my favorite books. A sort of math history for part of the 20th century. Obviously the part that has to do with Chaos.

u/networklackey · 3 pointsr/books
u/bigattichouse · 3 pointsr/todayilearned

Sigh. It's actually from discussion about meteorology and sensors from the following book:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140092501

The idea is that, no matter how detailed the model, in reality there are perturbations in reality that are always smaller than your sensors.. so even if you had a sensor every one foot ... something as tiny as a butterfly's flutter could eventually cause unmodelable changes.

I feel old now.

u/NeoMarxismIsEvil · 3 pointsr/exmuslim

I think the best answer to your question, is probably Chaos Theory. Here are some links:

u/RobusEtCeleritas · 3 pointsr/AskPhysics

Goldstein is good.

u/monodelab · 3 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

For refresh your knowledge, the basic:

u/MaceWumpus · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

As /u/as-well notes, there are a number of possible interpretations of your question.

There's a bunch of work on whether philosophical methods can get you closer to the truth in the way that science does. This section from the SEP article on Naturalism will be helpful for you in that regard.

You might also be wondering about philosophers who attempt to use "scientific" methodologies in pursuing philosophical questions. There's a whole boatload of that sort of work, from Bayesians in epistemology to certain philosophers who work on semantics to "experimental philosophy" (which is, so far as I can tell, psychology done by philosophers). I'm not sure what a good introduction to this sort of work would be, but perhaps someone else can suggest some.

It seems like a number of other commentators have read you to be looking for "philosophy of science" broadly construed. That's a giant discipline, but it mostly deals with the nature of science and various issues surrounding it. If you're interested in that, I'd suggest starting out with a textbook like those by Peter Godfrey-Smith or Alan Chalmers. Under no circumstances would I recommend beginning with famous past philosophers of science like Kuhn, Popper, Carnap, or Lakatos: their discussions are both subtle and extremely opinionated, and are therefore likely to give you a really misleading picture of the discipline.

u/Laughing_Chipmunk · 3 pointsr/askphilosophy

Good post. I must say i follow a similar train of thought considering most matters you have discussed. It seems scientific thought plays a big role, and hence would be wise to understand the philosophical stance of science, or at least the attempts that have been made to understand it. A book i haven't read yet, but will embark on soon is titled What is this thing called science which as far as i'm aware is the go to introduction to philosophy of science text, also among universities. Also there is a good series on youtube that i've watched which covers some of the main ideas in philosophy of science such as inductivism, deductivism, paradigm theory and systematicity. That's a good watch, ~ 12 lectures that go for about an hour or so each. I can give you the lecture slides if you want. Also in relation to philosophy of science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is also very popular in which Kuhn puts forth paradigm theory.

u/jello_aka_aron · 3 pointsr/atheism

Well... yes and no. When your views/findings contradict the views and findings of the vast majority of the rest of the scientific community you tend to have a hard time getting traction, yes. That's part of how it works. The other part, however, is that ultimately the truth is in the data. If the data is good it will win out in the end. Others will come along and check your results, usually with the intent to get you to shut up and move on to helping address what almost everyone else says is important. Then, sometimes... not real often, but sometimes they find out the unpopular weirdo thing that crazy guy was talking about actually is true/works.

Read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for an in-depth look at this topic. Oftentimes it takes the old-guard literally dying off for the new model to truly take hold, but ultimately science is about the data and whatever construct best fits the available data is the one that will be used.

u/jamille4 · 3 pointsr/exchristian

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Also, learn about other religions and their histories (not the most comprehensive, but you could start here). History of early Christianity was enlightening for me, as well.

u/Shailud · 3 pointsr/atheism

If you haven't read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan, I'd highly recommend it. Having a firm foundation in thinking skeptically will help you avoid relapse into faith.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

u/fromkentucky · 3 pointsr/atheism

Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan

>Many of you appear to have been raised non-atheist. What do you wish your parents would have told you?

The truth.

In all seriousness, what religion really deprives children of, is critical reasoning and independence. I was slowly and implicitly discouraged from questioning things, anything I was told by a person I was supposed to respect was not to be doubted, ever, or it was an insult to that person. This is wrong. I was also made to be emotionally and psychologically dependent on faith. By convincing me that I would see my loved ones again in the afterlife, I was suddenly saddled with the need to continually reaffirm my faith or else I might have to deal with the pain of loss and actually complete the grieving process.

The truth is, dealing with death in a realistic way is what really gives this life meaning and is very imperative to becoming an independent, grounded adult.

u/MrMushyagi · 3 pointsr/environment

Also, have been misled by industry funded scientists, that used the same tactics as tobacco and pesticide (DDT) lobbyists

https://smile.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942?sa-no-redirect=1

u/runplato · 3 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

Look into the agnotology literature, especially Proctor and Schiebinger's book, and Oreskes and Conway's book. Hot area of study on the cultivation of ignorance as a response to uncertainty, very cool stuff going on right now. Think you'd like it given that stated interest.

u/EmCdeltaT · 3 pointsr/teenagers

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Fermats Last Theorem - Simon Singh

On a related note, what are your favourite non-fiction books?

u/Manrante · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook
u/reverendfrag4 · 3 pointsr/excatholic

I always like to recommend Carl Sagan's book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. It is a layman's guide to scientific materialism: the philosophy that only that which can be proved is real. It's also a pretty entertaining read. Start there.

u/navyjeff · 3 pointsr/philosophy
u/whorfin · 3 pointsr/atheism
u/pstryder · 3 pointsr/DebateReligion

Start here : The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark by Carl Sagan.

There's no reason for your parents to object to this; it's not about religion at all. It's about what science can tell us about reality, and how to know things.

You are on a quest for truth. This book describes a 'skeptical toolkit' that will help you identify truth.

u/tikael · 3 pointsr/atheism

Online resources.

Iron chariots wiki

Talk origins index to creationist claims

Atheist gems

As far as actual books on logic?

Demon Haunted World

How to win every argument

Books on atheism? Apart from the obvious ones by the four horsemen (Dawkins, Dennit, Harris, Hitchens).

Nuke the pope keeps a list.

Hope that helps

u/ToadLord · 3 pointsr/atheism

Baby steps. Enjoy the book, and definitely read this one next.

u/readbeam · 3 pointsr/suggestmeabook

I used to love all those new age books! Why not head down to the used bookstore and pick up half a dozen books that look fun out of that section? There's always something entertaining there. If she's a true believer, avoid anything that suggests people can survive by eating nothing but air.

Or, if she's not a true believer but just interested in the subject, have you considered getting her some non-fiction books that delve into the psychology behind ghost sightings and such? Like Investigating the Paranormal (less skeptical) or Demon-Haunted World (much more skeptical)?

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches was a fascinating read and IIRC largely historical. She might also enjoy branching out into a book like The Predictioneer's Game, which is about game theory and how to use it effectively in modern life.

If she likes mysteries at all, I suggest Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. It's about a police officer who is laid up in hospital and decides to use the time to solve a famous historical mystery. You could also consider biographies of strong and active women who inspire -- Princess Diana, maybe, or Martha Stewart?

(Edited to add links)

u/panamafloyd · 3 pointsr/atheism

If the guy's more of a "liberal Christian", the first one I usually suggest is this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

But since your wife's pastor recommended Strobel, I suspect he's a fundamentalist. Even something as 'gentle' as Sagan may not work..and anything more confrontational than Sagan's work will just make the pastor angry (provided he actually does read it, of course).

I agree with [http://www.reddit.com/user/Vu70n0m0v5]. He and your wife think they're going to "fix" you, even though there's nothing wrong with you.

u/PoobahJeehooba · 3 pointsr/exjw

The Demon Haunted World is Carl Sagan’s book, but great recommendation regardless 👍

u/TechnicolorSushiCat · 3 pointsr/houston

That is not remotely what this article says, nor what the concept is.

Again man, enjoy your conspiratorial thinking where science is a lie and you are being scammed by a global cabal millions of people strong to destroy america and conservatism, with the elaborate lies of climate change, and the insane idea that if you want the rise to be kept to a reasonable minimum, you've got twleve years left to do it.

You could just ask Exxon. They knew in 1982.

Liberal exxon. With their insanity that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

I feel sorry for you, bud. I really, really do. Like I said, I doubt you have done well for yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/MoreAccurate · 3 pointsr/Documentaries

I'd like to suggest The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, it talks about the UFO phenomena in great detail.

u/wegener1880 · 3 pointsr/atheism

only problem is that it is 497 pages at least in the 1997 paperback version.

u/scotland42 · 3 pointsr/exmormon

Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0345409469

It won't prove the church is wrong directly, but it gives a good guide to scepticism and how to think logically. It is probably the most important book I have ever read.

u/Invisibird · 3 pointsr/atheism

Congrats from a former Catholic. Be out and open about it. We need more people to not be afraid to identify themselves in public and to their families as atheists. People have no clue how many there are around them.

​

For book recommendations, I like The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

u/unamenottaken · 3 pointsr/atheism

Sounds like you'd find interesting, and benefit from, learning 'critical thinking'. It helps tremendously with questions like yours.

Google it. And a good book, off the top of my head, is Carl Sagan's 'The Demon Haunted World'.

u/Sahqon · 3 pointsr/exchristian

> If not, I've been lied to and held to impossible expectations my whole life and that's hard to swallow.

You must realize that when you believed without question, you also "lied" to everybody else about the same thing. You are not a single person being lied to, you are part of a group in which likely no one is lying to anyone else, they just don't know any better (than you do), and everybody else is just confirming to the others that "of course we are right".

Read some books about the history of the religion (The Bible Unearthed or Who Wrote the Bible for the OT and the Jesus Wars for the NT are a good and rather entertaining overview), and maybe read Sagan's The Demon Haunted World to clear up some things about who believes what and why it's not necessarily a lie, but might still not be the truth. Seriously, it's about UFOs, lol.

r/academicbiblical is also good (and free), but it's sort of short answers to specific questions about the Bible. Their wiki is the best though!

u/srosorcxisto · 3 pointsr/satanism

Anything particular that you're looking for? Here are three of my favorites outside of the usual recommendations.

The Unique and Its Property (aka The Ego and His Own) by Max Stirner. Updated translation of the OG book on Egoism

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Great read on the the scientific method, skepticism and developing a baloney detection kit.

Captivate by Vanessa van Edwards. The best guide for lesser magic out there.

Edit: fixed links. I was posting from my cell phone which caused a lot of issues.

u/antonivs · 3 pointsr/technology

> As scientists, theories should always be called into question if there are doubts about their validity, surely?

Sure, but that goes both ways - well-verified science can also call results into doubt. As Carl Sagan put it, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (On that note, if you're interested in an excellent book that deals with evaluating claims rationally and scientifically, I highly recommend Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.)

In this case, there's nothing raising doubts about the validity of fundamental principles and theories like the conservation of momentum, special relativity, or quantum field theory, which are the theories which would have to be violated for these engines to work.

One of the consequences of the scientific advances of the past century or so is that science is now much more able to not only predict things accurately, but rule also rule things out with a high degree of certainty. The latter point often isn't well understood, so I'll give a very relevant example.

In 1915, Emmy Noether developed a very important mathematical theorem, now known as Noether's theorem, which has been called "one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics." What Noether's theorem
does is prove that conservation laws, like conservation of energy and conservation of momentum, necessarily arise from the existence of certain kinds of symmetry.

For example, our universe has a property called translational symmetry which we all take for granted: it's simply that when an object moves through space, it retains its shape - so e.g. a ball won't turn into a cube just because you move it a foot to the left. We can imagine universes where something like this happens, e.g. where the shape of space varies such that objects in space change shape as they move - but observation indicates that our universe doesn't work like that. Even under the most extreme circumstances that we've observed, our universe appears to respect translational symmetry. Noether's theorem tells us, with the certainty of a mathematical proof, that in any universe with this property, translational symmetry implies that a law of conservation of momentum exists.

So if someone says that they've found a way to get around conservation of momentum, there's one of three possibilities: (1) they've found a way to break translational symmetry; (2) something is wrong with mathematics itself, because it has produced incorrect results in the case of Noether's theorem, which has an easy to verify proof; or (3) the claimants are mistaken or lying.

(1) and (2) are both extraordinary claims, and certainly if there were any evidence that they were true, scientists would be all over it, because it would imply a major shift in the fundamentals of science and even mathematics. But there's no evidence that anything like this has happened. Instead, we have people making claims that simply don't add up when these fundamental physical theories are taken into account.

Of course, because of the above, even many purveyors of crank science know that violating conservation of momentum is a big no-no, which is why they've tried to claim that relativity and quantum theory somehow allows them to avoid this violation. The problem is, I could provide exactly the same sort of description for relativity as I have above, and it would similarly end up leaving us with a few extremely unlikely options followed by the option that the claimants are mistaken.

In each case, "claimants are mistaken" is not just the most likely option, it's almost certainly the correct one - and if it's not, it would imply that we're just terribly wrong about some of the most basic features of physics, a situation which up until now hasn't even been hinted at.

> I just like to keep an open mind about these things.

What if they were saying "our engine is powered by invisible fairies", would you still keep an open mind then? From the perspective of a scientist, what they're actually saying is little different from that.

u/darkcalling · 3 pointsr/atheism

Support her. Offer her advice you wish you had at the time. Be there for her, and if necessary give her caution about telling your parents if that would be a problem. Encourage her to think critically, to ask questions.

I highly recommend the book Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan even though it isn't explicitly atheist.

u/atheistcoffee · 3 pointsr/atheism

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

u/HerzogZwei2 · 3 pointsr/booksuggestions

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan for general science.

Stuff by James Randi, Michael Shermer for general stuff about new age crap.

The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin and Deadly Choices by Paul Offit on the Anti-Vaccination movement.

Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best and How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff (Also see How to Lie with Maps by Mark Monomonier for a similar subject) for questioning stats and graphics used in the news.

Is there anything specifically you're interested in?

u/Skreeonk · 3 pointsr/skeptic

If you like the article, read the whole book.

u/crotchbiscuit · 2 pointsr/atheism

For a more thorough analogy, read the very brief chapter entitled The Dragon in My Garage, from Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, a book which should be required reading for anyone wishing to be an advocate for critical thinking.

u/pretzelzetzel · 2 pointsr/atheism

Don't trust everything you read online, either. Books are still generally your best bet, because people who might not know what they're talking about can't edit them while you're reading them.

Obviously I'm not saying all books are better than all internets, but find some credible ones and you're much better off.

I'm not a scientist by training, but I can suggest a few books that will provide a pretty good counterbalance to what your mom will be teaching you. (A few of them have quasi-religious-sounding titles, too, so if she happened to find them lying around she might not get too angry.)

The Chosen Species: The Long March of Human Evolution

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

A Brief History of Time

I can recommend more if you'd like. These ones are pretty broad surveys of the topics of (in order) evolution, more evolution, the role of science in society, and the physical nature of the universe. If you're homeschooled, I'm assuming high school-level? None of these books is technical - they're all 'popular science', intended to explain broad concepts to non-scientists. They're very, highly interesting, though, and it's easy to find recommended reading lists once you discover some specific topics that interest you. The Chosen Species itself has a lengthy and detailed bibliography and recommended reading section at the end.

I hope I've been able to help! Good luck!

u/ness36 · 2 pointsr/atheism

I would highly recommend this book by Carl Sagan:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

here is a clip from a review by Amazon user "My Uncle Stu" that does a amazing job of explaining what the book is about:

>In Demon Haunted World, he writes about science, about what science is and what science isn't. Whenever you get in debates with religious types, or with those self-appointed geniuses, the philosophy majors, they will always hit you with the fact that science is just another belief system, just like any religion or philosophy. They will tell you science can't answer all the questions and is often wrong. Of course that is true, if you look at science strictly as a body of knowledge. But that is not what science really is. Science is a process. It is a way of approaching the world, a way of formulating and testing hypotheses. If it is just another belief system, then it is a belief system that grows by virtue of challenging its adherents to challenge and disprove the current state of knowledge. It's the only belief system where you have to be a skeptic to be a zealot.

I think understanding how the scientific method works is greatly helpful, since a lot of religious people think science is just a collection of ideas that are believed on faith, similar to religion, when really it is a method for finding out the truth.

u/HermesTheMessenger · 2 pointsr/atheism
u/N8theGr8 · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Don't sell yourself short. 16 is definitely old enough to begin thinking for yourself. It takes a lot of time and thought to become a good critical thinker, but anyone can take necessary steps. Here are a few starting points I recommend:

Here be Dragons It's about 40 min long.

The Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan

Also the TV series "Penn & Teller: Bullshit" is pretty good, although they use a little too much name calling in my opinion, but it's entertaining and they get the point across.

u/prepress_monkey · 2 pointsr/skeptic

Another favorite source is The Demon Haunted World By Carl Sagan.

u/Irish_Whiskey · 2 pointsr/religion

The Case for God and The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong are both good. The God Delusion is a simple breakdown and explanation of most major religious claims. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by the Dalai Llama is an interesting book on ethics. The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook is 150 funny and insightful pages on Islam. Under the Banner of Heaven is a shocking and fascinating account of fundamentalist Mormonism. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan discusses religion, and Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot are my secular versions of holy books. And of course given the occasion, I can't leave out God is Not Great.

I recommend avoiding authors like Lee Strobel and Deepak Chopra. Both are essentially liars for their causes, either inventing evidence, or deliberately being incredibly misleading in how they use terms. Popularity in those cases definitely doesn't indicate quality.

u/ThisIsMyRedditLogin · 2 pointsr/Christianity

> Take a deeper look at a lot of the stuff used to "contact" ghosts and spirits in hauntings.

I don't believe in ghosts. Why would I want to waste time hunting around the internet for the ramblings of paranormal fanatics?

> Same thing for the alien "contactees" there's all sorts of occult stuff there.

The people who usually get visited by aliens turn out to be village idiots and/or drunks. Why do aliens, in their powerful ships, always visit out of the way farms to rectally probe some innocent divorced farmer?

> "Channeling" messages from "aliens" who consistently lie about their origins and deny the Gospel every chance they get while proclaiming that man can be like God.

Aliens who lie about their origins and deny the Gospel? So aliens have come to earth and blurted out "Jesus doesn't exist"? And they also proclaim that humans can be like God?

Listen to me carefully. STOP DRINKING THE TURPENTINE. It's not helping you.

> Sounds like the same tune Satans been singing for years just cleverly repackaged.

Yup. That nasty Satan pretending to be an alien in a beautiful spaceship, experimenting on cows and telling farmers, with a probe up their anus, that Jesus doesn't exist. Damn that Satan to hell, along with his rectal probing device of deception!

This is the perfect book for you.

u/Sybertron · 2 pointsr/reddit.com

Pale Blue Dot should be a suggested reading for American High Schools. This video makes want to start a campaign championing it.

u/atheistlibrarian · 2 pointsr/atheism

Try reading The Demon Haunted World by Sagan. He breaks down why people believe things without evidence far better than I ever could.

u/drones4thepoor · 2 pointsr/politics
u/Kagrabular · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Demon Haunted World is great for teaching skeptical critical thinking skills.
When I was around his age I loved Redwall. They're great books that really appeal to a young boys sense of wonder and adventure, all while teaching great life lessons along the way.

u/howardcord · 2 pointsr/atheism

You should read this book.

u/Mines_of_Moria · 2 pointsr/BetterEveryLoop

He would say "I told you so." He has written many a word decrying falsehoods and lamenting the possibility of the decline of our ability to think critically. https://smile.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469?sa-no-redirect=1 Check that book out, Demon Haunted World.

u/nonsensepoem · 2 pointsr/videos

Now go forth and get yourself a copy of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.

u/permutation · 2 pointsr/atheism

> A Demon Haunted House

Sorry, I'm usually not that nit-picky, but it is The Demon-Haunted World.

u/daseperatah · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

I think the most important one for understanding the essense of science and of Sagan's philosophy is

The Demon Haunted World

Seriously, I can't recommend it strongly enough it might change your life in some small, or perhaps large, way.

u/AlSweigart · 2 pointsr/atheism

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

u/awkward_armadillo · 2 pointsr/atheism

A descent selection so far from the other comments. I'll throw in a few, as well:

​

u/sanedave · 2 pointsr/IWantToLearn
u/babelincoln61 · 2 pointsr/promos

I'd love to hijack this ad and recommend people check out The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

u/drb226 · 2 pointsr/exmormon

Hopped on Amazon to check it out: http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

The kindle version costs more than a brand new paperback version... wtf is this ಠ_ಠ

u/ProbabilityMist · 2 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

Truly surprised that no-one's recommended Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World yet. That's almost literally and exactly about this topic and it's a classic.

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/Kemilio · 2 pointsr/atheism

>maybe higher iq correlates to being right

You have the right idea. Having a solid foundation in logic correlates to "being right", and thankfully using logic is a learnable skill.

When it comes to understanding the world, you have two practical choices. You can rely on emotion and follow only what "feels good" (like you said, wanting to feel special and having the world make sense to you exclusively rather than learning how to make sense of the world, big difference). Here you risk being manipulated and fooled by emotionally controlling groups or individuals. You also risk being very wrong about how things in the world work.

Or, you can rely on reason and follow the path that corresponds logically with what you already know. It's not easy or fun at times, but if you really want to be able to understand how the world works then it's the only option. The best thing is that, once you establish a good system of logical checks, you develop a sense of true pride and confidence knowing that you can see past bullshit and even anticipate how things will happen. You become a better informed person, and that in itself is special.

