Month: December 2009

  • Inescapable Truth #2: People Act in Their Own Self Interest

    One of the keystones of the scientific method is the concept of reproducibility. If you perform an experiment, someone else should be able to reproduce your results. Few experiments have been subjected to this test as often as that of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In this experiment, two prisoners can either stay quiet or rat on…

  • Inescapable Truth #1: We Not All Created Equal

    There are no pygmies playing in the NBA. Only women have babies. Whites are six times more likely to die of skin cancer than blacks. Duh. Clearly, there are genetic differences between different groups of people in the world. Whether we group people by gender or ethnicity, it is easy to find certain differences based…

  • Inescapable Truths

    Winston Churchill said,  “If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” This adage says two things. First, it highlights that our opinions change as we get older. Second, it says that I have no brain 🙂 I remember having arguments with…