My name is Elizabeth Liddle, and I started this site to be a place where people could discuss controversial positions about life, the universe and everything with minimal tribal rancour (pay no attention to the penguins….)
My motivation for starting the site has been the experience of trying to discuss religion, politics, evolution, the Mind/Brain problem, creationism, ethics, exit polls, probability, intelligent design, and many other topics in venues where positions are strongly held and feelings run high. In most venues, one view dominates, and there is a kind of “resident prior” about the integrity, intelligence and motivation of those who differ from the majority view.
That is why the strapline says: “Park your priors by the door”. They may be adjusted by the time you leave!
I will start the blog off with a series of posts arising from some interesting discussions at Uncommon Descent, which were difficult to pursue because of the blog format over there. I hope that the participants in those discussions will come over here where we can continue them without having to move from squat to squat on other threads, derailing them as we go.
I also hope that other people will join me in posting new OPs, so that it becomes a group blog, and that people will also offer to write guest OPs.
In the mean time, welcome to all, and have a free virtual beer on the house!
Lizzie
Just changed the strapline to:
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
referencing “Cromwell’s Rule” by Dennis Lindley:
“Avoid using prior probabilities of 0 or 1, except when applied to statements that are logically true or false.”
Alan Fox,
That sounds like a good idea.
sez bwe: “When I get back I will talk to lizzie and see if the DB has any way to store backups to avoid future mishaps of this sort.”
The WordPress website has a section devoted to WP documentation, and one of the pages in that section is about backing up your database; it looks to me like this is what you’re talking about.
Perhaps you could set up a cron job or something to automatically back up the database at regular intervals? Maybe one backup per day, and automatically delete any backup that’s more than one week old?
BWE,
I think you mean Cubist.
yep. whoops.
I wondered what BWE and Liz were up to these days. One question for now. Is there any way I can change my password? Chrome will remember it on this laptop, but I just lost my last one and it’s nice not to have to find where I stored impossible to recall passwords on most of the sites where I participate.
When I visit the site while logged in, there’s a gray bar across the top with a few links. On the left is my name. If I put the mouse over that, there’s a menu which includes “Edit My Profile”. If I click on that, the page has a place where I can give a new password. It also requires the old password be given before changing.
I’m not sure if you see the same. I seem to have privileges to post new items, and perhaps that’s why I have those links. However, at FreeThoughtBlogs, where I do not have any special privileges, I see similar links and options. So I think this is something provided by the wordpress software being used at both sites.
recursive prophet,
Lizzie remarked she was by the pool holidaying in Spain with a dodgy internet link IIRR which must be why we haven”t seen anything of her here or at UD for a while. I am sure she will attend to matters on her return.
Incidentally, I don’t think this blog is restricted to registered members. I don’t need a password to comment, just name and email.
Back home now!
Will do some sorting out this evening 🙂 Nice to see you rp!
We understand, Dominatrix!
Pedant, That’s DR Dominatrix to you!
Off topic, but surely everyone downloaded the Koonin book. That should make a great thread.
I just looked, and it still seems to be free.
I’ve checked your account, and I think you should be able to change it on the dashboard, unless you’ve lost your password, in which case I can email you a new one (I think).
Hi Lizzie
Knowing you are a professional in the area of cognition and cognitive neuroscience, I wonder if you have time to consider the following quote
Do you agree?
Not being a professional in the field, I am struck by the value inherent in the word ‘merely’.
Yeah, made me smile.
Mortimer J. Adler has cropped up as a philosopher who has made a contribution to neuroscience, though Wikipedia is not very helpful. Is he well regarded in this field?
Well, it’s so applied right now, that I’ve scarcely had time to do anything else!
Will be back shortly…..
Two things:
I’d like to see a thread on neuroscience
I’d like to see a suggestion box. Is this it?
Let’s make it so!
And I’ve got a half-written neuroscience posts, but it’s been competing with a nearly finished neuroscience grant application for the last week or so!
Now that this blog has grown so nicely, a search function would be helpful.
Weird. Your comment was held up for approval. It must have looked like potential spam.
I will look through the plugins for a good search function. It’s definitely not the same sort of thing as a forum in terms of organization. I think I remember a plug in that lets you tag favorites and have them show up as quick links which might be nice too. Maybe Lizzie has already tried it. I am hesitant to install stuff since I’m basically back-up support but I’ll put links up to postential plug-ins for Lizzie to see.
I hope the grant won the competition!
the search box at the top works sort of alright for me. I just played with it and it isn’t perfect I understand. But I couldn’t find a plug in that, for example, searches all of a specific user’s posts/ There must be one. I think in the admin panel there is the mechanics for one. If someone re purposed it fot the front page it would probably be sufficient.
Paging Lizzie!
here it is:
Penguins need sweaters!!
Penguins need sweaters!!
http://tinyurl.com/63epf4c
Jon Fleming,
I have a fondness for penguins as well, since I’m a Linux OS devotee (in particular, for purposes of using the open-source GMP [GNU Multiple Precision] math library for my research in cryptography) — yet another of my bizarre hobbies.
Yes, it definitely helps, in my love-hate relationship with Linux, that Linux has a penguin 🙂
Nesting comments isn’t working as well as I hoped, and I’m realising that with more activity on the site it makes it harder to check up on recent posts to an older thread.