If you're serious about this, I would recommend reading this book. It's a great introduction into analysing the world from a logical perspective.

u/The_Mighty_Atom · 2 pointsr/exchristian

>>Finally! do you have any good book recommendations? Again, thanks!

Ooh goody, I always love it when people ask for book recommendations. :)

Here's just the tip of the iceberg:

u/stoic9 · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World is a good place to start. Moore and Parker's Critical Thinking starts to formalize things a bit. Getting a little more technical there is Choice and Chance.

u/Cdresden · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook
u/Skyhawk1 · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Complete bunk.

Check out Carl Sagan's book ' The Demon Haunted World', which
explains how and why these concepts still exist.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345151511&sr=8-1&keywords=demon+haunted+world+by+carl+sagan

u/Richard_Fey · 2 pointsr/IAmA

I suggest reading Demond Haunted World by Carl Sagan. This should pretty much clear up anything you've ever been told about UFOs and bad science in general.

u/rugtoad · 2 pointsr/reddit.com
u/robinrising · 2 pointsr/WTF

>Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World

Definitely. Here's a convenient link to purchase.

u/AlphaCygni · 2 pointsr/nosleep

There are excellent books out there that explain this phenomena. Unfortunately, I have no titles to give you, but I've definitely read a few. I think that Sagan's Demon Haunted World is one of them.

IIRC from when I read them, the scientists point out that, before aliens, people often reported seeing religious figures/demons/angels. In other cultures, they report seeing the 'commonly viewed' figures of those cultures, from religious figures, to elves, to fairies, etc. At the turn of the century and before, many respectable adults reported seeing fairies, which was why that faked fairy photograph was so widely believed.

Our brains aren't perfect machines which accurately record the world and notice every detail. We actually interpret everything we see, adding things in and ignoring things deemed inconsequential. Since we, as a culture, share similar ideas, it makes sense that we would interpret odd shapes and things have glimpsed through the cultural lenses of what we would expect to be there when something is there that's not supposed to be. Before 'little green men' were aliens, they were goblins and other creatures. From wikipedia These examples illustrate that use of little green men was already deeply engrained in English vernacular long before the flying saucer era, used for a variety of supernatural, imaginary, or mythical beings.

Also, as an Evolutionary Anthropologist, I find it very telling about the human psyche that the physiology of these supposed advanced aliens is so strikingly similar to our own, with the changes in shapes like an overdeveloped human. The first time I saw a Homo sapiens skeleton placed next to a Neanderthal skeleton, I was struck by how we must have looked like aliens to them. It's very interesting that our 'enemy' is a more advanced version of ourselves.

u/Morpheus01 · 2 pointsr/atheism

Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in The Dark" directly addresses this. He even references crystals.

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

Buy it, and give it to her. I hope that helps.

u/grandzooby · 2 pointsr/genetic_algorithms

Melanie Michell's book, "Complexity, a Guided Tour" (https://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0199798109) has a chapter about GAs. Her example is a robot in a room that learns to pick up cans using a GA.

There's an example of this coded in NetLogo: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/RobbytheRobot

Another source: http://is.muni.cz/www/139613/genetic_algorithms.html

u/dat_cosmo_cat · 2 pointsr/compsci

I read Complexity: A Guided Tour on a flight a few years back. It's a thoughtful and well written non-technical CS book, uses concrete real world examples with interesting historical tangents weaved in (I enjoy that "here's what people believed at the time/here's how this person figured out XYZ" sort of stuff). It kind of reminded me of Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

u/enter_river · 2 pointsr/INTP

Ok, well let me preface this by saying that while I am indeed a PhD student, I am a brand new one, and I wouldn't want to assert any undue authority on the topic. I definitely encourage you to continue to explore these ideas on your own, but i'll give you a quick rundown of the topic as I understand it.

Complex systems science is a broad, interdisciplinary research program seeking to explain how organization emerges from the interactions between multiple independent agents in the absence of central planning and control. Each agent is following their own rules according to limited information about a shared environment, but through regular interaction with other agents certain system level structures and/or behaviors may emerge.

A classic example (IMHO) would be flocking behavior. For a long time researchers were trying to figure out how flocks of birds controlled their movement in flight. They spent a long time looking for some sort of "bird leader" (really), before realizing that those decisions are really being made by the flock itself through a form of collective computation rather than by any individual or group of individual birds. An individual bird will make sure it is pointing in the same direction as the birds around it (alignment), and stay as close as it can to the birds around it (cohesion), without running into other birds or crowding them (seperation). As long as all the birds are following those rules, the flock can move just fine. With just one or a few birds the interactions aren't very interesting, but when you scale it up you can get some pretty spectacular collective behaviors.

Now, my own background is in international relations and public policy, with a focus on political economy. My focus as a graduate student is on the processes by which informal norms and values are codified into formal institutional structures, and how the specific knowledge, beliefs, and values of individuals result in the collective behaviors and cultures of larger scale actors in the international system (nations, states, ngos, corporations etc.)

In addition to what I had said above, we're talking about fractal structures, self-similarity at scale, distributed information processing, the evolutionary algorithm, chaos, information and entropy à la Shannon. In my opinion at least these ideas will be the basis for a new non-linear, computational scientific paradigm which will finally allow us to gain insight into problems that have resisted analysis through traditional functional or linear regression type analysis. I also happen to thing it is the perfect XNTP discipline. So many different and challenging things to learn. So much of the foundation is still being laid here.

This is alot of text so far, and I'm not sure I've even conveyed anything of value, so I'm going to quit here. I'd be happy to try and answer any other questions you might have. I love this stuff and I love talking about it.

Here's some further resources:
Web
Complexity Explorer
Santa Fe Institute
New England Complex Systems Institute
Books
Think Complexity(pdf) -Allen B Downey
Complexity: a Guided Tour - Melanie Mitchell
Complexity: A Very Short Introduction - James H. Holland
Out of Control - Kevin Kelly

Edited: for formatting (I am not very good at Markdown) and to add a sweet bird video.

u/ari6av · 2 pointsr/hebrew

I just double checked - this one in particular is from the preface to the first edition of this book. The photo in the OP is of an edition that's laid out differently from mine, but the text is the same. What gave it away for me was the Cambridge 1950, and that I remember seeing the roshei teivos when I first got the book a few years back.

u/shavera · 2 pointsr/askscience

Okay so if it evolves towards "all futures" simultaneously, how can we predict the motion of a ball in the air? Which timelike axis is it following along to give the motion with which we're familiar?

What I'm trying to say is that while you may have an interesting idea or an idea that interests you in answers, now is the time to then start learning what we already know about our universe so that you can either see where the idea is wrong, or learn how to formulate it in the mathematical framework of physics. When I was in high school and early undergrad I too had a lot of ideas along these lines. But when I learned about classical mechanics and general relativity and quantum mechanics and so on I was able to see why those ideas didn't work and just how cool the ideas we do have are. So if you have some experience with calculus (including multiple dimension calculus, partial derivatives, and preferably some linear algebra) then maybe try and work through some classical mechanics textbooks (like Goldstein, Poole, and Safko).

u/maruahm · 2 pointsr/Physics

I heard good things about it, but honestly as an applied mathematician I found its table of contents too lackluster. Its coverage appears to be in a weird spot between "for physicists" and "for mathematicians" and I don't know who its target audience is. I think the standard recommendation for classical mechanics from the physics side is Goldstein, which is a perfectly good book with plenty of math!

For an actual mathematicians' take on classical mechanics, you'll have to wait until you take more advanced math, namely real analysis and differential geometry. Common references are Spivak and Tu. When you have that background, I think Arnold has the best mathematical treatment of classical mechanics.

u/MahatmaGandalf · 2 pointsr/AskPhysics

The books others have suggested here are all great, but if you've never seen physics with calculus before, you may want to begin with something more accessible. Taylor and Goldstein are aimed at advanced undergraduates and spend almost no time on the elementary formulation of Newtonian mechanics. They're designed to teach you about more advanced methods of mechanics, primarily the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations.

Therefore, I suggest you start with a book that's designed to be introductory. I don't have a particular favorite, but you may enjoy Serway & Jewett or Halliday & Resnick.

Many of us learned out of K&K, as it's been something of a standard in honors intro courses since the seventies. (Oh my god, a new edition? Why?!) However, most of its readers these days have already seen physics with calculus once before, and many of them still find it a difficult read. You may want to see if your school's library has a copy so you can try before you buy.

If you do enjoy the level of K&K, then I strongly encourage you to find a copy of Purcell when you get to studying electricity and magnetism. If you are confident with the math, it is far and away the best book for introductory E&M—there's no substitute! (And personally, I'd strongly suggest you get the original or the second edition used. The third edition made the switch to SI units, which are not well-suited to electromagnetic theory.)

By the way: if you don't care what edition you're getting, and you're okay with international editions, you can get these books really cheaply. For instance: Goldstein, S&J, K&K, Purcell.

Finally, if you go looking for other books or asking other people, you should be aware that "analytical mechanics" often means those more advanced methods you learn in a second course on mechanics. If you just say "mechanics with calculus", people will get the idea of what you're looking for.

u/ZBoson · 2 pointsr/askscience

Any mechanics text targeted for the standard junior level mechanics course for majors will cover it. I used Fowles and Cassiday when I took it. I'm not really sure what else is standard. The standard text in grad courses is Goldstein, which should be approachable by an undergrad at least. If you're crazy and a classical mechanics junkie like I was as an undergrad, Landau and Lifshitz vol1 is a beautiful treatment (that you unfortunately probably already need to have seen the material once to appreciate. Oh well. Like I said: if you're crazy). The issue here is that sometimes undergrad courses will skip these (as I learned, amazed, when I was encountering other grad students that hadn't done Lagrangian mechanics before) so make sure you read those chapters and do the problems: quantum mechanics is done in a hamiltonian formulation, and quantum field theory in a Lagrangian formulation (the latter is because the Lagriangian treatment is automatically relativistici)

I never had a course specifically on waves. It's something you'll likely hit pretty well in whatever non-freshman E&M course you take. Beware though that some courses targeted at engineers will do AC circuits at the expense of waves. But the text is still useable to look into it yourself.

u/jnnnnn · 2 pointsr/Physics

Quite right. Some more advanced concepts that might be useful are

  • group theory (I can't provide a reference for this, sorry) and
  • Lagrangians (this book is good).
u/BreSput · 2 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

Curd and Cover is pretty much standard undergraduate textbook for philosophy of science courses. It has a ton of very good articles and a ton of very well put together commentary on each article. If you are interested in getting into the philosophy of science it is literally your best choice.

The Rosenberg and this book, which I have read and would definitely recommend, are very good supplements to help you understand the general themes in the philosophy of science, but the Curd and Cover is your best bet. If you have to choose one choose that one. It it such a good compilation of the most important essays in the philosophy of science.

Yeah. Don't know how much harder I can stress: Curd and Cover is great.

>This second one is from what seems like a very well respected and legit publishing company that has a gigantic list of books, which all seem excellent after reading descriptions:

You'd be surprised how little this means in academia, especially philosophy. Essentially if you have a good cv and can write a coherent statement of purpose you can get a book published, probably even on a big name academic publisher. Books aren't referee'd the way articles are, and if you get a book deal the chances of them pulling the plug is very small (you'd have to fuck up big). Articles by contrast have to go through a rigorous process of peer review, and only the best (hopefully) make it to the pages of a journal. Curd and Cover is a compilation of the best articles in the philosophy of science.

u/jacobheiss · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

Sure, I personally know of many examples; that's why I mentioned it before. Also, your second paragraph did not seem remotely offensive to me; it just sounded like you were trying to clearly articulate your point! In response, I think there might be two helpful things to raise at this point before going into specific examples:

  • There is a difference between critical inquiry and what I guess I'd call mere criticism. For example, scientists are perpetually engaged in critical inquiry, testing both the results of and also the basis of their discipline, but they are in general disinterested in mere criticism--exploring whether or not science is loopy or of any value whatsoever. I think you may be mistaking this difference in the way you address religion, but a parallel set of conditions obtains. I know very few religious people who engage in mere criticism of religion (although there are some out there!), but I know of quite a substantial number who engage in critical inquiry.

  • It sounds like you may be transferring a lot of your personal experience with religion to other people's expressions of their experience. This might not be the case--you may actually be encountering a lot of people who engage in pseudo-critical thought about their religious beliefs--but I'd wager that this sentence is bordering a self-fulfilling prophecy in the strictly, psychological sense of the term:
    > when I read of how people "question their faith" I see a similarity. I see myself in their words. So far, I haven't seen anything deviate from this.

    Two concluding caveats; despite how frequently this point is raised in debate, it is not substantial:

    > a dozen religions believe contradictory things

    The way this is usually developed to merely criticize religion is like saying "because a dozen philosophies or aesthetic theories or anthropological worldviews believe contradictory things, they are all wrong." Just because two different religious loci make wildly different claims does not mean that they are both equally, wildly incorrect. On the other hand, this is a very good point:

    > some of these "self-criticisms" are no better than a person who's in love with someone who is emotionally abusive towards them but they can't bring themselves to leave. Any sort of "evaluating the relationship" is simply a joke. Any example of misconduct is explained away by rationalizing that "but everything else is OK and it feels good on top of that."

    I think what we are dealing with here is something that is not specific to religious belief but to any belief that is radicalized in the case of religion. This was part of the point Kuhn so famously made in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, that there is a strong effect of personal bias and comfort and perceived upheaval in the way that any discipline develops. In other words, I would absolutely grant your point that a lot of religious people are sub-critical and self-deluded when it comes to their reflections on their own religion, but I would attribute this to a condition of humanity in general given its prevalence in other realms of rational endeavor and not just as something particular to religion.

    Perhaps this is so obviously prevalent in the case of religion for two reasons:

  • Religion necessarily deals with things close to the bone. There's a lot at personal stake for most people when it comes to whether or not Jesus rose from the dead circa 30 CE, but there's little personally at stake for most people when it comes to whether Marc Anthony married Cleopatra circa 32 BCE. It's more difficult to be critical about beliefs that are "close."

  • We live in a society that rarely speaks openly and pointedly about religious matters. Hence, people have difficulty treating them as a "subject" of a debate or a study without taking things very, very personally. This has been the case in the past for other disciplines in other contexts; for example, it is said that the followers of Pythagorous threw one of their own out of a boat to drown when he demonstrated that the square root of two was an irrational number. People take their religion much more personally now than they take their mathematics; hence, they tend to be ill-adept at a healthy sort of critical inquiry when it comes to religion in general.

    Nevertheless, I maintain that there are a lot of religious people who are healthily critical of their own beliefs.
u/TempusCavus · 2 pointsr/MovieDetails

Since we are talking about expert based evidence courts use the Daubert test.

Now it still has an element of the bandwagon fallacy, so it's not best for determining actual truth.

Then there is the problem of induction which implies that actual truth from scientific testing may not be obtainable because all science relies on induction.

The next place to go to is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which I think anyone who is interested in epistemology should read. The take away for this discussion is that scientific consensus is ever changing and while it is not perfect it does give rigorously tested guesses. And as long as a theory can make valid predictions then there is no reason to not accept it, but it should never stop being questioned. Mere skepticism gets you know where besides solipsism. Skepticism with scientific rigor allows you to make predictions that, while flawed, result in cars, computers, rockets, medicine etc. etc.

Physical evidence is derivative of science because the the methods used to test physical evidence are based in scientific theory. So, the same logic applies

My personal approach is a factors test that looks at such things as:

Whether it makes logical sense, Probably the weakest factor, but it helps to weed out logical errors first.

Whether it passes scientific rigor, Scientists do a good job of testing things repeatedly to see whether a theory works practically, in addition to logically. Some areas of science are more trust worthy than others. Always check what bias my exist in the scientist. Always follow the money.

How many other assumptions do I have to make to get to? This is a variation on Occam's razor. The more assumptions I have to make to get to the conclusion the less likely I am to believe it.

I don't believe I have perfect knowledge. I do believe I have practical/working knowledge. And if something happens in the next five minutes that changes my assumptions then I'll change what I believe.

u/VixennRadio · 2 pointsr/ScienceTeachers

I took a class in college called "Scientific Revolutions" about the shifts in scientific paradigm throughout history. One of the textbooks in the course was The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. It was rather enjoyable and extremely informative. I wish I kept my copy. Amazon has a bunch of related suggestions as well.
(https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083)
Perhaps this will spark some ideas?

u/AFNMFH · 2 pointsr/Keep_Track

*SNAP* Yep, this one's going in my cringe compilation.

\>Cherry picking studies and datasets to fit an agenda under a thin facade of academia certainly takes some brain power.

Accuse the enemy of what you already do yourself, a classic. Left-leaning/Leftist academics selectively publish/approve articles that conform to their worldview regardless of the veracity.

https://quillette.com/2018/10/01/the-grievance-studies-scandal-five-academics-respond/

Also, you have not cited anything; your argumentation is entirely based on emotions. Pathos, quite literally pathetic.

Continue to reject scientific data that does not conform to your worldview; it is normal.

Pick up a copy of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It is the foundation for the widely cited and accepted notion that science is not a progressive act in the way it is commonly perceived. Even scientists will reject or fight with data that does not match their existing narrative about the world.

P.S. I've got another common part of reality for you to reject.

Dogs and other animals can be selectively breed to produce specific behavioral traits. Humans are animals with close ties to other mammals (you do not seem to be a creationist to me). In this study a group of wild foxes were domesticated within roughly 40 years. There is nothing shocking about groups of humans that have reproduced separately for several hundred to thousands of years having different traits.

​

u/dstone · 2 pointsr/science

In case anyone was too lazy to look it up.

It's fairly cheap too!

u/breisdor · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

Check out The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. It is a great book and would be sure to give you a few topics to write about.

u/DeeperThanNight · 2 pointsr/Physics

For special relativity, I would check out Landau's The Classical Theory of Fields, first few chapters.

For general relativity, Wald's book is the gold standard, and might be better for you as a mathematician.

u/Cronecker · 2 pointsr/physicsbooks

The links between topology, geometry and classical mechanics are fairly well documented in the other comments. Geometry and topology are fairly important in modern physics, at least what I've seen of it. General Relativity is the main example of where geometric ideas began to enter into physics. A good resource for this is Sean Carroll's GR notes and corresponding book. There are more advanced GR texts as well, like Wald's book.

There are also some books which deal directly with the links between physics and geometry, such as Frankels book, Szekeres, Agricola and Friedrich and Sternberg. Of these I own Szekeres book which is very good, and Frankels looks very good as well. The other two I am not sure about.

Geometric ideas do raise their head in more areas, as an example it is possible to formulate electromagnetism in terms of tensors or the hodge dual (see here). Additionally, and this is a bit beyond my knowledge, a friend of mine is working on topics in quantum field theory involving knot theory. I'm not exactly sure how this works but the links are certainly there.

Sorry if this all has more of a differential geometry flavour to it rather than a topological one, the diff geo side is what I know better. Hope that all helps. :)

u/mrdevlar · 2 pointsr/statistics

If you want a math book with that perspective, I'd recommend E.T. Jaynes "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science" he devolves into quite a lot of discussions about that topic.

If you want a popular science book on the subject, try "The Theory That Would Not Die".

Bayesian statistics has, in my opinion, been the force that has attempted to reverse this particular historical trend. However, that viewpoint is unlikely to be shared by all in this area. So take my viewpoint with a grain of salt.

u/ConsciousJohn · 2 pointsr/exmormon
u/Mablun · 2 pointsr/exmormon

Why Evolution is True

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark


Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (free online!)

Guns, Germs, Steel

The God Delusion

Misquoting Jesus (Conceptional this is very compatible with Mormonism--the Bible not being translated correctly so we need the BoM!--but the specifics about what got mistranslated are devastating as Mormonism doubled down on the mistranslated parts. oops.)

Don't even both learning anything more about Mormonism. Just be widely read and you'll soon see that the Mormon version of history is in incongruent with reality. This will cause cognitive dissonance and when you're ready to resolve it, go back and read independent sources about Mormonism and it will be very obvious that the narrative they indoctrinated into you as a child doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

u/TalkingBackAgain · 2 pointsr/intj

24 years ago was a better time for me as well.

"The Prince" [Niccolò Machiavelli]

"The Demon-Haunted World [Carl Sagan]

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" [Douglas Hofstadter]

"On War" [Carl von Clausewitz]

"Intuition Pumps And Other Tools For Thinking" [Daniel C. Dennett]

u/trophywife26point2 · 2 pointsr/exmormon

Everyone who still needs help overcoming these fears needs to read this: https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469 AMAZING!

u/Deradius · 2 pointsr/agnostic

Book: The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It presents a strong case for a secular view and discusses the basic underpinnings of a skeptical mindset with a bit more subtlety than can be found in works by other famous atheist authors.

Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This book has nothing to do with atheism or agnosticism; in fact is was written by a Mormon. But it does provide some principle centered practices that are useful to people, particularly if you are feeling rudderless in the absence of a religious moral code.

u/godmakesmesad · 2 pointsr/exchristian

Thank you. I feel for that professor too.

Hopefully some scientists are studying this. I want to reread that Carl Sagan book

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

I believe it's worsening too, and have seen a change in my life time. The anti-science affected me negatively while in my brain the writings of Carl Sagan were buried, and maybe helped me out later. There's a lot of people who have given up reading and thinking and religion tells people to let others do their thinking.

Thank you for admitting that about the libertarian party. Corporate money is buying off our government. Government power can be misused, that much is sure from the other end.

