Lars P. Syll

Among the soft obscurantists some aim at truth, but do not respect the norms for arriving at truth, such as focusing on causality, acting as devil’s advocate, and generating falsifiable hypotheses. Others do not aim at truth, and often scorn the very idea that there is such a thing. By assumption, these non-respecters of truth cannot be reached by argument, only by ridicule … Let me mention who they are, by discipline and by name. Disciplines include deconstructionism,...

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.[embedded content] Susan Neiman’s defence of Enlightenment and critique of wokeism is both powerful and convincing. The ideas of the Enlightenment are still relevant, despite the numerous criticisms that have been levelled against them. The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of exploration that led to new discoveries in both science and culture. Rather than promoting a narrow worldview, it encouraged people to question assumptions and religious beliefs. It still...

Left is not woke .[embedded content] [You can watch the Foucault-Chomsky debate mentioned in the video here]

Pugh Rogefeldt (1947-2023) In Memoriam En av den svenska popmusikens största banbrytare, Pugh Rogefeldt, har gått ur tiden. Tack för musiken. Vila i frid min vän. [embedded content]

Woke math is coming to a classroom near you … .[embedded content]

Stephanie Kelton i Stockholm När tankesmedjan Katalys nu firar tioårsjubileum har man passande nog valt att bjuda in författaren till en av årtiondet största megahits inom ekonomiområdet — Underskottsmyten — Stephanie Kelton. Har ni vägarna förbi Stockholm i morgon tycker jag definitivt ni ska lägga ett par timmar på att besöka ABF-huset! Yours truly har under flera års tid nu frågat sig varför vi i det här landet har  begåvats med regeringar som inte vågar...

What RCTs can and cannot tell us Unfortunately, social sciences’ hope that we can control simultaneously for a range of factors like education, labor force attachment, discrimination, and others is simply more wishful thinking. The problem is that the causal relations underlying such associations are so complex and so irregular that the mechanical process of regression analysis has no hope of unpacking them. One hope for quantitative researchers who...

Les dangers du wokisme .[embedded content] Comme l’a soutenu Braunstein,  le wokisme est une véritable religion sectaire absurde. Il est évident qu’il est en train de construire un nouveau totalitarisme de la pensée quasi-religieuse. Et c’est certainement une attaque farouche contre la science et contre la vérité. Mais il est aussi un mouvement sociopolitique qui a gagné en popularité ces dernières années. Et comment est-il possible que le wokisme ait pu...

The Deadly Sin of Statistical Reification People sometimes speak as if random variables “behave” in a certain way, as if they have a life of their own. Thus “X is normally distributed”, “W follows a gamma”, “The underlying distribution behind y is binomial”, and so on. To behave is to act, to be caused, to react. Somehow, it is thought, these distributions are causes. This is the Deadly Sin of Reification, perhaps caused by the beauty of the mathematics...