Lars P. Syll

On sophistry and illusion

Noam Chomsky on language and knowledge .[embedded content]

Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters. Yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity. … Whereas the unconscious colossus of real existence, subjectless capitalism, inflicts its destruction blindly, the deludedly rebellious subject is willing to see that destruction as its fulfillment, and, together with the biting cold it emits toward...

On logic and science That logic should have been thus successful is an advantage which it owes entirely to its limitations, whereby it is justified in abstracting — indeed, it is under obligation to do so — from all objects of knowledge and their differences, leaving the understanding nothing to deal with save itself and its form. But for reason to enter on the sure path of science is, of course, much more difficult, since it has to deal not with itself...

Levels of aspiration among economists Submission to observed or experimental data is the golden rule which dominates any scientific discipline. Any theory whatever, if it is not verified by empirical evidence, has no scientific value and should be rejected. Maurice Allais Formalistic deductive ‘Glasperlenspiel’ can be very impressive and seductive. But in the realm of science it ought to be considered of little or no value to simply make claims about...

With four of our kids — the youngest, Linnea, wasn’t yet born — in Florence, twenty years ago. One of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever lived in (yours truly studied Italian there back in 1987).

.[embedded content] Wonderful Venice scenes from Brideshead Revisited — television’s greatest literary adaptation, bar none.

La liberté — le principe et la realité Dans de nombreux pays, et particulièrement en France avec les nouvelles manifestations du samedi, des oppositionnels se regroupent autour d’un slogan clair et mobilisateur : la défense de la liberté, supposée menacée par la montée d’un autoritarisme étatique, voire, pour certains, d’une dictature sanitaire. « J’ai le droit de ne pas me faire vacciner, c’est ma liberté ! » Face à cette importante minorité ancrée dans...

Probability and rationality — trickier than most people think The Coin-tossing Problem My friend Ben says that on the first day he got the following sequence of Heads and Tails when tossing a coin: H H H H H H H H H H And on the second day he says that he got the following sequence: H T T H H T T H T H Which report makes you suspicious? Most people yours truly asks this question says the first report looks suspicious. But actually both reports are equally...

.[embedded content] What a treasure!