Yes a lot is fake in TV shows, reality TV etc. I have the kind of mind where I notice too. I think many have improved in their understanding in how cognitive dissonance works, and are using it to many people's detriment. We are in the days where things have moved far beyond propaganda and into controlling and using biases. I think of how my own mind was manipulated in religion and elsewhere.

u/StardustSapien · 2 pointsr/AskScienceDiscussion
u/roundeyeddog · 2 pointsr/television

I would actually recommend these two books:

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

https://www.amazon.com/Asking-Right-Questions-11th-Browne/dp/0321907957

I'm not trying to be condescending, but these will really steer you in the right direction on sourcing. I still use both in my daily life all the time.

u/mr_sesquipedalian · 2 pointsr/exjw

Hey Dave,

I wanted to respond to this for a few days now. Sorry for the late reaction ;-).

It makes sense to be terrified at doom days predictions. We're all human and nobody is bulletproof to nonsensical ideas. You will find that even the smartest around us, believe in really silly things. This goes much further than religion. Alternative medicine (homeopathy, reiki, acupuncture), religion, conspiracy theories (911, Elvis still lives, we didn't land on the moon).

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a systematic way of knowing if 'things we know' (or ideas) were true or false. It would have to be testable and repeatable. and no matter what your origin was: American, African, Asian, European, you would have to come objectively to the same conclusion.

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

I would argue that most people don't want to become disassociated with JWs anymore, because it's the most logic step, but because they don't feel that way anymore. In the end humans are guided much more by their feelings than logic. We consider ourself a logic bunch, but when it comes to reality, most people take the decision with their feelings and then rationalize them self right using logic. Then what happens, is that although this person is not a JW anymore, they are still susceptible to other ideas, like alternative medicine, conspiracies or other religions. And this is really where scientific literacy comes into play.

Since you said you're a techy, I think you will like the following recommendations. I really encourage you to google and watch the following people on youtube:

Sam Harris

Daniel Dennett

Christopher Hitchens

Richard Dawkins

Neil degrasse Tyson

And read: http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

u/The_Stann · 2 pointsr/atheism

I always recommend this book to anyone who's interested in skepticism, and that includes skepticism of religious claims.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle/dp/0345409469

Sagan is the man.

u/lolrj · 2 pointsr/atheism

Catholicism is pretty interesting how they don't push the JUST BELIEVE down your throat. I grew up like that too, and the emphasis was just a lot more on the community, tradition and ritual. Then I went to an Evangelical church where the emphasis was on BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE.

Anyway, just musing to myself. You said you're all good on science (Catholicism is good like that), but I would still highly recommend Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan.

I'd also suggest some of Stephen Law's Philosophy Books.

I'd also suggest reading the Bible for yourself, if you haven't already :)

I guess you have to ask yourself what exactly it is that your belief depends on, then go after that yourself to find what other explanations are out there.

u/redditluv · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan

This shit should be mandatory reading...ESPECIALLY for politicians and policy makers.

u/mindful_island · 2 pointsr/getdisciplined

For a good starter into critical analysis and the scientific method, along with general topics on not getting suckered into things, I recommend Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan:

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

To help start thinking about balanced critical awareness you can try some little workbooks like this: https://www.amazon.com/Do-You-Think-What-Philosophical/dp/0452288657

That book isn't very in depth but I found it a good way to start exercising skepticism and logic.

To learn how to step back and pay attention to what is happening, including thought patterns, emotions and body states with a critical but calm eye, I recommend mindfulness practice in the insight meditation tradition, it is quite secular, rational and will be useful for anyone.

6 part introduction to mindfulness:

http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/

To dampen the irrational negativity I recommend the practice of metta which is something like purposefully practicing compassion, forgiveness and support.

For specific info on Metta(loving kindness) practice just ctrl+f on "metta" on this page: http://www.audiodharma.org/recommended_talks/

Then, I recommend two practical philosophies that both teach how to deal with internal dialogue and experience in rational and practical methods.

Secular Buddhism
https://secularbuddhism.com/category/podcast/

Stoicism
https://immoderatestoic.com/good-fortune/

You should start with the oldest episodes.

On the Stoicism side it would be helpful to read through Epictetus Enchiridion and Marcus Aurelius Meditations as starters. Try to find some modern translations to make it a bit easier unless you like the old language stuff.

I know that is a lot, I'd say start with either the mindfulness practice or Carl Sagan's book. Keep it simple and take your time.

u/lifestuff69 · 2 pointsr/TheRedPill

Watch The Rubin Report on YouTube. Dave Rubin interviewed both Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, as well as MANY of the other names I see posted by others here. He interviews people from different political, social, and economic philosophies. I even fund him on Patreon because his channel is great (and important).

 

If I had to pick three people that made the most dramatic impact on my life in terms of how I think, seek and evaluate evidence, and use reason, these people would be at the top. While the people on my list did not always agree on everything, I do believe that they are/were intellectually honest:

 

Thomas Sowell

u/criticalfactories · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

Don't stop dealing with him. Be valuable to him as a friend and confidant, but not as a potential convert.

For reading material, if it comes to that, a go to book is alway Carl Sagan. Read if yourself, if you haven't.

u/HeartlessGrammarian · 2 pointsr/exjw

Debunk what? A story being told on a show about ghosts and demons? Have you ever read the book The Demon Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark? I really recommend that you do if you haven't.

u/greim · 2 pointsr/religion

Whether or not this particular article is sensationalistic fear-mongering, witch-mania and superstitious fervor are endemic to the human condition. I recommend reading the book The Demon-Haunted World.

u/iamtotalcrap · 2 pointsr/atheism

My favorites... the first two are not even talking about religion, but simply pure science and fascinating.... the second starts off about UFOs but then goes into being critical of religion (while barely... it's sagan after all, it's enough to turn off a non-questioning christian).

http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

http://www.amazon.com/Genome-Autobiography-Species-23-Chapters/dp/0060194979

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

Beyond that, all of Malcom Gladwell's stuff is interesting and about science/sociology so it's a great read and a lot of is down to earth and so will pick at the fundamentalist belief some... eg:

http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922/

u/wiltscores · 2 pointsr/books

Weston's A Rulebook for Arguments is clear and concise.

Heinrichs' Thank You for Arguing is more informal with lots of pop culture references.

Sagan's Demon Haunted World is a paean to science & critical thinking and Whyte's Crimes Against Logic is good as well

u/billwoo · 2 pointsr/IAmA

All I can say is please read this, then come back and do an "I recently learnt the difference between pseudo-science and actual science AMA".

u/-Lemma- · 2 pointsr/TrueAtheism

Agreed looks like the OP just needs general skeptics resources and community. I would also recommend Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. You may also find /r/skeptic here on reddit useful.

u/Tyaedalis · 2 pointsr/askscience

Carl Sagan addresses this in his book titled The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. He deals not with the neurology behind it, but rather the psychology and history behind it. A good read.

u/kiwifuel · 2 pointsr/INTP

>Or if you don't believe in these things, how would you use your INTP characteristics to understand them?

By being able to self analyze. Use cold emotionless calculation.

I'll argue that the "spiritual" is not necessarily stupid, but a lot of people's take on the supernatural is.

Recommended reading: The Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark

u/TheWildhawke · 2 pointsr/atheism

Endorse the one-star review by Daniel Morrow.

u/IQBoosterShot · 2 pointsr/atheism

I'll have to send him a copy of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.

Even in these modern times people still believe in demons. Just think about that for a second. If that fact alone doesn't scream for more education, I don't know what does.

u/Taintlyn · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

Sorry for the delayed response! I'm taking Summer courses, and they're eating up all my free time. I am so thrilled with all of the suggestions. Thank you all so much. I probably shouldn't have phrased my focus with such a narrow term. When I say astronomy, I'm also talking about cosmology, space and time. The main Phil o' Science text I'll be working with is


 


Curd, Cover, and Pincock's Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues
I plan on focusing on a couple sections within this text, including Science and Pseudoscience, Models of Explanation, Laws of Nature, and Empiricism and Scientific Realism. From these topics I'll incorporate the cosmology/space and time pieces.

 

The main text for the astronomy angle on the course will be
Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought

 

Everything that's been suggested sounds incredibly interesting. I think it might be neat to focus on gravity and use pieces like the suggested Smith and Wilson articles. I hope that clears things up. If there's anything else worth suggesting, I'm all ears. Even if I don't have time to incorporate it into the semester, I'm always looking to add things to my general reading list.

u/FreelanceSocialist · 2 pointsr/answers

If anyone is interested in the history of algebra, the book Unknown Quantity is a great read.

u/berf · 2 pointsr/evolution

All of the above and more. This is a large area of philosophy of biology and of biology itself. Huge amounts of literature on the gene concept. You could start with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article and move on to Keywords in Evolutionary Biology.

It is indeed a foolish question in the sense that thinking there is one and only one gene concept that works for everything and all uses is the wrong way to think about concepts (never mind the gene concept). I just started reading Surfaces and Essences and am taken by its argument.

u/_bfrs_ · 2 pointsr/artificial

Hofstadter had this to say on the importance of Bongard problems in What are A and I?:

>... It is clear that in the solution of Bongard problems, perception is pervaded by intelligence, and intelligence by perception; they intermingle in such a profound way that one could not hope to tease them apart. In fact, this phenomenon had already been recognized by some psychologists, and even celebrated in a rather catchy little slogan: "Cognition equals perception"...
>
>...Sadly, Bongard's insights did not have much effect on either the AI world or the PR [pattern recognition] world, even though in some sense his puzzles provide a bridge between the two worlds, and suggest a deep interconnection. However, they certainly had a far-reaching effect on me, in that they pointed out that perception is far more than the recognition of members of already-established categories--it involves the spontaneous manufacture of new categories at arbitrary levels of abstraction. As I said earlier, this idea suggested in my mind a profound relationship between perception and analogy-making--indeed, it suggested that analogy-making is simply an abstract form of perception, and that the modeling of analogy-making on a computer ought to be based on models of perception...

It is unfortunate that Hofstader's insight on Bongard's insights still hasn't had much effect on the AGI world (AFAIK, no mention on the opencog group) or the ML [machine learning] world!

BTW, Hofstadter has expanded the latter portion of the 2nd paragraph above into a 500 page book published just last month: Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. Has anyone here read it?

u/ADefiniteDescription · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

> I guess I thought that modus ponens could be derived from the three laws I mentioned.

How is modus ponens derived from identity, LNC or LEM?

None of those even allow you to derive anything, let alone modus ponens. They're just statements. Without some background rules governing derivability they're useless.

I can't state this enough: this whole picture of their being some set of laws like the ones you say is constantly baffling to me. It's completely antithetical to the modern (post-Boole) way of doing logic. It is almost completely backwards! According to proper logic, LEM, LNC and identity are logical truths which hold because they're always derivable. That is, their fundamentality is completely derivative of the rules of derivability.

There is a certain sense in which they're special, but it has nothing to do with being foundational. Rather it's because they are often taken to have some sort of metaphysical import: for example, Dummettians often claim that LEM is a determinacy principle; it only holds of domains which are determinate.

> How many independently axiomatic logical foundations are there?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. Most philosophers and logicians wouldn't phrase things this way and don't think of logic in terms of "axiomatic logical foundations". They might think of which particular logical system they're working in, so that may be what you have in mind. For example, the most popular (historically) logics to work in/with are classical logic and intuitionistic logic.

As to how many logics are there are: I don't know. It's well-known (from some lesser known work of Gödel's) that there are at least continuum many logics. I don't know if there's any reason for thinking there's a larger cardinality of logics than that; I suspect not.

Most of those logics have never been used and will never be. There are probably a handful - maybe a couple dozen - logics which have been continuously used and developed over the past century. The standard text to see most of these is Priest's An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic.

> And how do you know which ones to exclude?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. You might be asking how do we know which logic(s) is the "right one". That's a really hard question. People write entire books and dissertations on that question. I should know - I'm one of them!

In general people start with some phenomena that you're interested in or some problem, and try to figure out which logic best accommodates that. Implicitly there's an understanding that the starting point is classical logic, and we work our way down (in terms of logical strength) from there to some non-classical logic(s) or another.

To give you a concrete case: take intuitionistic logic. LEJ Brouwer, the founder of modern topology, was concerned with the use of infinity in mathematics as it developed around the turn of the century under Cantor, Hilbert and others. To combat this, he developed a new school of mathematics: a form of constructive mathematics called intuitionism. Intuitionism is a complicated subject worth its own thread. But one of the things they deny is the Law of Excluded Middle, because it's tied up with infinity, determinacy and impredicativity. Brouwer's student Heyting developed intuitionistic logic based on these ideals, and since then it's been used for a variety of philosophical reasons, most notably in the debate over semantic realism/anti-realism.

I've linked a half dozen SEP articles above which include days worth of info that you might find interesting.

u/c3261d3b8d1565dda639 · 2 pointsr/books

If you want a strong mathematical approach, check out Peter Smith's Teach Yourself Logic Guide. If you don't want to take as heavy of an approach, you can use the suggestions as a roadmap and pick-and-choose from the suggestions. Even the introductory logic book suggestions in that guide might be too math heavy, but you might at least read their reviews on Amazon. A lot of reviewers tend to link to books on either side: easier and harder approaches.

For what it's worth, while I was in University we used Computability and Logic in the second logic course, which is after the introductory course teaching basic propositional and predicate logic. It's not a book for learning logic, but it's an awesome book for tying together a lot of what you initially learn with computability, model and proof theory. In another course we used An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic. I really enjoyed both of these books, and they're relatively cheap, but as I said they are not introductory logic books.

I'll be happy to reply again if you have any further questions.

u/Psy-Kosh · 2 pointsr/DebateReligion

> There is literally no way, if I only have associative data between A and B, to discern at all between "changes in A cause changes in B" and "Changes in C cause changes in B and changes in A."

You're right that you can't do it with just two variables. But with a few more, well, the situation changes.

Oh, authoritative source, well, much of this work was done by Judea Pearl, though he wasn't the only one. Judea Pearl's book Causality covers the subject of, well, causality. And has about a zillion references to various other published papers and such, algorithms for inferred causation, etc.

(Warning, long comment incoming, will be giving an example of how such causal inference could work)

To borrow and extend some examples, consider a baseball being thrown and breaking a window. Now, suppose that you are a being outside of time, or otherwise know nothing about the order of events. You just know "baseballs thrown toward windows seem to correlate with windows being broken. Perhaps broken windows cause thrown baseballs?"

Well, right now there's only two variables, "baseball thrown?" and "window broken?", so not too much that can be done with that. But let's add a third variable: someone that may or may not smash the window with a bat. Now, let's say we notice that, conditional on some set of variables, baseball throwing and bat swinging are independent (hee hee. I didn't do that on purpose, but is amusing that it worked out that way). ie, swinging bat correlates with broken window also, but does not correlate one way or the other with whether the baseball is thrown...

Further, suppose that conditional on the state of the window, bat swinging and baseball throwing are dependent. (ie, it turns out that if you know the window is broken, then knowing that the ball was not thrown raises the probability that the bat was swung, and similarly, if you know the window is broken, then learning the bat was not swung will statistically suggest the baseball was thrown).

If all of the above is true, then you can now reasonably infer that either "baseball-thrown?" has causal influence over "window-broken?" or they both have some common hidden cause. (similar for "bat-swung?" and "window-broken?")

ie, what we've done so far is eliminate "broken windows cause thrown baseballs."

Now, can we do better and actually establish that thrown baseballs cause broken windows?

Not with what we know so far, but with a few more variables, then yes.

For instance, suppose that there's also sometimes a case where someone might punch out the potential baseball pitcher, and also, separately, someone that might steal the pitcher's ball.

Further, suppose that we establish a similar relation between the triple "pitcher-punched?", "ball-thrown?", and "ball-stolen?" as we did with "ball-thrown?," "window-broken?", and "bat-swung?"

That is, using the same sort of process as before, we establish that either "ball-stolen?" has causal influence over "ball-thrown?" (specifically, prevents it from being thrown), or some common cause controls both of them. (ie, suppose we eliminate "ball-thrown?" having causal influence over "ball-stolen?" via the same type of analysis we used to eliminate "window-broken?" having causal influence over "ball-thrown?")

Further, suppose that through analysis of the data, if we already know whether or not the ball was thrown, then knowing about if a ball was stolen or the pitcher punched does not give us any further information on the state of the window. But without knowing in advance about the if the ball was thrown, knowing about if the ball was stolen does give us info on the state of the window.

THEN, we now have enough to nail down that "ball-thrown?" has causal influence over "window-broken?" and is not just "both have a common cause". (The particular pattern of conditional dependencies and independences described here would not be expected otherwise.)

There. Causality from data, without invoking time. TADA! (Essentially, the idea is that the other variables that we had to go through were performing the experiments for us. ie, instead of doing the experiments to establish causality, we just found other variables in the data that happened to effectively perform such an experiment already.)

Oh, one last thing:

> Processes cannot happen without the passage of time. Changes in variables cannot happen without the passage of time. Or at least, every process we've ever witnessed requires the passage of time.

What do you mean? You can have variables that, for instance, take different values at different locations in space, say. There, now you have a variable that changes along space, rather than specifically along time. :) (Interestingly, some physics theories eliminate time as a fundamental thing, so if you don't have some way of dealing with causality without time being more fundamental, you're kinda borked.)

u/potato_cabbage · 2 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

>this is not really a good way to think about experimental design. this book goes into model development regarding controlling variables and randomizing inputs, and developing counterfactuals.

Expand on this. Why not?

Fundamentally to test in experimental conditions is to test a part of the system in isolation. This requires knowledge of what to isolate, what it does to the the overall system and confidence that all external factors have been accounted for.

Similarly, a model only conveys what we are aware of and its level of complexity is limited by what we think is sensible given available computational capability and the requirements for the model.

Looping back to my usual point, this makes such experimentation highly unreliable when applied to the economy as it is an immensely complex system.

>This course I took around 2013 also goes into what influence different graph nodes implicate on one another. So, no, scale wise, there's not a "hard limit". Not one present in this book's examples anyways.

What do you mean by "hard limit"? To what?

Logically that statement does not align. It sounds like: You took course, therefore there is no hard limit, at least according to the book.

This doesnt make sense. I can't respond to that. Expand please.

>Nope, just that "emergent order" has no boundary to tell which is fictitious and what isn't.

We know a-priori that, say, the solar system emerged and wasnt imposed by deliberate action of some conscious entity, specifically not through human action. I get what you mean, we can't prove it empirically. I argue we don't have to.

>Right, wrong, and "end up" are all functions of input by a biased humanoid. Particularly involving "errors of input", data selection, and adapting older models (knowledge) to newer.

Look, if my goal is to train an AI to identify trees, then a tree would be right, a non tree would be wrong. The fact that we call a stick with dangling bits a "tree" has little significance in this context.

>I'm currently planning and executing a FPGA Evolvable Hardware project, where "we don't know what our ignorance looks like" on the circuitry level". Doesn't default to "emergent order"; no more than a "God of the Gaps" defaults to "Must be God".

Within the framework that I have outlined emergent order is an order that occurs naturally without deliberate outside interference by means of human action.

Its been a while since I did anything with FPGAs/ASICs but you essentially run a genetic algorithm of sorts to come up with the most efficient design given initial parameters and restrictions.

Either way you clarified that you don't deny existence of complexity as a whole so lets just leave this point be.

>Quite the opposite. I'm an atheist, so I'm still asserting that any aspects of "order" are imposed. We don't have any "somewhat ordered", "non-ordered", "imposed ordered", "emergent ordered", "99.999% deterministic ordered", "43.2% non-deterministic ordered" (....etc...) Universes to compare against. Thus, no demarcation of repeatability and falsifiability. We're stuck with what we got, and any claims of "order" are likely made by someone with something to prove. Teleology ain't a science.

>The fact that you can't articulate this doesn't reveal insidiousness, rather, it reveals the knowledge you've learned is biased. It's like bad set theory by reusing "error", "loss", "noise", and other "wrong" variables in inappropriate contexts.

This looks to me like an argument of definitions with an ultra-empiricist twist.

Arguing definitions across frameworks is pointless. Definitions dont prove anything in their own right but are merely tools to assist in conveying a message.

Lets take a step back, and before we continue this discussion define "emergent order" the way you see it within your framework, then lets compare to the way I define it to see if we are discussing the same thing to begin with.

u/OsoFeo · 2 pointsr/C_S_T

Some of this is based on a post I made a few days ago. By karma I don't mean a cosmic ledger of good vs. bad deeds, I mean the intrinsic metaphysical rules that govern causality. Also, the mathematical structure of causality has been studied extensively, e.g. see this and this (admittedly expensive and dense book).

I'm just putting together what I know about mathematics, computer science, biology, and metaphysical philosophy (heavily weighted towards Buddhist); in particular, I am taking a given that we are all eternal observers that have chosen to participate in one "reality" that has causality built into it. With just this assumption alone it is possible to infer a bunch of other propositions about the way things "work".

> Yeah but that tree falls in the forest if nobody's around.

Depends what you mean by "nobody". The animals in the forest are observers, so their participation in the causal "matrix" (if you will) means that the event gets "recorded". But if there are truly no observers, there is no Akashic record, so it never "happened".

Re: "aliens". They are also observers. However, they may understand the rules better than human observers do, enabling them to manipulate reality better than we do. E.g., modern engineers better understand the laws of physics than people did a hundred years ago, enabling them to create instruments that manipulate physical systems with more control than what existed a hundred years ago. Same idea. We are all still bound to the basic laws of causation.

u/inarchetype · 2 pointsr/Reformed

> Or that communism creates starvation (joke)

I don't think this is a joke. While causal designs would be difficult to apply, the spatio-temporal correlation is hard to ignore.