I’m also realising that it’s made Uncommon Descent even harder to navigate! So I’m thinking of reducing the nesting down to one layer (so people can add the odd specific comment to an individual post). What do you guys think?
Ideally I’d have liked something like Daily Kos, but WordPress doesn’t lend itself to that very well.
Eventually, if the site grows, I might go for BB software, but apart from the nesting, this seems to be working quite well for now.
Input gratefully received 🙂
ETA: if anyone has Mad Sysadmin Skillz, let me know. Some customisations would be cool.
I agree with you on the nesting.
I have tried to use nesting only for quick pointed comments (such as this). Otherwise, I use the colored “(Quote)” link which does a non-nested quote or reply, but cites the message to which it is a reply.
OK, done that, and it doesn’t seem to have made too much of a mess. Apologies if people can’t find their comments. Nesting is now only two deep, so the blue Quote link is the best one to use if you want to quote a message but not have it nested into the comment you are commenting on, and the black on grey “Reply” link will only be shown on first level comments.
I think.
Feedback welcome.
ETA: the blue “reply” link I think will put your comment at the end, but with a link to the post you are replying to. “Quote” will include the text of that post.
It is even better. If you select text with your mouse, then the blue “quote” will quote only the selected text. This post is an example.
Ah, I wondered if it worked like that. A bit like the Linux middle button 🙂
Let’s try:
Cool!
BTW I’ve just installed a plug in that prevents posts being edited after the day they were posted! I hope this means we won’t lose any more threads.
If you really need something editing, contact me, or BWE and we can do it.
Hello Dr Liddle,
Your presence has been very much missed. I hope you and your family are having a happy and safe holiday.
.
Merry Christmas, Dr. Liddle
Upright BiPed,
Bring your ideas on semiotic ID here. We’ve watched as you’ve attempted to elaborate and sharpen them over a considerable period at UD (and they have become more elaborate), but few of either your companions or your opponents appear to take them seriously enough to comment upon the core of your argument. Your frustration with that is palpable. I’d like to articulate for you what I see as significant flaws in your argument (starting with your repeated misuse of the notion of “entailment” and what the observation of “entailments” does and does not compel) – but like many others I cannot do so at UD for the usual reason. Perhaps you have valid responses to my objections. If so, I’d like to hear them.
Upright BiPed,
There are probably more “banned from UD” anti-ID people willing to discuss your position on evolution, than there are currently on the site!
You should definitely bring your argument here, where UD cannot interfere with your right to discuss them with us.
Where’s Upright Biped?
Chastened by the hospitality he’s been offered here?
Maybe that’s not a bad thing.
If he pops up on Uncommon Descent, he’ll have blown his cover…
Happy New Year…
…although I could be mistaken.
Now that Upright Biped has resurfaced on Uncommon Descent, maybe Elizabeth would invite him to display his wares here.
This site is moribund without input from creationists.
Pedant,
Sure it’s not ID and creationism that are moribund insofar as offering new intellectual challenges?
Thought I would try to liven up the moribundicity of the site….So, just for fun:
A light-hearted tribute to the Hadron Colliderites (“Are We Really Next To Nothing?/ Just A Lotta Nada Nowhere!”).
It’s dogmatic…fundamental!
And, in order to be clear…
Life appeared right outta Nuthin’,
Nuthin’ -Nowhere brought us here!
(continued….http://www.tomgraffagnino.com/are-we-really-next-to-nothing/)
Blessings,
Tom Graffagnino
Tom Graffagnino,
If this were true, how would it be any different than deities created by religions?
Christianity adopted the god of the Old Testament, added a virgin birth borrowed from Greek and other mythologies and created a loving god who walked the earth preaching forgiveness and tolerance.
In times of war, god always manages to be on the side of those who are “right”.
We know this because both sides after a war claim miracles that could only be caused by a god that knew that they were on the “right” side.
Sounds like a created deity.
Tom Graffagnino,
Well, of course, in one sense we are next to nothing. The atoms and molecules of which we – and all other material things – are made are mostly empty space.
What I thought was interesting about the LHC and the search for the Higgs boson – which, as I understand it, is needed to account for the mass of matter – was that there were a number of scientists were rather hoping it wouldn’t be found. They found the idea of everything fitting neatly into their little slots in the Standard Model rather boring. The possibility that the Higgs might not be found could mean having to re-think the whole thing from scratch and that would be much more interesting.
Yes, it did! Two of them did, in fact 🙂
We haz money.
Thanks!
Just catching up….
Just installed monsterID as I keep getting muddled about who is who.
If you can’t stand them, let me know 🙂
Just released some comments from a different spam trap.
Apologies to those who have had to wait for release of their comments!
A quick note to Elizabeth.
As best I can tell, the edit window is zero. That is, no editing of comments seems to be allowed.
I accidently omitted the period at the end of a sentence in a recent comment. There was no edit link on the comment. So I clicked on the comments link on the main page, to get to the comment source, but there was no edit option there, either.
This is not a big deal for the particular comment. I’m just letting you know that there does not seem to be an edit window on comments. I can live with that, but some of your own recent comments seem to have suggested otherwise.