Zoe Jackson > Recent Status Updates

‘Learning from evidence turns not on appraising or probabilifying large-scale theories but on piecemeal tasks of data analysis: estimating backgrounds, modelling data, and discriminating signals from noise. Statistical inference is not radically different from, but is illuminated by, sexy science [eg physics], which increasingly depends on it.’

‘When Popper wrote me “I regret not studying statistics”, my thought was “not as much as I do.”’

'Hear this or not, as you will. Learn it now, or later - the world has time. Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui - these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.'

'Gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is'

'You are never stronger, thought Samad as he approached the Doctor, than when you land on the other side of despair.'

'My opinion of mankind is founded upon the mournful fact that, so far as I can see, they find within themselves the means of believing in a thousand times as much as there is to believe in' - Augustus De Morgan

'Dean Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California ... surmises that the same cognitive or neurobiological mechanisms that predispose certain people to developing anxiety disorders also enhance the sort of creative thinking that produces conceptual breakthroughs in science.' Yep, pretty happy with cherry-picking that quote.

Um, bug in Goodreads meant my comment on Time Reborn migrated randomly to this book. It does not reflect my progress on or attitude towards this book in the slightest.

Only 40 pages of actual text left so I feel it is not premature to express my profound disappointment with this book.

So far, seems to be a whole bunch of the moralistic fallacy going on here, to the extent that I am even questioning whether I was naive when reading Smolin's last book (which i rated highly) and that, perhaps, its reasoning was similarly blustery and fallacious. 'Cause, right now, he seems to me incapable of not engaging in wishful-thinking arguing. Sad face.