Teen: "Math isn't real" Revisited

Three months ago I commented on a teenager who made a video saying “Math isn’t real.” Link. The video went viral. She also said the math she learned in school is real. She was obviously confused and naive. She asked three related questions: 

1. How did people come up with algebraic formulas?
2. How did they know what they were looking for?
3. How did they know they were correct?

I gave answers to them then. However, yesterday something else occurred to me about the second question. Why did she assume one has to know what one is looking for in order to find it?

Maybe it is partly her age and experience. Being a teenager, searching on the Internet became a common activity before she was born. She likely does it a lot. For that activity, one does need to be aware of what one is looking for in order to find it. Sometimes when one is looking for something quite specific, one has to already be aware of exactly what one is looking for. Else the search engine returns can overwhelm what one is looking for. What you are looking for will be buried deep in the stack and thus hard to find. Whereas using optimal search terms will put what you are looking for at the top of the stack or close thereto.

I learned that when I did a search about myself and something specific. What I was looking for was very local news. Hence, it was reported in only one not widely read publication. Searching only for my name on Google, there were 1500 hits. That's with a very unique name (first and last together). What I was looking for was well below the middle of the stack. Searching for my name and two more terms, what I was looking for was on top of the stack. Imagine the more general search had millions of hits.  

This may seem like an insignificant point. However, it is more significant from a philosophical perspective. It is an aspect of Empiricism. Experience shapes and limits knowledge.

Moral debate per Alasdair MacIntyre

In After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre asks, What salient characteristics do debates and disagreements about morality share? He says there are three kinds.

"The first is what I shall call, adapting an expression from the philosophy of science, the conceptual incommensurability of the rival arguments in each of the three debates. Every one of the arguments is logically valid or can be easily expanded so as to be made so; the conclusions do follow from the premises. But the rival premises are such that we possess no rational weighing the claims of one as against another. For each premise employs some quite different normative or evaluative concept from the others, so that the claims made upon us are of quite different kinds. In the first argument, for example, premises which invoke justice and innocence are at odds with premises that invoke success and survival; in the second,  premises which invoke rights are at odds with those that invoke universalizability; in the third it is the claim of equality that is matched against liberty. It is precisely because there is in society no established way of deciding between these claims that moral argument appears to be necessarily interminable. From our rival conclusions we can argue back to our rival premises; but when we do arrive at our premises argument ceases and the invocation of one premise against another becomes a matter of pure assertion and counter-assertion. Hence perhaps the slightly shrill tone of so much moral debate" (p. 8, pb). 

"A second, equally important, but contrasting, characteristic of these arguments is that they do none the less purport to be impersonal rational arguments" (p.8).

"A third salient characteristic of contemporary moral debate is intimately related to the first two. It is easy to see that the different conceptually incommensurable premises of the rival arguments deployed in these debates have a wide variety of historical origins. The concept of justice in the first argument has its roots in Aristotle's account of the virtues; the second argument's genealogy runs through Bismarck and Clausewitz to Machiavelli; the concept of liberation in the the third argument has shallow roots in Marx, deeper roots in Fichte. In the second debate a concept of rights which has Lockean antecedents is matched against a view of universality which is recognizably Kantian and an appeal to the moral law, which is Thomist. In the third debate an argument which owes debts to T.H. Green and to Rousseau and competes with one which has Adam Smith as a grandfather" (p. 10).  

Two Articles by Walter Williams, RIP

Sadly, Walter E. Williams died December 1 at age 84. Here is a tribute to Mr. Williams by the great Thomas Sowell (90 years old).
 
'Correct Diagnostics Needed’ is a recent article by Mr. Williams.

‘Costs Must Be Weighed Against Benefits’ is another.

Schumer and Warren yearn for a dictator

Senators Chuck Schumer (link) and Elizabeth Warren (link) yearn for a dictator. They want Joe Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt per person, and they want him to do so by Executive Order -- bypass Congress and just do it. Apparently they did not learn, have forgotten, or don't care that the Executive Branch is for executing the law, not making it. It is Congress's role to make law. That follows the principle of separation of powers. A primary definition of "execute" in most dictionaries is to carry out or put in effect, not to create or make.

