Maths is fun part 2

xkcd: newton and leibniz

ahaha, yeah.  the highest form of with i tells ya.

 

here’s your thought for the day from stephen pinker in case you feel in need of something else…

“Many intellectuals try to get their ethics on the cheap–by spin-doctoring or even fabricating scientific conclusions so that a morally desirable conclusion falls out of the facts, rather than being justified by a moral argument. They insist that all humans must be biologically equivalent, so that discrimination can be irrational, as opposed to immoral. They insist that humans must be inherently unselfish, honest, and peaceable, so that moral behavior is what comes naturally, rather than something we must strive for and encourage. They insist that behavior is mysterious and inexplicable, so that people cannot use biology as an excuse for their bad behavior–instead of separating explanations of behavior from exculpations of behavior. These confusions are bad for science, because they encourage people to promulgate comforting falsehoods, and bad for ethics, because they root moral positions in empirical claims which could turn out to be false, thereby jeopardizing the very positions they should be making rock-solid.”

a familiar thought to anyone that’s read his books no doubt, but concisely expressed here.  shame the interviewer can’t spell behaviour.

ps – read chris’s latest post.