Intellectual combat, to be sure, can be a titillating spectator sport. Readers of literary magazines savour the withering ripostes between intellectual gladiators. A popular genre of YouTube video features the hero who "destroys" or "owns" or "takes down" a hapless questioner (note the metaphors).
This is very dumb and obviously not the reason for the birthday
paradox
The high odds surprise us because we know it’s unlikely that a random
guest will share our own birthday, or any other birthday. What we forget
is how many birthdays there are - 366 in some years - and thus how many
opportunities there are for coincidences.
If there were more days in the year there would be less likelyhood of
coincidences - this is obvious if you imagine infinite days in a
year
Yep pretty basic probability...he failed his understanding of this and the pigeonhole principle. A higher n with a small enough number of pigeonholes accounts for the high likelihood.
Actually liking some of Pinker’s old books on linguistics has gotten
a lot harder to admit the past 15 years or so. There’s some alternate
universe where Pinker is still just talking about how the human mind
conceptualizes measurements and the like, but sadly this isn’t that
universe.
He wades into political and culture war disputes more often than he should and on topics he isn’t really equipped to speak on given his academic background. Some of his theoretical positions are also questionable, such as his views regarding innate psychological differences between different races and sexes.
It’s more that Pinker uses his academic knowledge and expressly links it to his culture war opinion - he invents metrics, misuses figures and data to misrepresent his culture war arguments as fact.
This includes but is not limited to; “race science”, touting discredited economic perspectives, historical revisionism, misleading or outright misrepresenting statistical data, and so on.
Pinker isn’t qualified to talk on culture war issues but he uses the fact that he is (or was) qualified to talk about (some of) these other things to directly claim these give his opinion more weight (not imply or suggest - outright claim. He uses his “facts” as direct defence of his position, despite the “facts” being misrepresented or outright false).
Pinker is the definition of an Establishment Academic - initially popular because his initial ideas aligned with the political class, continually popular because he has *deliberately spouted exactly what they want to hear* since, whilst (falsely) giving it an air of respectability. He’s a classic hack.
Yes. Using academic credentials as a bludgeon when wading into a topic that has nothing to do with said credentials is the real issue.
It gives him credibility in the mind of readers/viewers when in fact he is just talking about views outside of his area of academia.
>I find this kind of credentialism a little weird, especially because we don't go accusing actors or fiction writers of stepping outside their field of expertise ...
Whoa. Some of us do. Maybe not so much fiction writers, as a lot of them are fairly smart. But some of us definitely dispute the value of the typical Hollywood celebrity's opinion about much of anything.
> **we** don't go accusing actors or fiction writers of stepping outside their field of expertise when they encourage people to get vaccinated, or scientists when they voice pro-LGBT or trans views.
My emphasis. Please avoid this kind of rhetoric. It obviously isn’t the case that there is any such “we” here.
“here” means “amongst the public” as in that public you appear to be appealing to
Certainly there is obviously no general public which broadly accedes to the pronouncements of celebrities on things like LGBTQ or vaccination to which “we” all belong
But more importantly it’s an irritating and pernicious rhetorical device to breezily declare what “we” do, identifying the speaker with the audience as if there could be no question that “we” all agree on these obvious things “we” all know to be good and true
Instead of buying a private jet, used your friend’s! More like
“Savings Express!”
Pursue intellectual, personal and legal freedom! Spend your time
in legal jurisdictions that won’t stymie important inquiries!
Spend time with they youth! It may seem counter-intuitive, since
kids these days are hardly rational but I can attest that rubbing
shoulders, and minds, with the young can help keep you sharp!
And beyond that, actual academics (e.g. David Graeber) have consistently shown how his work and output are rubbish. But yeah, his frequent flyer miles on the Lolita Express, that is the big smoking gun.
Pinochet, Dershowitz, Pinker, could the BBC get any better?
that was a joke do not give rowling a show
This is very dumb and obviously not the reason for the birthday paradox
If there were more days in the year there would be less likelyhood of coincidences - this is obvious if you imagine infinite days in a year
Just failing high school level maths here
Step one: read something other than this article.
Actually liking some of Pinker’s old books on linguistics has gotten a lot harder to admit the past 15 years or so. There’s some alternate universe where Pinker is still just talking about how the human mind conceptualizes measurements and the like, but sadly this isn’t that universe.
Instead of buying a private jet, used your friend’s! More like “Savings Express!”
Pursue intellectual, personal and legal freedom! Spend your time in legal jurisdictions that won’t stymie important inquiries!
Spend time with they youth! It may seem counter-intuitive, since kids these days are hardly rational but I can attest that rubbing shoulders, and minds, with the young can help keep you sharp!
“Divide yourself by an integer.” Oh wait, it’s British media, integrity isn’t what they’re known for
What’s the problem with Steve Pinker?