Even the left-leaning Brookings Institution said Biden shouldn’t listen to Schumer and Warren on student loans. The objection was not based on separation of powers. "Many student loan borrowers are advantaged, well-educated high earners. About 56 percent of student debt is owed by those with masters or professional degrees, and almost 35 percent of loan balances are owed by individuals in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. Many student-borrowers need relief, but well-off borrowers who are thriving — thanks, no doubt, to their college degrees — do not."

Even the Washington Compost is against it. I doubt it is based on separation of powers. I don't subscribe to the Compost, so I couldn't read the article.   

Joe Biden has proposed only cancelling up to $10,000 (link). He might also accept an income cap, such as $125,000, or limiting it to undergraduate debt. More significant -- and unlike Schumer and Warren -- he wants Congress to make the law.

A Metaphysics for Freedom #8

My final post of this series gives my personal comments on the book A Metaphysics for Freedom by Helen Steward.

Overall I thought it was very good and well worth reading. I think the book could have been significantly shorter. She spends many words saying what she is going to say later in the book. She repeats in only slightly different words. She often expresses things tentatively, using lengthy clauses and sometimes entire sentences to do so.

Regardless, I believe her broad thesis is sound. Hard determinism assumes a lot, more than it delivers. Physics has nothing to say about goals, motives, and intentions, nor language. The concept of agency in its many and various ways, including when not limited to humans, is needed to give a plausible or better understanding of our complex existence.

Steward bases her case for agency on an animal's ability of moving its body, wholly or parts. The sort of movements she means is not entirely clear, but it seems she mostly means moving its entire body to a different place. I believe her case could be made somewhat stronger by tying some of those bodily movements to perceptual or sensual capacities. Examples are moving the eyes or head, ears, or nose to direct more attention to something visual, auditory, olfactory, or thermal in the environment. More specific ones include the eyes of a falcon, the nose of a bear, and the ears of a fox. Such movements are instrumental to the animal's survival or well-being -- for food, water, or safety.

Coronavirus - vaccine development

The Vaccine Story’s Heroes Do Not Fit the Liberal Narrative

Excerpts:

"Moderna had hundreds of vials of its vaccine shipped to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland by February 24. Everything that has happened since — 1.4 million deaths worldwide, crippling lockdowns — has gone on while we were waiting for that vaccine to be tested, approved, and distributed."

"Moderna’s testing was slowed for a critical juncture by demands to include more racial minorities in the trials."  

I guess the demands came from the FDA. Regardless, clinical trials were yet to be done, and they take a long time. Reference: Coronavirus – clinical trials #2

Update Dec 7: We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time

Coronavirus -vaccine approval

The U.S. FDA drags its feet and the UK acts quickly to grant emergency use authorization to the Pfizer and BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. 

Dr. Marty Makary [Johns Hopkins University] blasts FDA timetable to approve coronavirus vaccine: 'Why are they waiting three weeks?'

https://www.foxnews.com/health/dr-marty-makary-coronavirus-vaccine-fda-approval-timetable

TheHill Nov. 28: UK to approve Pfizer and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine next week 

https://thehill.com/policy/international/527822-uk-to-approve-pfizer-and-biontech-covid-19-vaccine-next-week-report

Update Dec. 2, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/world/europe/pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-approved-uk.html

"LONDON — Britain gave emergency authorization on Wednesday to Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine"

The European Union authorities say they will decide by December 29.

Update Dec. 3, 2020. https://morning.thedispatch.com/p/the-morning-dispatch-uk-green-lights?

"White House officials reportedly summoned FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn [nominated by Trump Nov. 2019] to the West Wing earlier this week for an explanation as to why the U.S. still has not granted emergency use authorization to Pfizer, which applied for FDA approval late last month."

“We are one of the few regulatory agencies in the world, if not the only one, that actually looks at the raw data from clinical trials,” Hahn told CBS News on Wednesday. “So we’re not going to take a summary from a company and take their conclusions and base our decision on that.”

Update Dec. 4, 2020. FDA Career Staff Are Delaying the Vaccine As Thousands of Americans Die by Marty Makary.