>Regarding causality- as you know that’s nearly impossible to prove in the social sciences.

Actually, these days the application of designs and approaches that provide strong support for causal claims have become quite prevalent. Some standard references-



1

2

3

4

good framework reference or a slightly heavier read

and the old classic


In fact, the Nobel prize in economics this year went to some people who have built their careers doing exactly that

It's actually become quite hard to publish in ranking journals in some fields without a convincing (causal) identification strategy.


But we digress.


>We will never be able to do an apples to apples study between heterosexual and homosexual child rearing for some of the reasons you mentioned above. (Diversity of relationship styles, not both biological parents within gay/lesbian couples)

In this case it isn't far fetched at all. The data collection for the survey data used in the study you linked could just as easily have disagregated the parents involved in same sex romantic relationships instead of pooling them. If I understood correctly, the researcher had obtained the data as a secondary source, so they didn't have control over this.

Outcomes for children in the foster care system are well studied, so one could in principal easily replicate the study comparing outcomes between children in the foster care system and those adopted into homes shared by stable same sex couples (you couldn't likely restrict it to married same sex couples, though, because laws permitting same sex civil marriage are too recent to observe outcomes).

>My bottom line-that I don’t see many disagree with if they are being intellectually honest, is a stable monogamous heterosexual family structure is the best model for immediate families. Or would you disagree?

But that's not the question at hand, is it? What we are interested in here is comparing kids bouncing around the state care system to those adopted into homes with two same-sex parents in a stable relationship.

That is exactly my point. The comparison you propose is uninformative relative to the question of permitting same sex couples to "foster to adopt". Because the counterfactual for those children is not likely to be a "stable monogamous heterosexual family". It is bouncing around the foster care system.

u/MoralAbolitionist · 2 pointsr/OBNYCmathbookclub

Causality by Judea Pearl. I've been interested in tackling this book for a while. Being able to use observational probabilities to bolster causal models seems interesting and useful.

u/MaxPayneX · 2 pointsr/science

The first chapter of Bill Bryson's Short Hisory of Nearly Everything does a good job of putting the universe in perspective.

u/Plaetean · 2 pointsr/Physics

This may be a little above the age range you're looking for, but Bill Bryson's short history of nearly everything is a brilliant introduction to some of the coolest aspects of science and technology. Had a profound influence on me as a kid.

u/homegrownunknown · 2 pointsr/chemistry

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

u/mariox19 · 2 pointsr/books

This is an older book that I read almost 25 years ago, so I'm not sure how it holds up, but I remember really enjoying In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality. I'm by no means a science person, but I remember that I was really into the book, and if I concentrated on what I was reading in it, I felt like I really understood it. It's good writing.

Maybe someone else on here has read it and can chime in, otherwise you'll have to read the reviews on Amazon and make a judgement call. I will say that I enjoyed it far more than A Brief History of Time.

u/doctorwaffle · 2 pointsr/books

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, by John Gribbin. It's an overview of quantum mechanics. It's quite mind-blowing and informative.

u/LinearInterpolation · 2 pointsr/atheism

The golden ratio is pretty damn interesting...

Mario Livio's The Golden Ratio is a decent book on the topic.

Here's a direct link to my favorite explanation of the golden ratio's prevalence in natural systems: link.

Basically, the golden ratio happens to be the ratio at which systems achieve minimized energy (galaxies, leaf arrangements, shell-construction, etc).




u/Kazkek · 2 pointsr/math

There were two books that got me completely involved in the world of mathematics.

History of Pi

Golden Ration, Phi

These two books were great when I read them when I was 16 and they got me completely wrapped up in mathematics (currently I am a Physics Grad student working on my Ph.d). Well worth reading.

u/MelSimba · 2 pointsr/math

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

​

and

​

The Golden Ratio

​

are two of my favorites

u/diogenesbarrel · 2 pointsr/politics

>Basically, education and knowledge is the "liberal agenda"

http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science/dp/0801857074

u/RockKillsKid · 2 pointsr/worldnews

So you recommended a few books I know I got a lot out of and a few others I think I sound interesting and will check out, so I'd like to return the favor and recommend Merchants of Doubt. It details how the same scientists and institutions that the tobacco industry went to in order to battle the theories that smoking lead to cancer switched causes and started working for big oil/coal companies to lead a very vocal defense of hydrocarbons in the face of mounting evidence of global warming.

u/metamet · 2 pointsr/IAmA

Bill,

Have you read Merchants of Doubt or watched the corresponding documentary? It uncovers how clear this very subject is.

u/KillBosby · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

Merchants of Doubt is a good book!

u/sup3 · 2 pointsr/science

Reminds me of this book I've been meaning to pick up:

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

Large companies can hire random scientists to say anything. That's why you need public funding in a lot of areas. It was the EPA after all that proved asbestos could kill you, not the companies selling roofing and other products containing all the asbestos.

u/bazzanater · 2 pointsr/news

Simon Singh wrote a very good book on how it was solved, here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Simon-Singh/dp/1841157910

u/greese007 · 2 pointsr/Physics

The distances between politics, religion, and physics are wide and hard to bridge. Only a few physicists had the temerity to try. Carl Sagan was one, and his book about the Demon Haunted World is a classic.
https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark-ebook/dp/B004W0I00Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537598004&sr=8-1&keywords=carl+sagan+demon+haunted+world

It has become painfully obvious that scientists and politicians have different definitions of truth, and that evidence and data are not very relevant to politicians. Especially Republican politicians.It is not accidental that only a small minority of scientists identify as Republican.




u/NewbombTurk · 2 pointsr/religion

I don't know what you are religiously, but you definitely need to bump up your incredulity, and skepticism.

Here's a book recommendation for you. The Demon Haunted World.

Also, and this is the dad in me talking, you shouldn't be taking psychotropic drugs at your age. You brain's not don't developing. Wait until you're older.

u/Klarok · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

Sounds like the book Merchants of Doubt would give you the information you're looking for - it's a fantastic read btw.

Thing is that you have to look at the history of climate change science to figure out where things started so I'll try to give a bit of a synopsis. You can Google all of this pretty easily.

Way back in 1896, Svante Arrhenius characterised the greenhouse effect and the relationship to CO2. However, it wasn't until Carl Sagan started looking at the atmosphere of Venus in the late 50s that the relationship became more than a theoretical abstract. Sagan himself wrote an essay on the subject which was included in his influential book Cosmos.

Things began to accelerate when James Hansen gave his testimony to a senate committee in 1988 which, in turn, led to the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

During all of this time, as you can read in Merchants of Doubt, the opposition to action on climate change was fairly mild. That was largely to do with various other environmental concerns (acid rain, ozone layer hole) taking up much of the news cycle and dominating companies' lobbying efforts to stop, slow down or mitigate the effect of legislation that would impact their profits in those areas. In particular, the automotive industry lobbied HARD against acid rain legislation and the electronics/white goods firms did the same for anti-CFC laws.

However, with the signing of Kyoto, many of the world leaders were substantially on board with the urgent need to take action on climate change. This was highlighted by the growing acceptance of the IPCC reports which contained sections specifically directed at policy makers from the 1990 initial report and continuing to the present day.

Suddenly climate change/global warming leaped to the forefront of the news cycle and it was sexy to talk about it. Lots of research groups received more funding and there seemed to be a flurry of positive action.

As highlighted in Merchants of Doubt, that led to a reaction from those who stood to lose profits from action on climate change and companies of that ilk have always been able to find pet scientists to take their money and obfuscate the science. Many of the scientists were the same ones who had argued against the dangers of tobacco smoking!

So the anti-science machine sprang into action using a multi-pronged approach which had proven quite effective in the past.

First they lobbied law-makers to slow down, commission studies and consider more evidence before taking action. This stalled and delayed action on the Kyoto Protocol and continues to this day.

Secondly they commissioned pseudo-scientific papers casting as much doubt on the science of climate change as possible. Recall that the science was fully settled as far back as the 1960s, long before any special interest group had even heard of climate change. The scientific "debate" was purely manufactured. Real scientists agreed climate change was happening but may have disagreed on some details like the exact cooling effect of volcanoes, the impact of clouds and the like.

Thirdly they got talking heads to start raising FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about climate change. The airwaves were filled with that sort of discussion and the largely ignorant public was heavily swayed because they didn't understand the science.

Finally they lobbied. Politicians are cheap to buy and generate returns of 1000% or more on the cost of political contributions.

Over the years, the anti-science rhetoric has been gradually beaten down by the plethora of pop-science books that have been written by reputable scientists explaining climate change in layman's terms. With some trepidation, I think that the consensus is swinging towards action.

Unfortunately, that only causes certain companies and organisations to redouble their FUD efforts. Delaying legislation by even a year can be worth billions to their bottom line so spending tens or even hundreds of millions to achieve that is just good business sense.

u/AutoModerator · 1 pointr/climate

There are a bunch of people whose job it is to put out hard-to-debunk nonsense. People aren't going to watch this kind of video content because it takes a big chunk of their day, and they're not going to learn anything meaningful from it.
Instead, try to identify the argument that they're making, and do a site-specific search on skepticalscience.com, which maintains of database of this kind of stuff, along with explanations of why it is wrong. Something like:
site:skepticalscience.com natural cycle

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

u/SeriouslyRediculous · 1 pointr/exmormon

There is a similar book called, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming!
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

As I read it I kept thinking of the church. They get a group of TBM apologists in a room and "set them apart" to save the church, then give them marching orders to create doubt. As one executive said, and it could be the words of one of the Q15, "Doubt is our product, and these experts create it."

u/retardedmoron · 1 pointr/climateskeptics
u/nwob · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

So Fermat was a complete douchenugget and would scribble mathematical theorems in the borders of his maths textbook, a copy of Diaphantus' Arithmetica, with claims that he had solved them, but would fail to include any kind of proof of his method. He was a French magistrate who lived in the 17th century and did maths as a hobby, but managed to create some of the most confounding maths problems that have ever been solved.

It would be one thing to make a load of unsupported claims and then have them turn out to be false - but people set to work on Fermat's unproven conjectures after his death and one by one, they were proven.

His Last Theorem, so called because it remained unsolved for hundreds of years, is the quite simple assertion that, where a, b and c are positive integers, it is impossible that a^n + b^n will ever equal c^n, where n is an integer greater than 2. Seems simple on the surface. But it was absolutely impenetrable.

I'm not nearly good enough with maths to lead you through the proof, but if you're interested then I would recommend Simon Singh's book by the same name. He does a fantastic job taking apart the process and it's the most interesting maths related thing I've ever read.

When the theorem was eventually proved by British mathematician Andrew Wiles in May 1995, 358 years after it had first been proposed, it made use of cutting edge mathematical tools which had not even been conceived in Fermat's time. So the question remains - did he have a better method, or did he merely get it wrong?

u/JeeJee48 · 1 pointr/math

Having just finished my A levels, it's all about looking at stuff beyond the syllabus.

As I'm more interested in physics, outside of the classroom I've looked at angular momentum, quantum physics, relativity, particle physics, and more.
As far as maths goes, the only maths that wasn't covered on my further maths course was some of the basic functions of vector field calculus. (I didn't actually do any of it, but just began to understand the concepts. This really tied in with the field stuff I was looking at in physics).

One of the best things to have during your A levels is a friend studying the same subjects as you, so you can talk about all the interesting stuff that you and they find out. I learnt so much in informal conversations with him and my teachers, and also looking stuff up online, it almost overshadows my actual A levels!

As far as books go, I can recommend plenty of physics books, but as far as maths goes I would recommend looking at Ian Stewart's works. Also, this book is interesting: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Simon-Singh/dp/1841157910
It doesn't contain a great deal of mathematics, but it is a very interesting read about the story of proving the theorem.

u/riyten · 1 pointr/worldnews

If you want a really good read on the whole history of Fermat and the eventual proof, Simon Singh's book is amazing. I'm not a mathematician in the slightest but it's really enjoyable in that it explains things very simply and tells you lots of the hidden history along the way, along with lots of other math trivia.

u/rptr87 · 1 pointr/worldnews

There is an excellent book by simon singh.
Must read.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-Confounded-Greatest/dp/1841157910

u/thenumber0 · 1 pointr/math

A few years ago I was in a similar situation to the students you describe and am now at one of the universities you mention, so these suggestions are bound on what I found useful, or would have liked in retrospect.

Do you know about nrich? They have some interesting puzzles, arranged by keystage. They used to have a forum 'Ask NRICH' which was great, but currently closed for renovation, so look out for its reopening.

If it doesn't already exist, encourage the students to set up a maths society, research into something they find interesting (you can give suggestions) and give a brief talk to their peers.

However, what most inspired me was my teachers talking about what they found interesting. At GCSE, my teacher told us about Cantor's infinities as a special treat one day; we had pictures of Escher drawings in the classroom. At A Level, my teacher used to come in with maths puzzles he'd been working on over the weekend, and programs he'd written to demonstrate them (in Processing & Mathematica). Encourage them to come to you with questions too!

You can recommend some books to get them hyped. Anything you've enjoyed. I'd recommend Gower's Introduction to Mathematics for an idea of what maths is really about (beyond crunching equations at GCSE & A Level). Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem and Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach are classics (especially on uni application forms) - the former an easy read, the latter somewhat more challenging. I'm sure you can find some more ideas on /r/mathbooks.

For STEP preparation, Siklos has an unbelievably helpful booklet. For the older ones, this would be instructive to look through even if they're not planning to apply for Cambridge.

Also (topical), arrange a class trip to see The Imitation Game!

u/gbgftw · 1 pointr/AskReddit

There is actually a book about this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-confounded-greatest/dp/1841157910

A mathematician called Andrew Wiles spent over 30 years trying to prove this. He nearly lost his mind and family while doing so, but he finally did it in 1995.

Rather good book actually. As for the problem that's a lot of challenge to accept..

u/Myntrith · 1 pointr/AskScienceDiscussion

If I may recommend a book that offers a good grounding for this:

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark-ebook/dp/B004W0I00Q/

u/Diggnan · 1 pointr/lgbt
u/bogan · 1 pointr/atheism

Though I realize that it is still a Demon-Haunted World for some, normally I would dismiss you as a troll rather than an example of Poe's Law, but I'm not certain, so please tell me you have no children.

u/tuirn · 1 pointr/AskReddit

All non-fiction:

u/SuperAngryGuy · 1 pointr/askscience

Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick is a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Making-Science-James-Gleick/dp/0140092501

You can follow that up with Chaos Theory Tamed by Garnett Williams for a mathematical simple intro to the science of chaos.

http://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Theory-Tamed-Garnett-Williams/dp/0309063515

u/ambiturnal · 1 pointr/science

I really hope you read Chaos, by James Gleick

u/goregantuan · 1 pointr/Drugs

Yep, I love reading on acid, especially this book and this one here.

u/jaywalkker · 1 pointr/science

If you want to stay in the same vein, James Gleick Chaos: Making a new Science is really fascinating, but I think that's out of vogue for String Theory popularity.

Otherwise the previous recommendations are pretty neato too.

u/SC_reference · 1 pointr/starcraft

I think Tasteless has read James Gleik.

u/StartsAsNewRedditor · 1 pointr/webdev

Yeah I can imagine google would solve that very quickly simply because that is a very heavily quoted analogy. However, if you were to generate something like:

> A is to C as C is to __ [with the answer being E]

Google would not be able to solve it, even though it is very much the same format.

> Watson would probably nail it.

Watson suffers from the same problem as any other computer. It is a stupid machine, and it must be programmed for a specific task. Now, Melanie Mitchell and Douglas Hofstader did work on a project for a computer solving analogy problems (which worked OK for very simple problems) and if you're interested in this sort of thing you should check out this book, which covers this in one particular chapter.. It was no where near a workable solution though for large scale, because it employs a complex distributed network to find likely solutions (sometimes completely missing solutions or proposing the wrong solution).

> The problem with analogies is that you have to program them in, which makes them effectively finite.

It doesn't make them finite, but it does make them more time consuming. Worded patterns would be the best and most usable option for the casual user. However, the A:C -> C:? style analogies can be generated, as can all kinds of other patterns.

> You can't use too many obscure ones either, because you could very well confuse people and deny them access to your stuff.

It cannot be any more difficult than what we are already expecting users to decipher.

> You mean the game "identify which one doesn't belong"? That's just identify each object and relate. That's most likely solvable.

Ha ha, yes for humans this is a very simple problem, and we are extremely good at it, but computers are (as previously stated) very stupid. Seriously stupid. The step of identify object is so much larger than I think you are imagining, and it's not even that the problem isn't solvable (it very likely is), but it's more a case of it's impractical. Computer programs have limitations of speed and memory. Sometimes this isn't a problem (Watson's case) but for your average spammer, this amount of work is not goign to be worth the pay off.

u/sjap · 1 pointr/neuro

I am currently reading Complexity: A guided tour which I am enjoying a lot. It is a mathematical and computer science perspective on biological computation. Although it is not strictly about the brain, it does get into what complex systems are, and how they can compute. It is written in a very accessible style, for anyone read.

u/nullmove · 1 pointr/Python

I have really liked Complexity: A Guided Tour. It has a chapter covering the exact material of this article, among other things. Very newcomer friendly too.

u/lysa_m · 1 pointr/math

Very good question. The answer is harder than you might think. It's really awful, when you get right down to it.

To start with, you can find the mathematical derivation of the behavior of an idealized spinning top in Goldstein, and it is surprisingly complicated; the explanation in the link from drabus' post describes some of it.

For a coin, it's actually quite a bit worse, because coind are not like tops in one very important way. There are two Euler angles (one that describes the slope of the face, and one that describes the direction the coin is facing without taking into account the slope) that behave like the angles for the spinning top, but the third angle ends up being equivalent to the distance the coin has rolled on the surface of the table (at least for an idealized coin, infinitely thin and with no slipping). Try to think about how that works; experiment with a real coin and a real top on the surface of a table to get a feel for what I'm talking about.

That third "angle" is really annoying mathematically, because it allows extra mathematical and physical wiggle room: Even if you tell me what all three angles are, I still don't know where on the table the coin is, even if I know where you started from and what your coordinate system is. For example, I could roll the coin around a circular path, or instead along a straight line, and get two different results.

This kind of ambiguity arises from the fact that there is only one angle representing the dynamics of the system at any point in time (the angle through which the coin has rolled while it's spinning), but two overall degrees of freedom that the coin can access by changing that one degree of freedom (the two dimensions of the surface of the table). The technical term for a system with this kind of behavior is non-holonomic, and it's in general a pain in the butt to analyze these systems.

As a side note, a real life top actually behaves a bit like a coin rather than the ideal version with a fixed vertex usually described; tops tend to roll along the surface of the table as they tip over, just as coins roll a bit as they spin. And coins, of course, skip a little, which is why they make that rattling sound as they spin. All of that makes the behavior and the mathematics even more complicated; most people have given up on the problem a long time before they ever arrived at this point.

u/functor7 · 1 pointr/math

A solid intro book to QM is Zetilli, but as others have mentioned you might want to learn some Classical Mechanics first and for that I recommend Landau or Goldstein. Landau is usually more of a grad book and Goldstein is an undergrad one.

u/blueboybob · 1 pointr/HomeworkHelp

halliday and resnick for general physics

1 - goldstein

2 - griffith

3 -

4 - griffith or jackson

u/mechanician87 · 1 pointr/askscience

No problem, glad you find it interesting. If you want to know more, Steve Strogatz's Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos is a good place to start and is generally very accessible. It talks about how to tell what regions of phase space are stable vs unstable, for example, and how chaos arises out of all of this. Overall it is a good read and has a lot of interesting examples (as is typical of a lot of his books).

For more on the Hamiltonian mechanics in particular (albeit at a more advanced level), the classic text is Goldstein's Classical Mechanics. Its definitely more dense, but if you can push through it and get at what the math is saying its a really interesting subject. For example, in principle, you can do a coordinate transformation where you decouple all the generalized momentum - coordinate pairs and do a sort of modal analysis on a system where you would never be able to do so otherwise (these are called action-angle variables)

u/wire_man · 1 pointr/askscience

A sufficient resource for explaining how to get to Classical Mechanics can be found here.

The idea is that if you have quantities on the surface of a geometry and quantities in the tangent bundle(where quantities like velocities lie), then your dynamics can be described by the interaction of the two under a small set of constraints. These constraints are set by the base axioms and principles of your understanding of the system.

Having these, you can formulate your dynamics which ever way you want. In other words, The Lagrangian is an arbitrary choice. Strictly speaking, it is a choice that physicists use because it makes that algebra easier. The Euler-Lagrange equations are the result of this, and can be used to describe the dynamics of the system. Similarly, once conservation laws in the Lagrangian have been established, the Hamiltonian can be calculated, and from there, invariants in the Hamiltonian can be used.

u/iorgfeflkd · 1 pointr/askscience

If you want to get more advanced, this is the book I used when I studied advanced (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian) mechanics: http://www.amazon.com/Classical-Mechanics-3rd-Herbert-Goldstein/dp/0201657023

(for pirates)

The book I used in first year physics was Giancolli, and in second year it was just my professor's crazy handwritten notes. Here are his crazy notes for advanced mechanics; the ones for Newtonian aren't up anymore.

u/undergroundsadalien · 1 pointr/AskReddit

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. Maybe not the book that has influenced me the most, but definitely one that jumped to mind immediately when I read this thread.

u/Facewizard · 1 pointr/books

Read "The structure of scientific revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn.

