A Little More Logical: Reasoning Well About Science, Ethics, Religion, and the Rest of Life

"A Little More Logical" is the perfect guide for anyone looking to improve their critical thinking and logical reasoning skills. With chapters on everything from logic basics to fallacies of weak induction to moral reasoning, this book covers all the essential concepts you need to become a more logical thinker. You'll learn about influential figures in the field of logic, such as Rudolph Carnap, Betrrand Russell, and Ada Lovelace, and how to apply your newfound knowledge to real-world situations. Whether you're looking to engage in debates with others, make better decisions in your personal and professional life, or simply want to improve your overall critical thinking skills, "A Little More Logical" has you covered. So why wait? Start learning and become a little more logical today! "A Little More Logical" differs from typical logical textbooks in a number of ways. One key difference is its emphasis on engaging and relatable examples and case studies. Rather than simply presenting dry definitions and concepts, the book uses fables, stories, and real-world situations to illustrate key ideas and make them more relatable for readers. Another unique aspect of "A Little More Logical" is its inclusion of "Minds that Mattered" sections, which highlight the contributions and insights of influential figures in the field of logic and critical thinking. These sections provide readers with a deeper understanding of the history and development of logical principles and offer valuable context for the concepts being discussed. Additionally, "A Little More Logical" covers a wide range of topics beyond the basics of logic and argument evaluation. Chapters on moral reasoning, probability and inductive logic, scientific reasoning, conspiracy theories, statistical reasoning, and the history of formal logic offer a more comprehensive and well-rounded understanding of logic and critical thinking. Overall, "A Little More Logical" stands out as a dynamic and engaging resource for anyone looking to improve their logical reasoning abilities. Its relatable examples, historical context, and broad coverage make it a valuable resource for anyone interested in mastering the principles of logic. This is a free, Creative-Commons-licensed book

Codes of Finance. Engineering Derivatives in a Global Bank

Codes of Finance is an ethnography of a global bank inventing new derivative products. It describes the multiple languages invented to describe and control these new products. It analyzes the recent discussions about financial derivatives and offers a new framework to understand financial innovation

Irreversible Noise: The Rationalisation of Randomness and the Fetishisation of Indeterminacy

This thesis aims to elaborate the theoretical and practical significance of the concept of noise with regard to current debates concerning realism, materialism, and rationality. The scientific conception of noise follows from the developments of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and dynamic systems theory; hence its qualification as irreversible. It is argued that this conceptualization of noise is entangled in several polemics that cross the arts and sciences, and that it is crucial to an understanding of their contemporary condition. This thesis draws on contemporary scientific theories to argue that randomness is an intrinsic functional aspect at all levels of complex dynamic systems, including higher cognition and reason. However, taking randomness or noise as given, or failing to distinguish between different descriptive levels, has led to misunderstanding and ideology. After surveying the scientific and philosophical context, the practical understanding of randomness in terms of probability theory is elaborated through a history of its development in the field of economics, where its idealization has had its most pernicious effects. Moving from the suppression of noise in economics to its glorification in aesthetics, the experience of noise in the sonic sense is first given a naturalistic neuro-phenomenological explanation. Finally, the theoretical tools developed over the course of the inquiry are applied to the use of noise in music. The rational explanation of randomness in various specified contexts, and the active manipulation of probability that this enables, is opposed to the political and aesthetic tendencies to fetishize indeterminacy. This multi-level account of constrained randomness contributes to the debate by demystifying noise, showing it to be an intrinsic and functionally necessary condition of reason and consequently of freedom

Entangled Matters: Analogue Futures & Political Pasts

Theorised as an "ontology of the output" my research project conceptually repurposes media machines in order to activate new or alternate entanglements between historical media artefacts and events. Although the particular circumstances that produced these materials may have changed, the project asks why these analogue media artefacts might still be a matter of concern. What is their relevance for problematizing debates within media philosophy today and by extension the politics that underscore the operations of the digital? Does the analogue as I intuit have the capacity to release history and propose alternate pathways through mediatic time? Case Studies: ARCHIVAL FUTURES considers the missing or 'silent' erasure of 18-'12 minutes in Watergate Tape No. 342 (1972). TELE-TRANSMISSIONS explores the 14-minute audio transmission produced by the Muirhead K220 Picture Transmitter to relay the image of napalm victim Kim Phuc from Saigon to Tokyo (June 8 1972). RADIOLOGICAL EVENTS examines thirty-three seconds of irradiated film shot at Chernobyl Reactor Unit 4 by the late Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko (April 26 1986). This research turns upon a reconsideration of the ontological temporalities of media matter; a concern both in and with time which acknowledges that each of the now historic machinic artefacts and related case studies have always-already been entangled with the present and coming events of the future. The thesis project as such performs itself as a kind of "tape cutup" that reorganises and consequently troubles the historical record by bringing ostensibly unrelated events into creative juxtaposition with one another. Recording asserts temporality; it is the formal means by which time is engineered, how it is both retroactively repotentialised and prospectively activated. Recording in effect produces a saturated ontology of time in which the reverberations of past, present, and future elide to become enfolded within the temporal vectors of the artefact

Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies

Once again, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe offer a volume that will set the agenda in the field of computers and composition scholarship for a decade. The technology changes that scholars of composition studies face as the next century opens couldn\u27t be more dramatic or deserving of passionate study. While we have always used technologies (e.g., the pencil) to communicate with each other, the electronic technologies we now use have changed the world in ways that we have yet to identify or appreciate fully. Likewise, the study of language and literate exchange, even our understanding of terms like literacy, text, and visual, has changed beyond recognition, challenging even our capacity to articulate them.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/1118/thumbnail.jp

Understanding Quantum Technologies 2022

Understanding Quantum Technologies 2022 is a creative-commons ebook that provides a unique 360 degrees overview of quantum technologies from science and technology to geopolitical and societal issues. It covers quantum physics history, quantum physics 101, gate-based quantum computing, quantum computing engineering (including quantum error corrections and quantum computing energetics), quantum computing hardware (all qubit types, including quantum annealing and quantum simulation paradigms, history, science, research, implementation and vendors), quantum enabling technologies (cryogenics, control electronics, photonics, components fabs, raw materials), quantum computing algorithms, software development tools and use cases, unconventional computing (potential alternatives to quantum and classical computing), quantum telecommunications and cryptography, quantum sensing, quantum technologies around the world, quantum technologies societal impact and even quantum fake sciences. The main audience are computer science engineers, developers and IT specialists as well as quantum scientists and students who want to acquire a global view of how quantum technologies work, and particularly quantum computing. This version is an extensive update to the 2021 edition published in October 2021.Comment: 1132 pages, 920 figures, Letter forma

Language of the universe

This thesis consists of a sequence of five scripts for a television series that seeks to articulate the history of mathematics through key events and figures. Programme One examines the idea of zero, while Programme Two looks at how much of geometry was developed by mathematicians who examined the stars and led on to Einstein's work on relativity. Programme Three explores the history of codes and Programme Four complements this by examining how understanding triangles in different contexts was used to solve contemporary problems. Finally, Programme Five looks at an area of mathematics that many people find counter-intuitive, the measurement of chance events. Behind the series lies the desire both to entertain and educate the audience, but also to demonstrate how the art of the documentary can be applied to science topics in a dramatic and imaginative way. The question of the documentary and its nature is discussed in the initial critical chapters that chart the development of the programmes and discuss the creative and technical issues they raise, together with a reflection on the learning process involved in their writing

Machine Medical Ethics

In medical settings, machines are in close proximity with human beings: with patients who are in vulnerable states of health, who have disabilities of various kinds, with the very young or very old, and with medical professionals. Machines in these contexts are undertaking important medical tasks that require emotional sensitivity, knowledge of medical codes, human dignity, and privacy. As machine technology advances, ethical concerns become more urgent: should medical machines be programmed to follow a code of medical ethics? What theory or theories should constrain medical machine conduct? What design features are required? Should machines share responsibility with humans for the ethical consequences of medical actions? How ought clinical relationships involving machines to be modeled? Is a capacity for empathy and emotion detection necessary? What about consciousness? The essays in this collection by researchers from both humanities and science describe various theoretical and experimental approaches to adding medical ethics to a machine, what design features are necessary in order to achieve this, philosophical and practical questions concerning justice, rights, decision-making and responsibility, and accurately modeling essential physician-machine-patient relationships. This collection is the first book to address these 21st-century concerns

A role for introspection in AI research

The main thesis is that introspection is recommended for the development of anthropic AI. Human-like AI, distinct from rational AI, would suit robots for care for the elderly and for other tasks that require interaction with naïve humans. “Anthropic AI” is a sub-type of human-like AI, aiming for the pre-cultured, universal intelligence that is available to healthy humans regardless of time and civilisation. This is contrasted with western, modern, well-trained and adult intelligence that is often the focus of AI. Anthropic AI would pick up local cultures and habits, ignoring optimality. Introspection is recommended for the AI developer, as a source of ideas for designing an artificial mind, in the context of technology rather than science. Existing notions of introspection are analysed, and the aspiration for “clean” or “good” introspection is exposed as a mirage. Nonetheless, introspection is shown to be a legitimate source of ideas for AI using considerations of the contexts of discovery vs. justification. Moreover, introspection is shown to be a positively plausible basis for ideas for AI since if a teacher uses introspection to extract mental skills from themselves to transmit them to a student, an AI developer can also use introspection to uncover the human skills that they want to transfer to a computer. Methods and pitfalls of this approach are detailed, including the common error of polluting one's introspection with highly-educated notions such as mathematical methods. Examples are coded and run, showing promising learning behaviour. This is interpreted as a compromise between Classic AI and Dreyfus's tradition. So far AI practitioners have largely ignored the subjective, while the Phenomenologists have not written code – this thesis bridges that gap. One of the examples is shown to have Gadamerian characteristics, as recommended by (Winograd & Flores, 1986). This serves also as a response to Dreyfus's more recent publications critiquing AI (Dreyfus, 2007, 2012)