A life in words

  • Priority

    In Bayesian statistics [based on those opening words I know I’ve already lost 50% of you] there is a concept of a priori and a posteriori beliefs. A prior probability distribution (also simply called a prior) indicates that prior to making an observation I already have some beliefs about the nature of the system being…

  • So Open It’s Closed

    There is a point at which an open mind becomes so open that it closes in on itself. At least, that’s what I think. At some point, the willingness to consider any and every thought as at least initially equivalent can wash out any willingness to evaluate the accuracy of those viewpoints. At that point,…

  • Choice and Belief: A Deliberately Credulous Introduction

    It’s been a little while since posting, and there’s a reason: I’ve been sitting on a stool somewhere in a smoke-filled room (Note: It wasn’t tobacco smoke—somebody just burned something in the oven, of course!) slaving away over a series of new articles on the topic of Choice and Belief. If after reading through all…

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. … A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech. … Freedom of speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of a good government. … Guilt only dreads liberty of speech, which drags it out of its lurking holes, and exposes its deformity and horror to daylight.Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood no. 8, 1722 (orthography and spelling modernized)