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083

The definitive book on academic disagreements, how and why they happen, and what they're good for. You will find it interesting and probably eye-opening: academics disagree all the time, but only when their accepted common beliefs no longer make sense and they've run out of productive research to do together. The book itself is about scientists, but many of his ideas can be applied to other disciplines as well.

u/drinka40tonight · 1 pointr/askphilosophy

You're right: the amount of texts out there is daunting, so it can be hard to find the right area that appeals to you. Maybe a little more about the issues and questions you're interested in would help narrowing the options down a bit.

Two books that might be worth looking at: Proofs and Refutations by Lakatos. It looks at math and advances a thesis about what "proving" in math is really about.

And, Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. It looks at the development of science through history and puts forth a provocative thesis about how science develops.

Take a glance at those, and see if they are up your alley. They are not too difficult, but they aren't really intro texts.

u/glennfish · 1 pointr/EmDrive

In the context of learning, essentially what you are proposing is what Thomas Kuhn proposed as a paradigm shift. If you haven't read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" you and everyone should. It's available at amazon https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083

However, the premise that Kuhn proposed was that it took a generation of scientists to die away before the new ideas had a chance to emerge. When he wrote the book, that was probably true, but in the present, in many disciplines, the ability to change a paradigm has gone from 30 years to 18 months, so it may not be as relevant as it was when written.

As to the premise of I'll believe it when I see it, that seems more to be a license plate slogan, i.e. Wisconsin "Just cows and cheese."

The simple fact of the matter, and my returning to this forum after an absence, is that there is a very high risk now of creating false expectations instead of revolutionary discovery. In my other OP thread, there is commentary showing me to be a defender of test results from a methodological perspective, which ultimately turned out to be subject to falsification.

I am not capable nor qualified to argue the physics side of this. I am absolutely qualified and capable of arguing the social psychology side of this. My simple premise is this. Looking at this from a philosophy of science point of view (it's a real academic discipline), the debate in this forum has gone from wonder and excitement to pathological. The physics doesn't support this. The experimentation doesn't support this. The 7,000 odd subscribers to this forum have to understand that this is approaching a pathological and near theological debate comparable to Scientology or hollow earth beliefs.

There are some competent and highly qualified individuals doing best efforts research into the EMdrive phenomenon, and some of them have the capacity to produce results, if positive, deserve scrutiny. However, IMHO, this reddit forum at this time with the commentaries posted, with the lame debates posted, does not contribute to those who wish to learn and know more.

Essentially, there are no plausible arguments for EMdrive, and no theoretical models that extend beyond crack-pottery. There are some interesting experiments in process that may push for a closer look, but none of them have come to fruition.

I am trying to take the high road and simply state that EVERYONE is entitled to their opinion, and in Physics, EVERYONE is entitled to a poster presentation, however, in the end, data has be replicated and scrutinized and beat to death and is the only thing that contributes to an extension of what we think of as knowledge. EMdrive hasn't yet gone beyond the poster presentation stage.

u/kevthill · 1 pointr/askscience

Things are a bit different for hearing, but the "such and unexplored area" feeling will be the same. For reference, this is what science is.

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

OH, also read Thomas Khun's, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions only 200 pages, and you'll probably get the point around page 50. Best book on human knowledge ever.

u/SampleBins · 1 pointr/IAmA

Yes, Einstein didn't like that quantum mechanics could only predict probabilities, and he figured that a deeper understanding would give rise to a more deterministic theory. A lot more research has been done since he said that, and unfortunately he died so there's no way we'll ever know if he would have changed his mind when faced with more evidence. That being said, there are still a lot of unanswered questions and we still don't have a theory of everything so maybe Einstein was right. We don't know.

But we're talking about science, not scientists, and Einstein's opinion on the matter didn't dictate what research showed in the years after his death. Physicists come up with theories and test them, and if they stand up to scrutiny, these ideas are adopted until something better comes along. If a theory isn't supported by the evidence, it's rejected- regardless of what the original proponent of the theory thinks. Therein lies the magic of science. New generations reject ideas that have overwhelming evidence against them.

I don't need to tell you that this doesn't happen with religion. The Bible, for example, directly contradicts itself in countless ways and describes events that we know are physically impossible, but is still considered to be inerrant by conservative Christians who may have been born hundreds of years after a given Biblical assertion was shown to be monstrously implausible.

If you're genuinely curious about how paradigm shifts happen in science, you might like to read Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It's considered the definitive work on the matter, and it's interesting, easy to read, short, and inexpensive.

u/taanews · 1 pointr/Christianity

Thank you for your response and for the citation of the text.

As I argued above from multiple texts across the Old Testament, slaves were to be treated as human beings. To take Leviticus 25:44 which belongs to the same body of work as contradictory to the other texts above (where I also noted that slaves were allowed to be taken in war), due to vesting a modern notion of “being property” into the text is to interpret anachronistically. To point it out from the 10 commandments as you ask:

> “but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. On that day you must not do any work, you, your son, your daughter, your male slave, your female slave, your ox, your donkey, any other animal, or the foreigner who lives with you, so that your male and female slaves, ‘like yourself’, may have rest. Recall that you were slaves in the land of Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there by strength and power. That is why the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”
(Deut 5:14–15 NET)

Consider this as well: Israel has the law and knows the true God. If you are a slave there are many harsh places in the world that you could go, but if you go to Israel you have legal protections, and become acquainted with God.

Regarding applying moral notions to God, I wrote above. God doesn’t reserve rights for himself so much as dispense any rights anyone else has. That’s the Creator/Creature distinction.

Regarding DNA and paleontology, draw what conclusions fit with what is authoritative for you according to your worldview. Read Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. For myself, science is great as natural revelation filling in special revelation, but something subject to paradigm shifts is shaky foundation for a philosophical basis.

Regarding Adam & Noah, forgive my simplicity but Jesus believed them (Matt 19:4-5; Matt 24:37-39), and I trust him more than any man’s guesses since he’s God and he made them. I am still in r/Christianity right? This is the right place to post this? If you rather believe that you are assessing science’s assessment of the data correctly (layered as that is from the original data), that’s your decision.

As I said in another comment on this post, once we get off the Christian concept of God what is even the point of considering the OP’s question? I mean if Jesus isn’t God, Adam & Noah aren’t real, the Bible isn’t an accurate account of God, then what does it even matter if God can deceive or not, seeing as such a being likely doesn’t exist anyway?

The question only matters within the context of Scripture: does Scripture present a God who is indistinguishable from the devil? The answer is no. If we are going to be picky about what Scripture we are allowed to inform that interpretation by invoking science, why not just invoke science to disallow the concept of God and be done? If you want to debate the Bible’s reliability there are places for that, but that wasn’t the original question.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if I can clarify

u/BukkRogerrs · 1 pointr/Physics

Most undergraduate coursework doesn't involve any GR because it isn't a standard part of the curriculum. Some schools may offer an introduction to it at an undergrad level, but it's by no means a topic that undergraduate physics students are expected to be familiar with. As someone else said, even in graduate school you may not touch general relativity if it has nothing to do with your area of study. I do particle physics, but I did take a couple classes on general relativity just out of interest. One was offered in the physics department, the other was in the math department. Although they were teaching the same subject, it was interesting seeing the almost entirely different approach each class took.

If you're interested in learning the math as you learn the physics this is a really helpful book.

u/Orion952 · 1 pointr/math

Hartle: http://www.amazon.com/Gravity-Introduction-Einsteins-General-Relativity/dp/0805386629/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1420630637&sr=8-7&keywords=general+relativity

Pretty introductory, not a ton of math but enough to satisfy most undergrads. Includes a section on introductory Tensor Calculus.

Carroll: http://www.amazon.com/Spacetime-Geometry-Introduction-General-Relativity/dp/0805387323/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1420630637&sr=8-3&keywords=general+relativity

Probably the best intermediate book, does GR at an intermediate level. Includes several chapters on the math needed.

Wald: http://www.amazon.com/General-Relativity-Robert-M-Wald/dp/0226870332/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1420630637&sr=8-2&keywords=general+relativity

Covers GR at a fairly advanced level. More rigorous books exist, but are not appropriate for a first course.

u/yself · 1 pointr/cogsci

>Any general ideas on how to determine what information is being communicated by vocalisations in a social task?


You asked for general ideas. I recommend reading, The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy.


Also, you will find a number of YouTube videos, with presentations by the author, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne.


In particular, I recommend her talk, "A History of Bayes' Theorem" at Singularity Summit 2011.

u/AndersonCoopersDick · 1 pointr/statistics

Good read on the topic and history of the rise of Bayesian Statistics here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Theory-That-Would-Not/dp/0300188226

u/alexybeetle · 1 pointr/IAmA

You work on uncertainty - do you use Bayes' theorem? Have you read this book ?

u/EricTboneJackson · 1 pointr/videos

> this discussion has been nothing but hostility and ad hominem attacks

The irony is that all the ad hominem attacks have come from you.

This will come as a surprise to you, because you don't understand logical fallacies, but it's true.

Note: an insult is not ad hominem. Ad hominem is when you attempt to rebut an argument by attacking your opponent's character/motivations.
You've done that to me several times. I've not done it to you even once.

> the three waves of volunteers and the new earth by Dolores Cannon. Expand my mind a bit

Reading pseudoscience doesn't expand your mind, it closes it to reality. If you can't be bothered to learn actual science, you should at least read A Demon Haunted World, by Carl Sagan, and learn something about critical thinking and what "evidence" even means.

u/ziddina · 1 pointr/exjw

> Referring to reality, it was never needed.

Back before humans understood what caused storms, earthquakes, floods, fire, disease, aging, death - they DID need to generate some sort of explanation for these things, as well as practically everything else in their observable universe.

>I don't need to be told by man in general that spirits exist, I perceived it just like gravitation.

You might want to check out this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/GordonTheGopher · 1 pointr/Advice
u/abby89 · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

Book!

It's all about the karma.

Thanks :)

u/CaptainOuzo · 1 pointr/Bitcoin

Here's a real shit-sifter for only $11.55. Or as worded by the author, a "bullshit detection kit".

u/delanger · 1 pointr/atheism

Exactly! That's the exact point. If there is no difference between something you cant test and something that doesn't exist, I'll go with Occam's razor and take the doesn't exist option. And if you can't even define something beyond the word used to name it. Again, the simpler explanation is probably the correct one. To come full circle and quote Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." And read about the invisible dragon in his book Demon Haunted World. It explains it better than I just did.

EDIT : What you said about science not being able to measure. Science can measure a hell of a lot. From the furthest depths of the universe, billions of light years away, scientists can tell you the chemical makeup of a star. To the minutest particles in existence. They can find and measure. But there needs to be something in order to measure it. When looking for ghosts there is nothing. Each new wave of ghost hunters use newer and better technology to examine ghosts. But they find nothing beyond the known. IMO, your suggestion that science cannot measure is just another belief in order to hold on to your initial belief of their being ghosts. But serioulsly do read Demon haunted World. It is an eye opener.

u/MikeTheInfidel · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

Visitation by angels has been replaced with visitation by aliens. In his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan drew parallels between historical belief in angels, demons, succubi, etc. and the modern 'alien abduction' mythos. Fascinating stuff.

u/Light-of-Aiur · 1 pointr/atheism

It all depends on the goal. If OP wants to send a message, then choosing The God Delusion or God Is Not Great would certainly send that message. If OP wants a book that's a good read, both are still good choices, but now there're other books that are equally good choices.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, The Portable Atheist, On Bullshit, On Truth, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, The Moral Landscape, The Demon Haunted World, Religion and Science, and many others are excellent reads, but don't send that little (possibly unnecessary) jab.

u/roontish12 · 1 pointr/atheism

Several good books, God Delusion I like. Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan is also a very good one. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon is another good one.

u/vfr · 1 pointr/atheism

You appear to reject god on basic logic (a good start), but lack the knowledge/experience to expand that scepticism. I assume you're about 18. This is not meant as an insult, but just saying that you've got time and maturity ahead of you still, so your views here are not surprising, I held such opinions myself in my younger years.

I recommend you read this book, it's a good start. Starts at about $3 used.

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

u/thechr0nic · 1 pointr/DebateReligion

This honestly reminds me much of Carl Sagans book Demon Haunted World—Science as a Candle in the Dark
it deals with how to differentiate pseudoscience from science. how to apply skeptical inquiry to be able to distinguish the two.

I suspect (im willing to be wrong) that people who do not apply skepticism to claims are more likely to be convinced by faulty reasoning.

here is a link that has several of his quotes from the book and elsewhere, that describes some of the concept. If you have not read the book, I do highly recommend it.

http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/01/11/science-versus-pseudoscience-according-to-carl-sagan/

u/markjaquith · 1 pointr/atheism

That's a good bunch of books! I'd additionally recommend the following two:

u/ChristianityBot · 1 pointr/ChristianityBot

Logged comment posted by /u/ThisIsMyRedditLogin at 06/10/13 15:28:17:

> > Take a deeper look at a lot of the stuff used to "contact" ghosts and spirits in hauntings.
>
> I don't believe in ghosts. Why would I want to waste time hunting around the internet for the ramblings of paranormal fanatics?
>
> > Same thing for the alien "contactees" there's all sorts of occult stuff there.
>
> The people who usually get visited by aliens turn out to be village idiots and/or drunks. Why do aliens, in their powerful ships, always visit out of the way farms to rectally probe some innocent divorced farmer?
>
> > "Channeling" messages from "aliens" who consistently lie about their origins and deny the Gospel every chance they get while proclaiming that man can be like God.
>
> Aliens who lie about their origins and deny the Gospel? So aliens have come to earth and blurted out "Jesus doesn't exist"? And they also proclaim that humans can be like God?
>
> Listen to me carefully. STOP DRINKING THE TURPENTINE. It's not helping you.
>
> > Sounds like the same tune Satans been singing for years just cleverly repackaged.
>
> Yup. That nasty Satan pretending to be an alien in a beautiful spaceship, experimenting on cows and telling farmers, with a probe up their anus, that Jesus doesn't exist. Damn that Satan to hell, along with his rectal probing device of deception!
>
> This is the perfect book for you.

u/monkey3 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Might I suggest Mars by Ben Bova, The Gunslinger By Stephen King, The Plague Of The Dead by Z.A. Recht, Neuromancer by William Gibson and Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I wanted to keep going, but I was getting too excited recommending books.

u/Labyrinthos · 1 pointr/neurophilosophy

Let me get this straight. Nations have been keeping track of unindentified flying objects and that proves... what exactly? Aliens? Ancient aliens?

Homeopathy is not "partially correct", you are confusing it with placebo, and homeopathy claims to be a lot more than that. Homepathic so-called medicine has an effect identical to placebo, but their claims are much grander and are simply false, not "partially correct".

We seem to be getting a little off track here, and I feel I'm not getting through. I want to recommend a book to you that deals with these issues. The author is much better suited than me and certainly more persuasive. It's very accessible and quite a pleasant read. I hope you find the time to read it.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, by Carl Sagan

u/Breakspray · 1 pointr/ScienceTeachers

The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.

An inspiring push for the idea of scientific thinking as a mental tool set for everyone, filled with examples of what can go wrong when it is not applied.

u/deathofregret · 1 pointr/atheism

don't forget this one!

u/Vigil · 1 pointr/atheism

In addition to watching the series that sleepyj910 posted, I would advise reading The Demon Haunted World.

My younger brother believed like you do, that he lived in haunted houses and saw spirits in the corner of his eye. After reading Demon Haunted World, he realized just how much his 'supernatural' experiences were really just his mind filling in gaps and reacting in a purely instinctual way. He hasn't lived in a haunted house since.

u/energirl · 1 pointr/reddit.com

I highly recommend anything Carl Sagan has written. The book Contact is a good start since it's fiction. It's basically Sagan's love note to science. I also enjoy many of his non-fictions since he has a way of explaining things so that even an ignoramus like myself can understand.

My favorite is The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, but the first one I read was The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal view of the Search for God. I really attribute this book with making me want to learn more about science. It's the first non-fiction book I ever enjoyed.

Oh yeah, and watch any interview you can find with Richard Feynman. He has such a great way of looking at everything!

u/lilkuniklo · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

If you enjoyed Cosmos, I would also recommend Demon-Haunted World. Excellent for cutting through some of the bullshit that surrounds our day to day lives.

I would recommend reading some Richard Feynman too. Surely You're Joking is one of the favorites. He doesn't talk about lofty subjects or anything. He was just a down to earth guy from a working class family in Queens who happened to be a Nobel-prize winning physicist and a great storyteller. He was a genius without the facetious smartypants attitude.

This is a famous lecture of his if you want to get a feel for what his writing is like.

u/citizen059 · 1 pointr/deism

Here, I recommend this book instead: Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.

From the wiki entry on it: "Sagan's book aims to explain the scientific method to laypeople, and to encourage people to learn critical or skeptical thinking. It explains methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science, and ideas that can be considered pseudoscience."

u/BruceIsLoose · 1 pointr/Christianity

> As an atheist I'm guessing you would suggest critical thinking.

I'd hope that anyone, regardless of their stance whether they think god(s) exist or not, suggests critical thinking.

> How do I go about "learning how to think not what to think?"

I love Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World. It isn't a book about atheism or anything like that (do recognize that he is an atheist and has a naturalistic/materialist mindset though) but does an amazing job at looking at how and why people come to the conclusions they do about things. It discusses the nuances of things such as UFO sightings, Big Foot, how science has been a good and reliable way (I'm not saying it is the only way) of discovering what is reflective of our reality and the world/universe we live in.

I can mail you my copy if you'd like.

u/naroays · 1 pointr/KotakuInAction

> The fact that you haven't bothered to even Google "scientific arguments against Evolution" is not proof that there's no evidence.

But google isn't really scientific evidence, and the article you linked to fails the credibility test. It isn't hard to find all sorts of conspiracy nutjob theories on google. Just because a website says something, doesn't mean it's true. I'm a scientist. Speaking as someone very well acquainted with what type of evidence and arguments are needed, you need to understand that in order for these arguments to be taken seriously, they need to satisfy rigorous scrutiny by the vast majority of scientists around the world, like you pointed out earlier. That is, you need to find arguments published in Journals like Nature, Science or Cell, which have undergone the review process, and have been independently verified.

If you're more interesed in this way of thinking, I highly recommend Carl Sagan's excellent book, "The Demon Haunted World", that introduces how the scientific method works to the layperson, and how any theory and idea should be critically verified, doubted and analyzed.

This typically involves data and evidence published in peer-reviewed journals, and independently corroborated across many groups. The new theories/arguments should also fit in with the consilience of scientific knowledge.

Evolution is the unifying scientific theory that ties in every single field of biology, from microbiology to developmental biology. The "evidence" against evolution should held to a similarly high standard, which it fails and quite miserably so as well.

I repeat again, intelligent design is just Christian propaganda, doesn't have a shred of scientific evidence, and is a classic example of the right-wing trying to push a Christian law.

u/Carl_Vincent_May_III · 1 pointr/sorceryofthespectacle

This has been my curse since college. In college I truly blossomed, it was a community college and the profs truly cared and were passionate about teaching. I was fascinated by every course I took, I read books related to the course material because I couldn't get enough. I was blessed by having not grown up religious, and I easily shed the sort of pseudo therapeutic deism I had in favor of physicalism, lifism, and humanism. Humans beings and life on Earth are the things of the most value we have ever experienced. However with the knowledge I gained, I realized the nature of social reality that we all do here: we live in a humanity-destroying doomsday device called capitalism, politics was utter bullshit, and nothing was there to prevent the apocalypse. My greatest fear was and is humanity destroying itself via its own stupidity. This became my Focus, my core query, and the essential dilemma between what I valued most and its utter negation destroyed me. And so I went under, and how I went under. Imagine everyone you love dying at the same time, over and over, with you helpless to stop it; I felt this for years. I tried distractions, to "simply be happy" and seek escapism in video games and the internet (which led me to Second Life and my business there which made me $9000 a month at my peak) and to hide myself from the world. I became a hermit in my own apartment, (later a room in my Mother's house) and have been ever since, until now.

It was also during college (2001-2004, broken up due to life circumstances) that I discovered Richard Dawkins' phenomenal work, along with many others in philosophy and science. I envisioned a science of creativity, of a way to augment people's innate creativity instead of the shitty definition of "memetic engineering" which is essentially engineering propaganda. I imagined an explosion of human creative experience known as the Memetic Singularity. I didn't realize it, but after making this my Focus I subconsciously sought it, and to the solution of my core query of how to prevent the death of humanity. Eventually, this led me here. And so here I am.

There are many that share my core queries of an expanding fractal of human experience / life-as-art and art-as life, and to prevent the destruction of humanity. Our synchronicity is us working along separate lines of inquiry that converge in very precise ways, the precision having increased until the memetic singularity was realized sometime in the last few months. The War on Nihilism, the War on Zero is over, we are in a post-war period of reconstruction. A really awesome Christmas (metaphorically) is coming where many gifts will be revealed that will allow humanity to reach its true potential that we all know deep down is our birthright.

I like your diagram and it is a good way to visualize and organize your mental schema on these topics. I'm not sure what sort of diagram I would make, but it would probably involve bubbles with topics with sub-bubbles branching off with sub-topics and a whole lot of cross-crossing lines of relations between them.

If you haven't already, I strongly recommend watching my special blends in order, without skipping anything (the whole is other than the sum of their parts.) The true message is in the interrelationships of the media used, both between blends and within them.

