UPDATES ON A LIVING BOOK
This post is so titled because it stands for “THINKING FOR OURSELVES-ADDITIONS” where “Thinking for Ourselves” refers to my book with that title originally published in 2020 and updated in 2021 (For details see elsewhere under ‘My Books’ Category or under Tags on ‘Thinking’.) But from now on I want the book to become live, so that it can be continually updated here on line. Here you will find Exercises with Answers, corrections, images, calculations, supporting data, more detailed and improved arguments, readers comments with my responses to what is intended to become what I call ‘A LIVING BOOK’.See at the bottom of this Post how to make such Comments.
All the additions are shown below, mostly under a Chapter number and page number in the paperback book, version 2021.
GENERAL
EXERCISES WITH ANSWERS can be found at;
at the following url:
https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/tfoexans.pdf
AUTHOR’S MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT TFO (as of Aug 21)
I finished the book 3 years ago with the surprising but triumphal discovery of Categorical Inference – which connects the whole scheme for Common Sense Thinking so naturally and necessarily with Animal Thinking and Evolution. And IF it’s right it could change the world.
At that point I sometimes get struck with what I believe they call ‘Imposter Syndrome’– how could little me have unearthed a powerful scheme entirely missed by giants such as Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein? It doesn’t seem likely does it?
But then I look at some of its manifest achievements such as:
- Explaining Humankind’s dramatic leap in mental capability around 1000 BC.
- Its unique mechanism for balancing conflicting evidence, as illustrated with its success with Hidden Galaxies.
- A first transparent and convincing explanation for Ockham’s Razor.
- Its powerful mechanism (PAW) for dealing with Systematic Errors, which have kept us back so many times for so long.
- It’s perfect dovetailing into Animal Thinking and Darwinian Evolution.
- The multiple new insights which spring from it – see this blog and my other book “History of the Brits’ [HOB ch.5]. For instance it comes up with the keys to human Progress, what I call ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ .
So then I am reassured. But, but……Why little me again? All I can say to myself, and to potential readers is :
“It was bloody minded doggedness more than anything else. I started out with the modest ambition to find out what I believed was already known – the Scientific Method, only to find to my surprise that it was not, but that it probably had something to do with Common Sense, but that hadn’t been defined either. So I asked myself a different question: ‘How could animals think?’ and thereafter progress became relatively rapid because now I could entirely ignore Philosophy, Mathematics and Religion.
So I didn’t have to be a genius, which I definitely am not. And one doesn’t have to be a genius to make a great discovery. Look at Darwin – he spent the first 30 years of his idle life slaughtering wild creatures for fun. Basically he was an illiterate lout – but he stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery of all because he happened to be in the right place at the right time – the Galapagos Islands in 1838. But he was only there because his exasperated father had sent him out there as a punishment, saying “You wouldn’t even make a decent rat-catcher.” Indeed there’s little evidence of ‘genius’ in science more generally [ See Chapter 3 of TFO to see how great discoveries have been made in history] – so even if I’m not a genius , TFO could still be right.”
CORRECTIONS.
As of 21/8/21 there are only 2 because I have just made two dozen corrections to the original paperback edition.They are
P 302: replace ‘Sherman’ with ‘Pershing’.
P 456, line 7: replace 13 with 23.
But the most important of those for purchasers of the older editions are at:
https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/tfocorrsjun20.docx
ADDITIONS AND MODIFICATIONS BY CHAPTER
CHAPTER 1 (‘Can we learn to think better?’) p 15
CHAPTER 2 (‘Different kinds of Thinking’) p25
CHAPTER 3 (‘How do Scientists Think?) p46
CHAPTER 4 (‘Natural Thinking and Bayes’ Rule’) p95
There are several Posts on the fascinating subject of ‘Galaxies’ , including ‘Hidden Galaxies’, in the ‘Astronomy’ Category here, with many images.
CHAPTER 5 (‘The Detective’s Equation’) p132
CHAPTER 6 (‘Numbers and Thinking’) p154
CHAPTER 7 (‘Woolly Thinking and Ockham’s Razor’) p170
There are several posts here on ‘Big Bang Cosmology’ — which I use as a case study in dodgy thinking, under the ‘Astronomy’ Category’.
CHAPTER 8 (‘Common Sense’) p198
CHAPTER 9 (‘Error Analysis’) p236
CHAPTER 10 (‘Systematic Errors, The Elephants in the Room’) p268
CHAPTER 11 (‘Statistics – or Terror Analysis’) p294
Statisticians turned themselves from humble clerks into a dogmatic priesthood based on several misunderstandings, on their part. They need to be put firmly back on their stools. Having spent 30 years trying to teach Statistics at university, I gradually came to realise that the profession has got itself hopelessly lost in the No-man’s land between Induction and Deduction. Look what confusing advice they have given to the government over the Covid pandemic, They’re not scientists, they’re mostly priests, who hide behind higher mathematics when they are challenged. See Post “Statistics: exposed at last” under ‘Thinking’ Category.
CHAPTER 12 (‘Persuasion’) p342 t
CHAPTER 13 (‘Poor Thinking’) p357
CHAPTER 14 (‘The Extraordinary History of Thinking’) p407
CHAPTER 15 (‘The Peculiarities of Science’) p451
In Sect (15:12) ‘What about Mathematics’ I only gave some modest examples because I didn’t want to frighten off non-mathematical readers but on this site its maybe worth drawing attention to some more spectacular examples. For instance on pp 471-472 I then failed to recognise the full and dramatic implications of mathematics when applied to immigration: basically because immigrants arrive every year, while children arrive only a couple of times or so in a female’s life, immigration is no less than 160 times more significant than natural birthrate when it comes to population increase! Thus immigration into the UK at present is equivalent to 3 British mothers out of 4 having an extra child! If you don’t believe me, and I found it very difficult to believe it myself, you should consult the url:
https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/immigmaths-copy.pdf
Then the modern world, including radio, broadcasting, television, Relativity, satellites, mobile phones, the internet…. were all implicit in a set of equations derived by two Brits in the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell and Oliver Heaviside. You don’t have to understand the equations in detail but one can certainly admire a human artefact millions of times more momentous than either The Rosetta Stone or Tutenkamun’s Tomb. See:
https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MAXWELLSEQUATIONS.pdf
CHAPTER 16 (‘Consequences and the Ascent of Mankind’) p476
On p486 there is a very brief discussion of Time. If you want to see a deeper discussion of a profound topic see the Post “WHAT IS TIME?” under the Category ‘Thinking’. Those who want to look deeper into TIME can look at the Post ‘MAXWELL’S EQUATIONS’ (under ‘Thinking’ Category )which explains why Relativity has changed our view that Time is absolute; it’s not, according to physicists. Even so Time is still a great mystery; there seem to be several different kinds of time. all mistakenly labelled with the same four lettered word.
GLOSSARY p513
REFERENCES p526
APPENDICES pp 547 to 604
INDEX p612
Tags: common sense, hypothesis testing, my books, PAW, philosophy, scientific method, statistics
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