Carl Sagan is also one of my biggest role models, in the midst of the total chaos (parents, family, high school) of my teenage years I discovered amateur astronomy. I learned to love the cosmos, I built my own 10" Dobsonian Newtonian reflector, the night sky became a home to me. I had previously had a deep fear of the dark which vanished from this, which is why this book is so meaningful to me. What initiated my interest in astronomy was the movie Contact based on his book I had previously read. This scene in the movie describes the holy experience of astronomy that I felt many times just as strongly as the movie depicts. The scene isn't about aliens, it's about humanity and the universe, which has a sort of intrinsic quality of love to it, which it must to have created something as wonderful as life, love, and consciousness. We truly are the means by which the universe experiences itself.

Materialism isn't the problem, it's incomplete materialism that is Cartesian Dualism in disguise. The perception and not mere belief of holistic physicalism gives a sense of interconnectedness and wonder to all existence.

u/InfinitysDice · 1 pointr/IWantToLearn

If you, perchance, liked the Harry Potter series, you might enjoy Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as a fairly pain free and enjoyable introduction to cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and other useful tools to better thinking. Elizer Yudkowsky, the author of HPatMoR maintains several resources that can also be useful in training your mind to be more rational, and a better critical thinker.

​

The Demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark by Carl Sagan is a fantastic book in praise of science, a primer for the scientific method, and a decent guide to why and how science works. Further, it covers the nature of conspiracy thinking and pseudoscience, how to identify these things, and why they are harmful to society. Available in audiobook, ebook, and paper formats.

​

Algorithms to Live by is a bit off to the side of your requested topic, but it's an interesting treatise on how computer science can teach you some of the optimal ways one can make certain types of decisions. It's a bit counterintuitive, in the advice given, for example: messiness is often more efficient than spending a lot of time organizing everything, humans can't really multitask, and hunches are sometimes your best tool for deciding a course of action. I've read the book and posses the audiobook, both are great.

​

Almost anything written by Richard Feynman is accessible, humorous, and wise, in an askew sort of way. He's good at approaching topics from odd angles.

​

The Great Courses offers many resources on Audible: I've read and enjoyed Your Deceptive Mind, Skepticism 101, and Your Best Brain, which cover cognitive biases, and logical fallacies in detail, how to think more clearly without false, misleading thought, and how to take care of you mind through better lifestyle choices.

u/wrongright · 1 pointr/TrueChristian

>>or you have the equivalent of an online degree from the "college of creation"
from your abysmal analogies of DNA to computer code
you mean browsing the internet for anything that seems to confirm your pre-conceived notions
This is how I know you've never had a science class
your laughable comparison of computer code to DNA
You've been reading too many unscientific creationist websites.

Where you get your information, and whether or not you have constructed poor analogies, is not an appeal to your character or your emotions. Where you get your information, and how relevant your analogies of computers to biology are - is a pertinent criticism of your arguments and your line of reasoning. I think you would do well to re-visit the definition of an ad hominem.

In terms of whether or not you have ever had a science class, well, I apologize, but you have left me no choice but to conclude you know nothing of the scientific method if you think that IC is a perfectly acceptable hypothesis until it is "defeated". No, buster. That's not how science works. Either you were absent from science class those years, you didn't pay attention, you forgot, or you never enrolled. My statements are a relevant criticism (not an ad hominem) of your pseudo-scientific synopsis of the heartiness of IC as a hypothesis.

If you were using the DNA-code analogy in the same way Craig Venter uses it, I wouldn't have a problem. If you had said, "DNA is a lot like computer code except it wasn't demonstrably designed like code was", or "DNA has pieces of data that string along in sections to give instructions just like code does", or "DNA and code are similar, except code does not give complete instructions for the manufacture of 3D biomolecules that go on to make copies of themselves without any apparent intervention at all" - we wouldn't be having this conversation about how abysmally lacking your analogies are. Again, it's not an attack on you. It's an attack on the way you understand biology. It's the same with your car homology example. Those analogies fail and I have told you why.

>But my point is that you're arguing from an every-decreasing gap. Yes, it's still a gap for my side, but we continue to discover more purposes for what originally seemed pure evil. Yet the gap of evolutionary theory is ever-increasing as we continue to find more function and overlapping layers of complexity in genomes, while the models and observed evolution still accomplish very little.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The biologic theory of evolution gets more and more robust with every passing day. It's been criticized and thwarted for centuries and remains the only explanation. If your particular criticisms are so convincing to you, why aren't they causing more of a stir in universities? Do you happen to think you're the only person who ever thought the way you think? Oh sure, science and evolutionary theory are continually revised to fit the evidence, because that's what science does. It follows the evidence. The theory gets more accurate as time goes on. I think it's time you face that fact.

>You're losing the context of our discussion. Ken Miller claimed that any instance of homology refuted IC and showed common descent. Cars have homology but not common descent. It's irrelevant whether they reproduce.

You can't be this dense! It's very relevant whether cars reproduce, because common descent in biology involves REPRODUCTION TO GIVE RISE TO A SUBSEQUENT GENERATION. Cars don't manufacture themselves. Cars don't evolve. Organisms do. Your analogy fails... again. I'm fine with you comparing homology in, say, oysters, to homology in primates. That's apples to apples. Homology in cars? Gimme a break, dude. That's so incredibly immature.

Evolutionary theory has an avalanche of practical utility. Design does not. In order to be a working model a theory has to ANSWER more questions than it raises. Design cannot. There isn't a study you have cited yet that doesn't rely on the multi-faceted, highly tested, highly contested, highly predictive biologic theory of evolution. If you want to challenge it, you're gonna need a better audience than reddit. You're gonna need more than a B.S. in computer science. You're gonna need a model that explains biodiversity, genetics, ecology, limnology, zoology, botany, phylogeny, cellular, molecular, biochem, comparative anatomy, and everything else in biology just as well as evolution does, except better.

By developing this "better model" of yours, you're also simultaneously overturning the research of thousands of scientists from all over the world who are smarter than you, more diligent than you, who worked for a century and a half, many of whom are now deceased, who all vehemently accepted biologic evolution, whom the vast majority of which were also atheist - presumably because there is no need for a creator once there is a mechanism. So I wish you luck with that.

> I was raised agnostic and grew up reading Carl Sagan.

Every honest person in the world is admittedly angostic - so that doesn't really tell me anything. If you said you were gnostic it would just be an exemplification of intellectual dishonesty or stupifying ignorance. Agnosticism is also uninteresting because it makes no mention of your beliefs. Knowledge is a subset of belief, anyways. And it's belief that's interesting.

You used to read Carl Sagan? What the hell went wrong? The garbage you're quoting from now is awful. You should go pick this up. I think it would correct whatever problems you might be having with the fruits and labors of the true scientific community.

On to David Hume:

Point #1: The snowflake or the crystal may not pass your design criteria - but there are many other places where we see order in nature: Accretion disks in nebulae, growth rings in a tree trunk, the layering of scales on a fish, the shape of a drop of pure water (never really changes, does it?), ants marching into an anthill, the sound of a rooster crowing at dawn, the water cycle, the life cycle, the pattern of seeds on a strawberry, the golden ratio inside a snail shell, calmness before a storm, the shape of magnetic fields, and many, many others. There is plenty of order and purpose that has naturally arisen in the world.

>Likewise the crystaline structure of snowflakes is emergent from simple laws of chemistry.

That's sort of true, but...

>There are no such laws that make biology emergent in such a way.

...is dead wrong. Biology is also emergent from the laws of chemistry. For example: Oxidative phosphorylation in trees is almost the same as it is in humans because of convergent evolution. The biology of the MHC (major histocompatibility complex) is totally governed by chemistry and physics. That chemistry governing biologic processes is emergent from the laws of physics. Physics is emergent from 1st principles. 1st principles are nothing more than the predictive models we have created in science to describe the ways in which the universe works, all by itself.

On point #2: No. You misunderstand. Read it again: "But in order to point to a designed Universe, we would need to have an experience of a range of different universes. As we only experience one (universe), the analogy cannot be applied." (empahsis mine) Just because we suspect that its possible there are other universes, does not mean we have other universes to compare ours to. The design inference fails completely on just this point alone.

Point #3. No, that isn't outdated. Even if it were shown (somehow) that the world was designed, that can't get you to theism. Deism at best. You quoted Dawkins when he said the "illusion of design..." - I think you missed a word in there. The complexity of life is, indeed, fascinating, but it's had over 3 billion years to get that way.

Point 4:
>Any conceivable agent, even of unimaginable intelligence, would still be simpler than that.

How can it be conceivable and unimaginable at the same time? That's a contradiction.

Actually, it was Max Planck who was paraphrased to have said, "Science advances one funeral at a time" but I'm not sure if you understand the meaning behind that. the actual quote is "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is more familiar with it." You and Michael Behe will be dead soon. But the principles of evolutionary biology will live on forever.

Stenger's legacy is that the fallacy of fine-tuning has been exemplified with heavy physics as well as a careful philosophical application of the anthropic principle. You can disagree all you like but that doesn't change the fact that you are here in this universe asking questions. Of course the universe seems fine-tuned for you! Your kind has been allowed by the laws of physics to exist in your current form. I rather like Douglas Adams on the subject of anthropics. "This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise."


u/AncileBooster · 1 pointr/movies

Wonder what she thought of The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan

u/zeyus · 1 pointr/exjw

Awesome, it's great you're so proud of her!

Haha knowledge that leads to everlasting boredom! Book studies were the worst, I always felt super obligated to study extra hard because there were so few people that often nobody would answer!

Don't be so sure that your family will keep abandoning you, it's possible sure, but there's always hope! Often they're surprised that you can leave the witnesses and live a normal, or even better than normal life (of course there's always the "blessed by satan" get out clause) but they do expect people who leave to get aids and die from a heroin overdose.

It's easy to prove them wrong! Either way though, you have your own family to look out for and you can learn what not to do!

On to the suggested reading. I've mentioned many on here before but I don't expect everyone to be aware of it all so here goes:

Reading (I have a kindle and love reading, but they're all available for ebook and in paperback)

u/ooddaa · 1 pointr/Metal

If you haven't already, check out Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. Essential bullshit detection manual.

u/remembertosmilebot · 1 pointr/exchristian

Did you know Amazon will donate a portion of every purchase if you shop by going to smile.amazon.com instead? Over $50,000,000 has been raised for charity - all you need to do is change the URL!

Here are your smile-ified links:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Why Evolution Is True

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

Why There Is No God

Jesus, Interrupted

The God Argument

Deconverted: A Journey from Religion to Reason

---

^^i'm ^^a ^^friendly bot

u/penguinland · 1 pointr/atheism

> I'm afraid my friends would judge me.

This should be obvious, but just in case it's not: don't tell them anything if you're not comfortable with it. You're very good at going through the motions of whatever religion you've been raised as. Keep doing that until you're more confident in whatever your beliefs will become.

In the meantime, read as much as you can from as many different perspectives as you can. Question everything. As an atheist, I'd suggest you start by reading The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, and the Bible.

u/orbweaver82 · 1 pointr/reddit.com

Try This One Next.

u/reddilada · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/Abaddon_4_Dictator · 1 pointr/atheism

Seeing that you have questions about demons, I suggest reading Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World.

If obtaining a copy is difficult let me know, I can help you look.

u/John_Q_Deist · 1 pointr/askscience

For the beginner I would recommend this from a perennial favorite.

u/sciencepoetryreality · 1 pointr/exchristian

I went to Alpha when I was still a Christian, but when doubts were starting to form. They invite you in by sharing a meal together, watching Gumbel's presentation, and having discussion. The video segments are made up of the same old arguments stating that people are basically bad and need to be made right by the blood of Jesus. It's an effective tool on those who aren't able to or aren't trained in logical/cognitive fallacies.

> I've tried to respectfully challenge her on a couple of things, but she feels that I'm attacking her new found faith.

IMO this is a red flag. Being defensive usually doesn't allow for an open mind. Be wary.

> Are there any good books which help explain non-literalist Christian beliefs to someone who came from a literalist background?

I wouldn't keep pointing in the direction of belief, but rather point in the direction of truth (Plus, we were taught to hate Rob Bell in church):

u/erchamion · 1 pointr/AskReddit

The Demon-Haunted World. It's ~500 pages of a passionate plea for people to think about what they believe. I'm sad I waited until I was 24 to read it.

u/the_tortfeasor · 1 pointr/atheism

If you are at a university with a good engineering program, you probably have access to other science courses that will really open up your eyes on these topics. I was already an atheist, but after taking a biology course, I really understood evolution. Similarly, taking an astronomy course would teach you about the big bang and the formation of the universe. Keep up the work on your own, but enroll in a couple extra classes outside your major that will expand your view. Any science classes will strengthen your critical thinking skills and you will be able to explore so much more on your own.

I also recommend Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan as being one of the most influential books to me in shaping how I think and view the world. It's a very easy to read book and it's beautifully written.

Keep your eyes open and enjoy exploring science on your own!

u/Shareandcare · 1 pointr/atheism

>Where do I start?

Please read the FAQ.
**
>
Where can I read why the big bang is the closest theory or idea of rightness. Where can I read about ideas of the particles that made up every atom or whatnot smaller spec to create the big bang?*

Start with:

u/mariusmule · 1 pointr/atheism

I'm sorry, and I'm sure you're a good person, but if you're a muslim you're subscribing to, and therefore enabling, an ideology which encourages the murder and rape of people who don't subscribe to it.

You don't need to follow my advice if you don't want to but I highly advise picking up atheism. Start with these books:

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330464203&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Reality-Know-Whats-Really/dp/1439192812/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330464390&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330464824&sr=1-1

u/wisdom_possibly · 1 pointr/AskAnAmerican

Life Everywhere (Darling, David) is a primer on exobiology - the study of the possibilities of non-terrestrial life. A bit outdated but informative and very funny.

A Demon-Haunted World (Sagan, Carl) outlines epistemology, the nature of knowledge.

u/cardinals5 · 1 pointr/AskAnAmerican

Visible Saints, which is about the early history of my hometown from the early colonists up through the end of the American Revolution.

I'm planning to start The Demon Haunted World next.

u/WalterFStarbuck · 1 pointr/AskReddit

In addition to Guns, Germs, and Steel:

u/MUnhelpful · 1 pointr/atheism

Just keep thinking, and consider whether moral claims seem reasonable, and whether factual ones match with reality. You'll figure out what to believe in eventually. It might help to read some Bertrand Russell (the first few sentences might be some of my favorite words of all time) or Carl Sagan on your way there. If you aspire to a rational worldview, Eliezer Yudkowsky's Sequences at LessWrong are a good start (and his Harry Potter fanfiction is great, too). I can also recommend QualiaSoup for "outside" views of religious beliefs and a good introduction to critical thinking, science, and morality without authority (this seems to be a difficult point for the religious).

u/001Guy001 · 1 pointr/suggestmeabook

Carl Sagan - The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark + Cosmos (I haven't read it, just watched the show, so I don't know how it compares)

Brian Cox - Wonders Of... book series (again, haven't read them but watched the mini-series)

u/MoonPoint · 1 pointr/science

"Lightning is Zeus hurling his thunderbolts. Leave it at that." As they have in the past, some people still prefer the demon-haunted world.

u/ThomasWHS · 1 pointr/funny

No, it takes ages to put together a formal argument supported by data. I would have to study the subject for a fairly long time to put together a solid argument.

The amount of work I would have to put in to do that would not be worth the effort when the people I am talking with would likely not be convinced no matter how well supported the argument. So why would I bother doing that to win an argument on a level that the person I am arguing with will not be bothered understanding?

I started listening to "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" as an audio book. It seem to be mostly fun anecdotes and a loosely structured biography from a great scientist rather than a writing on the scientific method.

Feynman isn't a saint, I have read accounts from people who knew him say that it appeared that he would go out of his way and get in the way of other people just so that he would be able to create interesting anecdotes and feed into the strange cult status of his idiosyncratic genius.

I have been reading Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions and soon I am going to dig into an anthology of key writings on the philosophy of science.

It is a bit of a cliche, but the more I learn the more I realise how much I don't know. I know enough to have a general understanding of a bunch of things and I know enough to know how to research to learn more about them and to link that new information into my world view.

u/fubuvsfitch · 1 pointr/philosophy

This is pretty interesting: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s04.html

An excerpt: Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought. One example is the idea of the atomic structure of things voiced by Democritus. Certain conjectures about natural selection were made in ancient times by the philosopher Lucretius and later by the French thinker Diderot. Hypothetically he anticipated what became a scientific fact two centuries later. We may also recall the Cartesian reflex and the philosopher's proposition on the conservation of motion in the universe. On the general philosophical plane Spinoza gave grounds for the universal principle of determinism. The idea of the existence of molecules as complex particles consisting of atoms was developed in the works of the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi and also Russia's Mikhail Lomonosov. Philosophy nurtured the hypothesis of the cellular structure of animal and vegetable organisms and formulated the idea of the development and universal connection of phenomena and the principle of the material unity of the world. Lenin formulated one of the fundamental ideas of contemporary natural science—the principle of the inexhaustibility of matter—upon which scientists rely as a firm methodological foundation

The latest theories of the unity of matter, motion, space and time, the unity of the discontinuous and continuous, the principles of the conservation of matter and motion, the ideas of the infinity and inexhaustibility of matter were stated in a general form in philosophy.

If we trace the whole history of natural and social science, we cannot fail to notice that scientists in their specific researches, in constructing hypotheses and theories have constantly applied, sometimes unconsciously, world-views and methodological principles, categories and logical systems evolved by philosophers and absorbed by scientists in the process of their training and self-education. All scientists who think in terms of theory constantly speak of this with a deep feeling of gratitude both in their works and at regional and international conferences and congresses.

Some people think that science has reached such a level of theoretical thought that it no longer needs philosophy. But any scientist, particularly the theoretician, knows in his heart that his creative activity is closely linked with philosophy and that without serious knowledge of philosophical culture the results of that activity cannot become theoretically effective. All the outstanding theoreticians have themselves been guided by philosophical thought and tried to inspire their pupils with its beneficent influence in order to make them specialists capable of comprehensively and critically analysing all the principles and systems known to science, discovering their internal contradictions and overcoming them by means of new concepts.

To artificially isolate the specialised sciences from philosophy amounts to condemning scientists to finding for themselves world-view and methodological guidelines for their researches. Ignorance of philosophical culture is bound to have a negative effect on any general theoretical conclusions from a given set of scientific facts. One cannot achieve any real theoretical comprehension, particularly of the global problems of a specialised science, without a broad grasp of inter-disciplinary and philosophical views. The specialised scientists who ignore philosophical problems sometimes turn out to be in thrall to completely obsolete or makeshift philosophical ideas without even knowing it themselves. The desire to ignore philosophy is particularly characteristic of such a trend in bourgeois thought as positivism, whose advocates have claimed that science has no need of philosophy. Their ill-considered principle is that "science is in itself philosophy". They work on the assumption that scientific knowledge has developed widely enough to provide answers to all philosophical problems without resorting to any actual philosophical system. But the "cunning" of philosophy lies in the fact that any form of contempt for it, any rejection of philosophy is in itself a kind of philosophy. It is as impossible to get rid of philosophy as it is to rid oneself of all convictions. Philosophy is the regulative nucleus of the theoretically-minded individual.

This is also pretty much where it all began:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

Aristotle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle

Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance

In the biological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the nineteenth century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle#Aristotle.27s_scientific_method

In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences

Now to your comment: I have not defined simply thinking as philosophy. When I think to turn on my blinker before I make a turn, I am not doing philosophy. I am thinking, but not philosophizing.

As for deciding which is science and which is philosophy being silly... well I think that notion is a bit confusing. Neither philosophy nor science are 'just thinking'. As for what makes science science: For one, science is ALWAYS FALSIFIABLE. Meaning, one can test the statements made by science. Philosophy is often abstract and untestable. Secondly, science is OBSERVABLE in the real world. We observe correlations in nature when we are doing science. Philosophy may or may not involve observation of natural phenomena. Science involves PHYSICAL EXPERIMENTATION. Philosophy involves thought experimentation. Science always makes PREDICTIONS. Philosophy doesn't have to make predictions. There are about six demarcating criteria that distinguish and define science as science. Science falls under the umbrella of philosophy. In other words, all science is philosophy, but all philosophy is not science.

My point is that if you know the history of science, and you know the history of philosophy, you know that philosophers are the fathers of modern day science. See, the inquisitive nature and thought that philosophers exhibited manifest itself in several ways. One of these manifestations was scientific method. See my last post.

I think also you may be misunderstanding the point. Not every scientist is thinking "I'm doing philosophy!" before he goes into experiment, although he is walking in the footsteps of philosophers, and even doing philosophy though he may not know it. Further, it was the love of wisdom, philosophy, that led to the scientific method in the first place. So any time someone is doing science, it is because they love wisdom (unless of course it's 'just a job'). They are seeking knowledge. This is philosophy. Philosophy both super cedes and precedes science.

If you have the time, and the money, and the desire, this is an excellent book:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Central-J-Cover/dp/0393971759/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268296671&sr=1-4

u/exeverythingguy · 1 pointr/math

two excellent books by John Derbyshire:

Prime Obsession regarding the Riemann Hypothesis

Unknown Quantity which is about the history of Algebra

u/markov- · 1 pointr/etymology

For more concerning al-Khwarizmi and the development of modern algebra, check out Unknown Quantity by John Derbyshire.

u/TheUncommonOne · 1 pointr/math

Just read unknown quantity. Mostly talks about the history of algebra. Really blew my mind how recent most of our ideas and notation are.

Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452288533/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_ALHeY6WCDhbXV

u/FF_BC · 1 pointr/INTP

I'm afraid it's not a secret. Someone wrote a book about it.

u/psykocrime · 1 pointr/books

Some of it just recognition - if you see something in a book that reminds you of something you read about in another book, or something you know about the world, or history, or religion, then your mind may make the leap to say "Oh, this is a symbolic reference to trench warfare in France during WWI" or whatever. So the more "stuff" you know about, the more equipped you are to recognize references. So studying history, religion, economics, world news, various natural sciences, etc., etc. will help you with this And the more you know about the author you're reading, the time he/she lived and wrote in, etc., the more you can pick up on.

Note though that a lot of this symblic stuff is indirect / abstract... they are vague allusions using analogy or metaphor, and not necessarily explicit. So the more you develop your capacity for abstract thinking, thinking in metaphors, etc., the better. To that end, you might consider reading Metaphors We Live By, Surfaces and Essences, and similar books.

Also, a lot of "symbolism" is rooted in the thinking of Freud and Jung, even to this day. A lot of Freud's stuff has been discredited now, but from a "cultural literacy" standpoint, it wouldn't hurt to read his book on dream interpretation, as well as some of Jung's stuff. The stuff about archetypes and the "collective unconscious" would be good.

Also, a lot of symbolism may be rooted in, or linked by metaphor, to existing mythology. Some ideas from myth are tropes that appear again and again. With that in mind, I'd suggest reading The Hero With A Thousand Faces and The Hero's Journey by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell. If you're really interested, any and all of his other books would probably be useful as well.

One last final note: It's entirely possible that all of most of this "symbolism in literature" stuff is total bullshit. What I mean is, you (or I, or whoever) can "find" all sorts of symbolic links in a work, and find arguments to support that link. But unless the author is still alive, and willing to confirm or deny his intent, you never really know if the "link" you've found is really "a thing" put there by the author, or just your own overactive imagination running wild.

u/integerdivision · 1 pointr/musictheory

The expansion of the term hemiola to mean things other than 3:2 groupings is a natural process of the acquisition of language. We learn a rule or a meaning and generalize. Check out Surfaces and Essences for this process of analogizing—it is excellent even if it’s a bit example heavy.

I got the idea of a hemiola being a note that is held over the end of one bar into another, but that’s because I heard the term from someone who either didn’t understand or didn’t properly explain it. Judging from your experience and the comments of some others, similarly vague and over-generalized definitions seem to be pretty widespread, which as a linguist, makes me want to encourage the redefinition of hemiola to be broader and more useful.

u/hell_books · 1 pointr/askphilosophy

Really? Nolt's Logics? Besides the numerous errors, it's telling that the book has not come out in a second edition.

I think Quine's Methods of Logic remains a fantastic text, if it is a bit dated and filled with Quinean quirks. A more recent text, Ted Siders' Logic for Philosophy is also very good, although the exercises are sometimes quite difficult. I would combine Sider's text with a book on metalogic, since he skips over some of that. Kleene's Mathematical Logic is a classic text by a real giant in the history of 20th century logic. Those should keep someone busy for a good year of study. If you want to branch out, Graham Priest's Introduction to Non-classical Logics will get you started in modal, tense, epistemic, paraconsistent and dialethic logics, also by a contemporary giant in the field.

After that, I would go on to set theory, and stop when I had a grasp of forcing.

u/metalliska · 1 pointr/CapitalismVSocialism

> contribute nothing to the world around us

lolwhut

> assume human behavior is entirely random by default,

False dichotomy

>hey we have some feasible explanation for something we had no feasible explanation for

Ahh, yes, the "crystal ball" method of feasibility.

>So either you have to improve our ability to understand and predict phenomena, or you have to be the first person to try to systematically understand and predict phenomena.

Especially that "flawless knowledge" from which economists scribe by hand from the dear Shepherd Lord Alfred Marshall. Protected, the sacred texts are.


>However, we can observe human behavior.

This is the non-falsifiable claim here. There's no way to say which is and is not "behavior".

>We can make theories about how people rank their preferences, and we can test to see if those theories are consistent with our observations of human behavior

First correct thing you've said. Those "Theories" aren't "Scientific", as they're not demarcated, but a close effort.

>However, because models are inherently incomplete - we can't measure every single covariate in existence that could matter (largely because we often don't know every single covariate which can matter), so there's going to be some degree of error between observed and predicted values.

this is where you should stop what you're doing and read this book

It goes into which Social Studies' models errors are testable, and which Science errors are testable. This includes counterfactuals, the "do" operator (a.k.a. controlled environment based on variable isolation), and many more tests (such as randomized inputs).

u/olaconquistador · 1 pointr/PearlCausality

I was unable to find a TOC for the book you mention, but the causality book's TOC can be seen here . I am also behind schedule because I didnt have people to discuss with, so have not reached the interventions part of the book. From what I see, causality is about the basics of graphical models, with a focus on causal models. This includes inferring what the graphs are like from the data, dealing with unobserved variables, dealing with sudden actions like fixing a variable etc. All the topics in the book you mention find their place here, but i dont know how the books compare

u/Passion_Fish · 1 pointr/occult

Here is an article about macro-level quantum phenomena in biology.

How much do you know about quantum mechanics? If very little, and if you have the mathematical and basic physical background, it's worth reading (or brushing up on) an introductory textbook, as you'll learn about (or recall) the intrinsic randomness (and observer-dependence) of the physical world at the atomic level.

Also, your OP (which was very nice, BTW) mentions a lot about causation, and it might be worth reading scientific treatments of causation. The seminal work is Judea Pearl's Causality, but it is mathematically very dense. So is the Robins school of causal inference in epidemiology (see also other stochastic process treatments of causation, in the causal inference subdiscipline of epidemiology and statistics).

Hope this helps!

u/spletnigasper · 1 pointr/Bayes

If you want to start with very basics I suggest http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~dang/books/Learning%20Bayesian%20Networks%28Neapolitan,%20Richard%29.pdf

This book is also very fine to read: http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-Pearl/dp/052189560X

and while I was searching for it I stumbled upon this article:

https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~russell/papers/hbtnn-bn.pdf

I have no experience in your field, but here is another google hit you may find relevant: http://www.bayesialab.com/book

Concerning software, you may want to check this out: http://www.phil.cmu.edu/tetrad/publications.html again I don't have enough experience to actually answer the software question.

u/Noddy1989 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Short-History-Of-Nearly-Everything/dp/0552997048 Absolutely brilliant book for Science related knowledge. Brief chapters on a lot of things, ranging from the Big Bang to Evolution etc.

Other things to do is read newspapers, magazine (informative magazine, I read How it Works and New Scientist. I'd like to subscribe to more but can't afford it currently.

u/BigBadAl · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/proffrobot · 1 pointr/AskPhysics

It's great that you want to study particle physics and String Theory! It's a really interesting subject. Getting a degree in physics can often make you a useful person so long as you make sure you get some transferable skills (like programming and whatnot). I'll reiterate the standard advice for going further in physics, and in particular in theoretical physics, in the hope that you will take it to heart. Only go into theoretical physics if you really enjoy it. Do it for no other reason. If you want to become a professor, there are other areas of physics which are far easier to accomplish that in. If you want to be famous, become an actor or a writer or go into science communication and become the new Bill Nye. I'm not saying the only reason to do it is if you're obsessed with it, but you've got to really enjoy it and find it fulfilling for it's own sake as the likelihood of becoming a professor in it is so slim. Then, if your academic dreams don't work out, you won't regret the time you spent, and you'll always have the drive to keep learning and doing more, whatever happens to you academically.

With that out of the way, the biggest chunk of learning you'll do as a theorist is math. A decent book (which I used in my undergraduate degree) which covers the majority of the math you need to understand basic physics, e.g. Classical Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics and Electromagnetism. Is this guy: Maths It's not a textbook you can read cover to cover, but it's a really good reference, and undoubtably, should you go and do a physics degree, you'll end up owning something like it. If you like maths now and want to learn more of it, then it's a good book to do it with.

The rest of the books I'll recommend to you have a minimal number of equations, but explain a lot of concepts and other interesting goodies. To really understand the subjects you need textbooks, but you need the math to understand them first and it's unlikely you're there yet. If you want textbook suggestions let me know, but if you haven't read the books below they're good anyway.

First, particle physics. This book Deep Down Things is a really great book about the history and ideas behind modern particles physics and the standard model. I can't recommend it enough.

Next, General Relativity. If you're interested in String Theory you're going to need to become an expert in General Relativity. This book: General Relativity from A to B explains the ideas behind GR without a lot of math, but it does so in a precise way. It's a really good book.

Next, Quantum Mechanics. This book: In Search of Schrodinger's Cat is a great introduction to the people and ideas of Quantum Mechanics. I like it a lot.

For general physics knowledge. Lots of people really like the
Feynman Lectures They cover everything and so have quite a bit of math in them. As a taster you can get a couple of books: Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces, though the not so easy pieces are a bit more mathematically minded.

Now I'll take the opportunity to recommend my own pet favourite book. The Road to Reality. Roger Penrose wrote this to prove that anyone could understand all of theoretical physics, as such it's one of the hardest books you can read, but it is fascinating and tells you about concepts all the way up to String Theory. If you've got time to think and work on the exercises I found it well worth the time. All the math that's needed is explained in the book, which is good, but it's certainly not easy!

Lastly, for understanding more of the ideas which underlie theoretical physics, this is a good book: Philsophy of Physics: Space and Time It's not the best, but the ideas behind theoretical physics thought are important and this is an interesting and subtle book. I'd put it last on the reading list though.

Anyway, I hope that helps, keep learning about physics and asking questions! If there's anything else you want to know, feel free to ask.

u/airshowfan · 1 pointr/askscience

Oh good! It's even more BS-ey than I had realized!

My knowledge of quantum physics is limited to what one can learn from popular books (1, 2, 3 ). Could you try to explain the differences between the underlying models/assumptions on which Orch-OR is based, and the models/assumptions in established/standard physics? I would appreciate it.

u/mefansandfreaks · 1 pointr/AskReddit

You might want to read a book like "In Search Of Schrodinger's Cat" by John Gribbin

u/The_Kitten_Stimpy · 1 pointr/Physics

I reallt hopoe you have a decent background in and love of studying math. Live it and love it. If you have that and the curiosity to ask the questions above you are getting ready for one cool academic 'trip' when you advance beyone high school. That said go an buy 'In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality" by John Gribbon it addresses almost exactly what you are asking. It is completely in layman's terms. I have been reading this over and over for at least 17 years and get a little closer, understand a little more each time. Link

u/Lost7176 · 1 pointr/HardcoreSMP

I just wrote a super long response and accidentally the tab and whole textbox. Anyway, it consisted of a few points,

  1. being that, as far as I understand it, quantum fluctuations suggest that what we previously thought of as "empty space" is actually filled with subatomic particles coming in and out of existence, and in light of this, it is possible to imagine that, however unusual, the big bang could have spontaneously come from nothing and will return thereto eventually.

  2. Continuing with the "cone" analogy (that our universe is a 4 dimensional object, analagous to a 3 dimensional cone, and that we are experiencing 3 dimensional transects along a 4th dimension of time, analogous to a 2 dimensional planar transect traveling along the 3rd dimension of height), you can't talk about something "before" our universe, because the very notion of time is a property of our universe. It's like asking "what is the height of point X outside the cone," when the very notion of height applies only within the cone object. We can imagine that such a point exists, but by virtue of its definition we can't know what it is, otherwise it would be part of our universe.

  3. As I see it, the first atom probably emerged from a primordial soup of subatomic particles, but where those subatomic particles emerged from is still a big question. As mentioned, I suspect quantum fluctuation, I think that there's always some activity of particles coming and going out of existence, with statistics favoring small particles/energy levels over very short periods of time. Of course the chances of such a big bang mess of particles emerging spontaneously would therefore be be infinitesimally small, but in an infinite span of multidimensional possibilities, perhaps it was inevitable that such an unlikely event would happen somehow and since only under those circumstances could a conscious 3 dimensional brain come to exist, so we find ourselves in the unlikeliest of circumstances - and it could be no other way (else we would not be here to marvel at it).

    I'm still drunk, probably moreso than before, but I hope at least some of this makes sense. I have no authority in any aspect of physics, but I do enjoy reading and thinking about the nature of our existence. Two books - Flatland and In Search of Schrödinger's Cat have probably had an undue impact on my beliefs and theories. But fuck it, this is a minecraft server subreddit and I can ramble about half-baked cosmological perspectives if I feel like it.
u/gristc · 1 pointr/atheism

I liked In Search of Schrodinger's Cat by John Gribbin. I had read A Brief History first, then this and then I read I Brief History again and found I understood it a lot better.

u/kouhoutek · 1 pointr/askscience

It is probably a little below what you are looking for, and it is coming up on being 30 years old, but In Search of Schrödinger's Cat is a really good place to start for entry level quantum physics.

u/BinLeenk · 1 pointr/math
u/rkiga · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

>You seem to be entirely ignoring that he didn't just like the golden ratio or think about it a lot, he blatantly incorporated it into his designs. This is the only bit that matters... he very clearly and obviously used it in many of his designs, which are considered to be of great beauty.

I know that he used the golden ratio. I never tried to deny that. But I completely disagree when you say that it matters. And especially if you think that it's the most important thing.

I ignored it because it has nothing to do with merit in my mind. Use of something by a famous person doesn't give it merit.

As an example, da Vinci experimented with materials. He wanted to use a different kind of paint that was oil-based instead of using fresco, painting on wet plaster. He wanted a medium that would let him layer on paint when it was dry. He flatly refused to paint frescoes. His experiments were extremely unsuccessful.

He never bothered to test his paints out before using them in large scale works of art. He abandoned works because they began to deteriorate while he was still painting them. Worse than that, he continued to use his experimental materials even after repeated failures. Look at how badly his The Last Supper has deteriorated. It probably looked even worse than that when he was still alive. That is after multiple restorations (but before the most recent restoration). It's a complete mess of cracks and missing pieces.

His Mona Lisa suffers as well from his experiments. He used wax in his paint and experimental varnish. It began to crack, fade, yellow, and darken almost immediately. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, look at the difference in damage and color between his Mona Lisa, and the one supposedly done by a student sitting next to him: Mona Lisa vs Museo del Prado Mona Lisa. I'm not trying to say they should have looked exactly the same, because the original has been exposed to more of the elements. But the damage is far more extensive than if he had just used normal materials.

So should we admire da Vinci's experimental mind? His wanting to try something new to bring the art he had in his head into reality? Of course. Without experimenting, we'd have have no progress.

But should we admire his methods, or his refusal to use proper tools? Should we say that his paints and varnishes had merit? No! He made a mistake. Many mistakes. He was stubborn and foolish, and his great works of art suffered.

Le Corbusier using the golden ratio is not nearly as bad as that. His buildings haven't toppled because of the golden ratio. But just because a famous artist does something does NOT give it merit. Just because they do something doesn't make it significant. It could be that they're just doing things because they're set in their ways and stubborn as a donkey.

I'm not even trying to say that Le Corbusier's designs are bad. But if what you said were true. If picking a number and "blatantly incorporating it into your design" were all that mattered, then an artist could pick ANY number and do that. If so then everything has merit. So what's the point of saying that? Everything is the same then.

>Oh come on, that's written by some editor trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Nearly all blurbs on the back of a book are stupid, and don't always give a reasonable insight into what the actual text is like.

The editor will also tailor the blurb towards the target audience. It's pretty clear that one is aimed at the nutjob crowd. So my pointing it out has more to do with why you would even link it to me in the first place. You complained before that I used that guy's blog as a source when talking about it, but then you suggest that I'm going to find scholarly notes in that book? Read through the "look inside". It's a practical guide on how to wave your hands and create art with the golden ratio.

>As far as proof, I don't know what you expect. In fact I'm sure you know that there isn't any "proof" because, what exactly am I trying to prove here?

You said that the Modernists cared where Modulor came from, and you said they cared about the golden ratio. Where are you getting that from? Where's your proof?

I want proof that any artist ever said that they used the golden ratio for a reason. Anything to show that the golden ratio has more merit than any random number.

You called that blogger a nutjob so I think you agree with me that some people take it too far. So when we get somebody like Le Corbusier it should be worth reading. Instead he talks about it in relation to music and then states in his words that his "scale" is based on "harmony" and using an arbitrary height as the basis for human beauty, and by extension the beauty in his architecture.

We have all these fake blog examples and then we get to a real example from a respected artist and his explanation is so incredibly stupid. Doesn't that bother you?

He could have picked a random number (well actually he did) and it would have been just as good, as long as he planned out his system with as much care. That's why I'm saying it's not the golden ratio that matters at all, it's what he did with his system that matters. Why the golden ratio? Why not pi, or tau, or e, or 5.2987, or 40?

If you take any graphic design class they will probably teach you about using a grid system. But there are so many different grid systems, it becomes completely silly. Proponents point to this example or that to show what makes it look beautiful. But it really doesn't matter which grid you use. What matters is that after you create a draft, you look at your work and fix things that look wrong to you, and that you make things consistent. Anyone who spends their time looking at art or design will be able to tell instantly if a page layout looks good or not. You don't need a ratio telling you where to place your gutters. Just as a photographer or art director doesn't use the rule of thirds to tell if a photo looks right or if it should be cropped.

Jan Tschichold came up with one such grid system in which he favored "natural" and "intentional" numbers like the golden ratio. He said that if a designer accidentally used one of those special numbers, that it was "unintentional" and therefor bad design. Even if the intentional design was exactly the same as the unintentional one. I find that line of reasoning idiotic.

>That the golden section is a geometric ratio which people tend to find innately pleasing? This is plainly unprovable. How could I possibly begin to prove such a thing?

How can you say that something is innately pleasing as a fact if you don't have anything at all to back it up? Did you read that on a blog or something? You say it as if it's common knowledge.

This is talked about in the book I link further down.

>I'm pretty sure you know that absence of evidence isn't the same thing as evidence.

The book tries to be a summary of all that is important in art history. You're right that absence of mentioning the golden doesn't prove that it has no merit at all. But the implications are that it's not important. It's in it's 14th (?) edition now, they've had plenty of chances to fill any holes in their coverage. And that's a hell of a lot more telling than your book link, so I wouldn't throw stones about this one if I were you.

>I was asking you for a scholarly work which argues against it, not one which ignores it.

You said my arguments were not "solid", but I never saw you ask for anything scholarly, even when I asked you for that exact thing. Considering you didn't even read the book you linked to me, I didn't even think about linking you any books. But I have some:

Mario Livio wrote a book about the history of the golden ratio. It's the only one I know of that talks at any length about the history of reasoning. He talks a lot about the history of math. He talks about where the golden ratio was and wasn't used. He makes several attempts to debunk various theories about artists who did or didn't use the golden ratio. Not all his arguments are perfect, but he's basically talking about pattern recognition and forms of apophenia. Then he talks about scientific and psychological studies about the golden ratio, their findings, flaws, and merits. And then he takes a strange turn and talks about God, evolution, mathematics, and philosophy. Here is a short article by the author: http://plus.maths.org/content/golden-ratio-and-aesthetics

If you want to learn about grid systems in graphic design and proofs of why Jan Tschichold is an idiot, read The Form of the Book by Jan Tschichold.

Prove me wrong, but you'll never link me anything worth reading because there's a problem for both of us. There are very few scholarly papers or books written about the golden ratio, whether for or against it. You said you don't think it's a fringe theory, but that's exactly how it's seen in the art history / art theory world. That doesn't prove that it has no merit, that's just my understanding of the situation. So there's little reason for any contemporary art historian to talk about it. There's not much incentive for anyone to argue against it, and it would take a very convincing paper or book to break through all the bullshit on blogs to get any art historian to change their mind in favor of it.

u/lash209 · 1 pointr/math

If I remember right this book had pretty good information. I could be wrong though I did read it 5 or 6 years ago. Might be worth taking a look at.

u/zonination · 1 pointr/AskReddit

I can post a few links from some books about numbers. I haven't read a few of them, but the history of some numbers like phi, pi, zero... all of them are fascinating.

u/zygy · 1 pointr/math

I downvoted you for being narrowminded, but I still laughed. FWIW, I'm a math major and I loved the book.

Edit: Why don't you read something like this?

u/3rdFunkyBot · 1 pointr/Design

Here it is.

It was referenced at the end of the third paragraph.

u/CultOfCuck · 1 pointr/samharris

Are you illiterate? I answered your question:

> a process of constructing knowledge that is highly dependent on the individual's subjectivity and interpretation of their active experience and not what "actually" occurs. It is grossly unscientific garbage.

Those are not buzzwords and I sure as shit didn't make them up. You will find those terms in academia since the 90s at least.

If you are really interested, then read this book about the issues plaguing science: https://www.amazon.com/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science/dp/0801857074

Also see another one called, "The Science Wars" which is a sort of follow-up to the above.

u/Jill3 · 1 pointr/worldnews

BTW, you are correct that there is a lot of distrust of media out there. Here is the best book I know of on distrust-- and how a propagandist doesn't need to convince you they are right, in order to be successful, but only needs you to convince you to distrust their opponent:

Merchants of Doubt

https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483819977&sr=1-1&keywords=merchants+of+doubt

u/ALexusOhHaiNyan · 1 pointr/todayilearned

> Your citations are extremely selective

And pharmaceutical companies aren't?! You seem like an intelligent guy too. So why aren't you applying the same incredulity and skepticism towards a trillion dollar industry that have for one individual with nothing to gain?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperors-New-Drugs-Antidepressant/dp/0465022006

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_an_Epidemic

http://www.metafilter.com/113750/How-Corporations-Corrupt-Science-at-the-Publics-Expense

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1FEQ9E7PZVCNEAJT8VYM

u/akornblatt · 1 pointr/environment

Who went to jail from the Tobacco fraud case?
My point here, what the Koch brothers and companies like Exxon have been doing since the 80s is THE EXACT SAME THING. They even used some of the same "Scientists" to write their "scientific papers."

Check out [Merchants of Doubt](https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942
)

u/literal · 0 pointsr/AskReddit

That book is a sequel to In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality, which is pretty good.

u/beck1670 · 0 pointsr/LifeProTips

> So you're telling me that you can memorize the fibbonacci sequence but just can't wrap your head around remembering 1.6?

I took that as you saying that 1.6 is easier to remember Fibonacci. Was that wrong of me? How else could this be interpreted?

> So you only need to remember the Fibonacci sequence rule for all conversions of all units?

No, it's that 1.6 gets obfuscated by all of the other conversion factors, whereas Fib is unique and novel, making it noteworthy.

> How does that prove that rules are easier to remember than values? All it shows is that values are easier to remember if you also have rules.

We need the rules to make it easier to remember numbers. That's how hard numbers are to remember. Arbitrary rules are absolutely not easier to remember than arbitrary numbers, but when things have meaning then we can comprehend them. When we find simple rules that explain numbers, we find a simpler, more engaging way to think about a number that would otherwise be arbitrary.

> You may find it fascinating, I do not. I find it pointless.

This is why different people need different mnemonics! If you have the time, take a look through this page.. The takeaway message is the the Fibonacci sequence creates a lot of situations. The reason it works for miles to kilometers is because 1.6 is very close to the golden ratio (another number that I have to look up), which just shows up everywhere (which is fascinating in and of itself - there are entire books written about this one number and it's been known about since at least 300BCE).

I (like many other people) already learned about the Fibonacci sequence. Knowing that it applies to unit conversion means that I don't have to remember anything else - I've learned both things on their own terms, so the union is not a new thing to me. If you don't know the Fibonacci sequence, it might be a fascinating thing to learn. And lo and behold, you don't need to memorize a number (because very few people actually enjoy rote memorization).

u/cookielemons · 0 pointsr/askphilosophy

I find this to be an excellent paper that tries to debunk postmodern methodologies: http://philpapers.org/archive/SHATVO-2.pdf

The philosopher Roger Scruton has written a whole book devoted to critiquing various postmodern thinkers: https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Frauds-Firebrands-Thinkers-Left/dp/1408187337/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1468857400&sr=8-1

For postmodernism's relation to the field of history, you could try this volume by Richard J. Evans: https://www.amazon.com/Defence-History-Richard-J-Evans/dp/1862073953/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

In its relation to science, you could try this book: https://www.amazon.com/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science/dp/0801857074/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=

u/amt4ever · 0 pointsr/Economics

tenured? The Overton Window of opinion you allow gets smaller and smaller every time you post.

There're tenured 'experts' in the GMU econ department too. Would you care to guess what their consensus would be? Should we make them our only 'quality contributors'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

And you have let slip away another chance to show you have bothered to research the issue at all.

You can add this book to the stack of books you will never read:

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

u/Shabadoo99 · 0 pointsr/vancouver

Races are not antagonistic "jokes" about cyclists. You're just an ass. I don't watch shows that are obviously schilling for the petrochemical industry. Maybe you should read a book. Start with this.

u/caboosemoose · 0 pointsr/atheism

Except this idea is just wrong. Suggested readings:

How the laws of physics lie

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Realism and the Aim of Science

I'm not here to get into a debate on the philosophy of science, nor do I have any time for revealed religions. But science is an investigative quest, and suffers from its own sociological conundra. And much what science is isn't actually trying to be true, which is fine; an empirically accurate approximation is quite serviceable enough most of the time. But the bottom line of that is there is no reason to believe that in replaying it the same models would have to be produced.

u/WhackAMoleE · 0 pointsr/Advice

Intro to physics. Ok, how about how at the end of the 19th century, we thought we knew how everything worked, and all we needed to do was fill in the details. Then the quantum revolution happened. This is a great historical example of what Kuhn called a paradigm shift. In fact you might want to have a look at The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Four bucks used on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/The-Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Edition/dp/0226458083

u/Elliot_Loudermilk · 0 pointsr/newjersey


This has been a respectful back and forth, and I appreciate that. This will be my concluding comment.

> Religion has been the single greatest force limiting advancement in human history
>


This is the claim of the likes of Sam Harris. And this was the point that Nassim Taleb tried to make to him, although quite clumsily- religious thought has greatly contributed to building the Western world. For example, much of science has it's foundations in the presumptions produced by a religious worldview. Religion provides answers to existential questions that need to addressed before any scientific inquiry can be made. For example, one must have the presumption that the world is intelligible and comprehensible before engaging in scientific inquiry. If you don't start with that presumption, you cannot do science.

If you're interested in learning more about the philosophical presumptions that form the basis for scientific inquiry, check out The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn


Peace.

u/tennanja · 0 pointsr/askscience

We DON"T know that, its just every time we check on them (do experiments) the results come out that in such a way that makes us think that the laws that we have deduced from previous experiments still hold true. The interesting thing about scientific paradigms is that we do something, then see a result and then try to come up with an explination of why that result happened, the better our explanation explains the result and explains other results and survives repeated testing the better our explanation is to determining how the world really works, from which we can do things that build on our explanation.

This in the end does allow false assumptions to exist in science (think phlogistion chemistry) but as the field of science requires more complicated and complicated excuses for why different events happened, they are replaced with a new paradigm that explains the physical world differently.

In the end we may find at some point down the road something that scientists believe an unquestionable rule of physics is actually incorrect because it cannot explain X,Y, or Z but a new explanation comes forth and explains the stuff the first law explained and X,Y, or Z, in a better, cleaner way.

To read more I suggest : The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-Thomas-Kuhn/dp/0226458083

u/HollowImage · 0 pointsr/AskPhysics

Ok, so I would recommend Carrol's Spacetime and Geometry http://www.amazon.com/Spacetime-Geometry-Introduction-General-Relativity/dp/0805387323

If you are feeling more up to snuff with tensor calculus and mathematical analysis and can wade your way through R_n analysis, (in terms of problem solving and approaches), then go for Wald's Genearl Relativity http://www.amazon.com/General-Relativity-Robert-M-Wald/dp/0226870332

edit: warning: both of those books are graduate level. Any GR is only taught at grad level, but I took GR with Wald (yep the guy himself) my 3rd year with similar background to yours. You will be fine, but its going to be a lot of head beating against the wall. Some of that stuff is really complex and will possibly require more than one source to understand. JUST the book may not be enough. I would even recommend you talk to your local GR prof and see if you can send him questions as you work through this; I cant imagine any good professor refuse to help you in this way, as long as you dont send a question every 5 minute and they are actually substantial.

also, anything else you would be stepping lower than carrol and i would advise against it if you wanted to get a good grasp of mathematical approaches and rigorous proofs (especially Wald in this case)

u/frznwffls · 0 pointsr/AdviceAnimals

It's the same thing as DEET or cigarettes. We doubted that the research was real because industry-paid research showed that neither of those substances were dangerous. You can read more about it in "Merchants of doubt"

https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942

u/FormerlyTurnipHugger · 0 pointsr/climateskeptics

The book Merchants of Doubt explains the history and philosophy of climate skepticism very well.

u/Thrug · 0 pointsr/AskReddit

It may also be worth pointing out that "liberal" or "left" in America is actually roughly centre for the rest of the developed world. Policies that are "crazy left" in the US, like government controlled universal healthcare, have worked really well for the rest of us.

The idea that the media should be drawing a line in the sand that is equidistant from both political parties is remarkably similar to the Golden Mean fallacy. Similarly, the media culture leftover from the Fairness Doctrine years assumes that equal time given to both sides of an argument is the best way to present it.

Equal time and obsession with what Americans regard as "centrist" (which is very right-wing for the rest of us), has caused you great harm in the past, and continues to do so. This book does a good job at explaining why.

u/legalpothead · 0 pointsr/trees

I love Carl Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World. He gives instructions on how to construct your own bullshit detector, and then he uses it on a whole host of pseudoscience: ghosts, witchcraft, extraterrestrials, past lives, etc.

u/revericide · 0 pointsr/worldnews

My advice to you is to read a book. The ones I pointed out would be a good start, but if you can't handle actual scholarly works yet, the Bible and Doctor Seuss aren't going to get you terribly far. So try finding a library. Pick up Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke. Then maybe you can graduate on to Jack Diamond and Graeber before tackling Pinker, Sagan and Krauss.

Read a book.

u/fuckineverything · 0 pointsr/atheism

Tell her to netflix the cosmos. He makes many subtle stabs at superstitious beliefs in the series. If must have Carl Sagan, I have not read it but it but there are tons of good reviews for Demon Haunted World. However for the purposes you're describing you should recommend The God Delusion. I have read it and its a flawless victory defeat over believers.

u/shredler · 0 pointsr/occult
u/George_E_Hale · 0 pointsr/Ghosts

Ok, I want you to read what I am writing closely, not because I am trying to belittle your view or your beliefs in ghosts (which are yours to hold and I don't know your experience) but because we are talking about a way of knowing the world and I think it's important to think this through. First I will define some terms to make sure we know we are talking about the same thing:

Double blind: The person doing the experiment (the person on-site doing the testing) does not know exactly what the goal is. The people being studied also do not know what the goal is. This prevents the experimenter from fudging the data with his/her biases (e.g. not taking it seriously because he or she doubts the process, or looking for patterns in what is essentially random because he/she wants ghosts to be real.) It also prevents the people being studied from telling the experimenter what they think he/she wants to hear.

Experimental design: This means, among other things, randomization. You don't have people who already 100% believe in ghosts as part of your experiment, but nor do you fill it with a bunch of skeptics. You have as much as possible random sampling. You also
have more than one person you are experimenting on. The results of one experiment could be a function of coincidence, luck, whatever. Random chance. So you do it again. Multiple measures. Multiple participants. Different times of day or night, if this is relevant. This also means you control as many things as possible that could be effecting the outcome. If you wanted to do a longitudinal study you'd test the same things over a longer period of time.

You have two groups being experimented on differently--one group uses the Ouiji Board in the way you want it to be tested. The other group does not use the Ouiji Board properly but just sits with it in the room talking about whatever (or however you design this). Then you look at results and see: Are they all later having spooky experiences? If so then it's not because of how the Ouiji board was used (You still don't know why, and you'd have to explore this further.) Or you could have one group use the Ouiji board and another group just sit in a room watching a scary movie. Then see: Are they all having spooky experiences? Then it wasn't the Ouiji board that caused it. Again, you still don't know why. Occam's razor would suggest the easiest answer is probably the right answer: I.e. It's just emotions, it's just imagination. Again, you could explore as long as you wanted.

There are all kinds of ways to design studies, and each design is used to fit the question of interest (in this case, do Ouiji boards do anything?) But you have a question, and you have ways in which you can answer that question using your brain. If Joe uses the Ouiji Board at the same time as Sue, and Sue has no ill effects but Joe does, does this mean Sue is magically immune? Or does it mean Joe is imagining things? You can use experiments to test exactly this!

This doesn't even get into testing physical manifestations, a la Ghostbusters where you are looking at whatever ways you have of measuring sounds or what we see or whatever. Scientific thinking in the way I am describing it is meant to test whether any of this is in the imagination only or if something is actually going on. If it is, then you will need relevant people to explore what that something is.

IF you found something was actually going on, then breakthrough! you have done what no one else has done. Now it is time to analyze using physical measures.

If you do NOT accept this kind of analysis then that's up to you, but realize this lack of willingness to doubt yourself, to hold your assumptions and beliefs up to the light of scientific analysis, is equivalent to washing your hands of reason. It's what allows charlatans of all types to peddle mystic woo and rake in the cash from the gullible wishing for contact with the spirit world, for healing from crystals, for whatever. And it's dangerous and not good for a society to have people unwilling to make these connections.

Science, meanwhile, is not a religion. It is precisely science to say "We don't have all the answers." What science doesn't do is say "Well, we don't have all the answers, so I will assume demons are following me around." Science is about questioning, about exploration, about testing.

I highly recommend Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. In it, he writes about his own life and his hopes, for years, this is Carl Sagan's hopes, that the weird supernatural shit we all read about as kids was actually real. And he is amazingly well-balanced and refreshingly unjudgmental in the book.

I hope this doesn't come off as me being an ass. The fact is 300 years ago if anyone had been doing well-designed studies they certainly would not have concluded that infection was jus random chance. They may not have known it was bacteria--just like if the Ouiji board did in fact do something you don't know that the thing being done is being done by a demon--but they would have known it was something. Again, as a result of scrupulous and rigorous testing, not quick assumption that conveniently confirmed their own beliefs (that's actually what often did happen, with unfortunate results.)

Edit: TL;DR: Whether or to what degree Ouiji boards are "real" and work can be tested by anyone with the time and willingness.

u/ChewsCarefully · 0 pointsr/DebateReligion

> Its still theoretical mumbo jumbo without a shred of evidence.

https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

Please just read this book..

u/HmmmNotBuyinIt · -1 pointsr/todayilearned

It is fallacious to state an argument with facts that are not directly pertinent to the case. There are many things (by far not all) on both sides of the coin that have merit. Arguing against the character is as bad as appealing to a character. Try to use logical and objective evaluations of things. Here are some good reads to learn more about fallacious arguments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469 (A book with parts that deal with the subject)

I would not dismiss everything he says based on a track record because there is a chance that he may say something right and I would be at risk of missing out on that info because of my bias. Understand?

u/pointmanzero · -1 pointsr/spacex

Oh?

u/FrancisCharlesBacon · -1 pointsr/TrueChristian

The Dictionary of Christianity and Science by Paul Copan, Tremper Longman III, Christopher L. Reese, and Michael G. Strauss. In one volume, you get reliable summaries and critical analyses of over 450 relevant concepts, theories, terms, movements, individuals, and debates on how Christian theology relates to scientific inquiry. It goes over the competing philosophies of science, and asks if they “work” with a Christian faith based on the Bible. Featuring the work of over 140 international contributors, the Dictionary of Christianity and Science is a deeply-researched, peer-reviewed, fair-minded work that illuminates the intersection of science and Christian belief.

Author Gerald L. Schroeder (widely known for converting atheist Anthony Flew to a Deist), Number 5 here was what convinced Flew. It's worth pointing out though that he conforms his theories to the current scientific paradigm of the age of the universe and strives for compatability when it comes to other areas like Pre-Adamite cave men. He is strongly against evolution and lays out why very thoroughly in his books. He is also Jewish.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn. Kuhn makes a well-reasoned argument that science is not an objective search for "truth," as many people believe. Instead, "normal science" is a problem solving endeavor, solving known problems by known methods. Science only changes the rules by which it operates (its "paradigm" - that over-used and often misused term in contemporary language) only when the current paradigm causes more problems than it solves. This is the real answer to any from any field who say, "The science is settled. There is no room for discussion." Those who make that statement need to re-read Kuhn and come to grips with the reality that all knowledge is inevitably socially constructed.

https://answersingenesis.org/answers/ An excellent resource that looks seriously at natural phenomenon in light of Scriptural revelation. They attempt to meet the skeptics own burden of proof by using established scientific methods. An important claim of theirs is that evidence always has to be interpreted. In the evolution vs. creationism debate for instance, there is no such thing as evidence with big bright letters stating that "this is a transitional fossil". There are not creationist fossils and evolutionist fossils, but there are creationist and evolutionist interpretations of the fossils. Charles Darwin himself made this point. In the introduction to The Origin of Species, he stated, “I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived.” Darwin was willing to admit that interpretation was key to choosing a belief. One scientist might view a particular fact as supportive of naturalism; another scientist might view that same fact as supporting creationism. I'd also point out the difficulty in in defending the young earth stance as it requires you to lay out all the arguments exhaustedly (which answersingenesis has done). Not only do you have to call into question the current scientific viewpoints but you also have to put forward the alternative theories. You have to do all this while your debate opponent can just sit back and appeal to authority and the current scientific consensus.

When Skeptics Ask by Norman Geisler and Ronald Brooks. Contains a good general overview of science and Christianity along with some other great chapters that answer quite a few questions that have been brought up by biblical skeptics.

------------

Because Reddit leans liberal, and most Christians have not done a deep dive into the philosophy of science, they accept evolution without much thought. That's why you see them promoting people like Christian Francis Collins who created Biologos.com and attempts to reconcile Biblical narrative with evolution. Never mind that the attempts of Dr. Collins are thwarted by Scripture contradicting the evolutionary timeline.

It's important for people to realize that science is based on axiomatic assumptions that requires faith. These assumptions turn into glaring flaws when trying to develop truths about the past like macroevolution and should significantly reduce the certainty one has regarding it.

It's also important to remember that the Bible is not written as a scientific document using the standards of our own recent methodology (the scientific method). Over history what we have seen are Christian's assumptions of the world that we live in by taking (often times vague) verses from Scripture and interpreting them. A good rundown of this is here. http://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-rc-sprouls-position-creation/

For a more exhaustive (but not complete) overview of books related to intelligent design, see this page. It's worth noting though that like Natural Theology, some intelligent design authors get you only half way there (i.e.. Theism). The rest would have to be done by studying comparative religion.

u/SugaShaq · -1 pointsr/canada

For a brief introduction to the normative narratives in Science read the following: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

When you have read that, then the last time you checked Science will have had normative narratives. Then we can continue our conversation.

u/howardson1 · -2 pointsr/TumblrInAction

I think SJW's lack education because they are naturally unintelligent. They're ignorance and stupidity

A. Attracts them to easy degrees in the humanities departments of colleges, which are dominated by ex 60's radicals and where they are indoctrinated with anti white, anti male, anti capitalist, and anti science cultural marxist and post modernist BS.

B. Prevents them from acquiring jobs that are not at Mcdonalds and Starbucks and is the source of many personal failures. This makes them angry at the world, which they blame for their problems, and attracts them to the ideology of SJW tumblr bloggers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

http://www.amazon.com/dp/156663796

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

http://www.amazon.com/Higher-Superstition-Academic-Quarrels-Science/dp/0801857074/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i

Good books on understanding tumblr SJWs.

u/pawsahf · -2 pointsr/movies

>spurred an interest in science and the paranormal

Those two areas of endeavor are mutually exclusive and shouldn't be uttered outside of an imaginary movie review in the same sentence. In the words of the genius Carl Sagan (who wrote a book debunking a litany a paranormal hogwash): "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." [The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark] (https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469)

u/ziziliaa · -3 pointsr/Shitstatistssay

It's relevance is that it educates you about the prehistory of humanity, the neolithic revolution and the beginning of civilization where class society and private property first appear. To understand what Marxism is you must understand the basics first. I would also recommend you the following books if you want to understand the philosophical basis of Marxism, dialectical materialism which is essential:

Quantum Social Science by Emmanuel Haven, Andrei Khrennikov

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas S. Kuhn


Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen by Mark Buchanan

Non of these authors are Marxists as far as I know but they are following in the footsteps of Marx and Engels, who developed the logic of dialectical materialism out of philosophical inquiry into the natural world.

u/counters · -3 pointsr/climateskeptics

If you want to worry about who to "trust", I strongly recommend you avoid cohorting with Fred Seitz. Here is a very brief introduction to who he is. I strongly recommend reading "Merchants of Doubt" for full perspective on Seitz and the (multiple) campaigns he has been involved in to obfuscate science in attempts to forestall industry regulation.

Once you agree that Seitz isn't a trustworthy source, then we can start investigating his claims in the proper context.

u/ActuallyNot · -7 pointsr/climateskeptics

> Whooosh! (Or today you learned absolutely nothing, same as every other day).

What other day was this?

> So, do you think there may be something wrong with doing 'science' by putting a few choice keywords into Google scholar (which conveniently excludes any papers that might contradict your predetermined thesis) scanning abstracts for the presence of that keyword (which just magically happens to be present), counting them up and then declaring that science has spoken?

No. What I'm saying is that there has been global warming throughout the past decade.

The warming of the near surface air has been slower than usual. (I've never seen the claim that this is statistically significant.)

But the oceans are warming and the ice is melting.

> If you find problems with this, then you really can't endorse similar junk from Oreskes, Petersen, Connolley, Schneider, and of course, John Cook and his imbecile Krusher Kroo.

Those papers are psychology and history of science. You could argue that they're science, but they're not climate science. They're useful enough to discover why science communication seems to be behind in some fields compared to others, but Oreskes has a much better handle on why that is in "Merchants of Doubt".

... Anywhere else it would be needless to say that you're description of the methodology of those papers is dishonest. But here it probably has to be said.

u/ThetamingoftheMew · -23 pointsr/GamerGhazi

Honestly, get into STEM. Get everybody into stem. The reason people fall for psuedo-science so much is a fundamental lack of scientific literacy.

Even though the war that's being fought is cultural, it's only been made possible by the dynamics today by scientific literacy. Jordan Peterson himself has a background in clinical psychology and has years of Academic experience behind him, so he knows how to structure his talks to hit the right notes of the audience he has. The platforms that's enabling us to have these discussions are built by HTML, CSS, PSP and Python programmers. Mathematicians and statisticians structure and analyse the data that's used to gauge voter preferences and target impressionable people with propaganda and advertisements. If you're not extremely educated in this landscape, you're going to lose. It's easy to shit on people like Zucc as being an emotionless lizard man now but he created the platform that arguably controls a good amount of the public discourse.

We have computers in our pockets, and the majority of the people that use them don't even know how they work. If you haven't the privilege to get into a science or technology field then at least start reading books like Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World and some Thomas Gilovich.