Why I don't own a telescope

Look ma!

Time to spread one of my heresies around.

As any warm blooded enthusiast I love hardware for its own sake and telescopes are no exception especially those that are all shiny and computerized. However I've decided not to own one. I have concluded that the cost and hassle of owning one do not match the results one obtains from it.

The realization finally came to me the day I peered into my local college's 16'' Meade Schimidt-Cassegrian to look at Jupiter. It was there all-right with some of the Jovian satellites, but it appeared so small. Maybe I had gotten my expectations unreasonably high by magazines and the like, but if such a big and expensive telescope could offer so little, what hope was there for small more affordable ones? Another notch against is that, unless one takes astrophotography as well, most of the objects up there will appear so faint as to not excite the eye cells, meaning they will be devoid of any color and appear only as  misty gossamer threads. 'Sky lint' is what some of the astronomers at the center there call them. To make things worse I live within a major urban area.

I want the colors, the details, the drama.

There's also the joy of the hunt. Amateur astronomers can make contributions to science. There are still some discoveries to be made as well; most of the top prizes have already been taken, but there are still fair probabilities for amateurs to make discoveries on their own. Ever heard of the McNeil Nebula? Jay McNeil of Kentucky discovered the nebula that now bears his name with unostentatious equipment. Am I one to discover something that one day bears my name too? Seems highly unlikely. If discoveries are made, chances favor amateurs as a group, not as individuals. McNeil himself had a couple decades of experience under his belt before making his mark.

Shoot. I'll settle with the zoo. This way I'll never find a comet or anything, but I'll get most of what I want. I'm looking into buying a book or books with better images than I'll ever experience on my own (considering Michael Benson's series). And these are cheaper too.

There's still some room for maybe a pair of binoculars. These not only are highly portable, but can cover large swaths of sky. Plus no squinting is required.

How the Purge button works

In The Cabin in the Woods movie the need for the Facility to have a purge button is unexplained. Given the ultimate consequences of its use, what is its logic?

(If you haven't seen this one before, you're doing yourself a disservice by not watching the real movie first. Go get it!)

Basing my opinion on that of an anonymous contributor to the Cabin wiki and what one can see on the theatrical release, I think that the elevator lobby was not meant to pour out the army of nightmares. The area can be described as a capital letter 'T' with the vertical line having the elevator doors with the guard booth at its bottom. On either side of the horizontal we have two exit doors  one leading to Administration  (the one towards the giant snake slithered away) and one to Engineering (from where the two security squads came from). Both these doors, along with that of the guard area look entirely unsuited to hold off anything, so one can safely assume that the Purge was not intended to be directed towards this lobby, but somewhere else, only resulting in what we saw in the movie to malfunction, quite possibly due to Marty's tampering with the wires to make the cubes run backwards. Or maybe to an oversight, for once Dana's and Marty's cube was located, it was directed to the lobby area for their retrieval, but so were the rest. This would also explain the small interval between activation and release.

So what for?

The Purge, judging by its name, was meant to get rid of everything on one go. Possibly, the creatures were not immortal in the sense in that they had an 'expiration' date and had to be renewed from time to time. Possibly then the current batch of creatures might get all tainted at once from 'something' as to make them unsuitable for the Ritual making it necessary to vacate their quarters  offseason for a new batch of nightmares (bred? captured?) from the Facility's departments (Zoology a top candidate). The elevator lobby would be then the loading area and quite sensibly the the Purge button would be there and not in the main control room, which monitored the Ritual proper.

So where to?

Maybe a safe disposal place within the Facility where the creatures could be controlled and dealt with. Or as the  anonymous contributor said, to the surface. Maybe there, they would turn on themselves saving the trouble to exterminate each one, or they would just die off by themselves (daylight? their expiration date?) . Releasing them all to ensure the Ritual's completion seems like an overkill, but maybe still an option.

Defeating the true Scotsman

It seems to me that there are four ways of beating the True Scotsman self-sealing argument. This fallacy is notable for being impervious to counterexamples; once one is given, one of its components is redefined by the other party to hold his ground. Still, this gives us enough of a foothold to pry a way in.

Symbolically the Scotsman's argument can be presented as:

~∃x(Sx˄Cx)

Read as "There is no Scotsman who does a Crime like that" or  alternatively "All Scotsmen refrain from committing such crimes".  Let's stick with the first reading. Once a counterexample is offered the patriotic Scotsman might reject it by redefining Cx (The chap is a Scotsman but what he did is no crime) or Sx (That's a crime all right but he is not a True Scotsman).

Overall, informal fallacies are best dealt with by bring them out to the open and exposing them by explaining why they are so. A first way then to beat the true Scotsman is to highlight that the argument at hand is a known fallacy and then offering Flew's prime example. This should suffice for most cases, since addressing the self-sealing argument by name shines light squarely on it and the absurdity of its general form adds close to decisive weight to your side.

One can go further in, for the sake of exposition, or to win over the skeptics,  by  directing  attention to the change of definition on which the fallacy hinges to a wider or narrower scope which in any case is different from the intended common use.

Secondly, we can can highlight that no counterexample is possible under the self-sealing strategy which makes the argument a no-go. Whatever is thrown at it can be conveniently redefined away.

Thirdly, this can be further clarified by offering a patently True assertion such as  "There are no triangular circles"  and showing that it even that could allow a counterexample by drawing a figure, showing how to reproduce it or writing down the appropriate equations, while the self-sealing argument offers no such courtesy. Furthermore, one can ask the patriotic Scotsman to offer a counterexample of his own and watch him squirm (though I think this one can backfire as one is more likely to receive a blank stare in return).

Lastly, the best defense is to settle & agree on the definitions before embarking on any discussion. This is especially true when dealing with a known or suspected weasel. One can still act midway by asking what he means by this or that term: "What do you mean by Scotsman?" Ask him to be thorough. Once he or she commits he or she  cannot go back without losing face. Of course it helps having impartial witnesses that can attest to the facts or the ridiculousness of the explanations resorted to by the Scotsman.

More examples of self-sealing arguments that follow the same general form can be found in Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict (4th) by Waller

Trim Intel X-25m on Windows 10

Okay, the situation with the Windows 7 update became so untenable for me (the updates would get stuck) that I was compelled to move on to Windows 10. I hate to admit it, but the move was not as bad as I feared it would be. My legacy programs worked, for the most part, as they should, which is funny, since I had tried installing some of these very same programs from scratch on another machine and they wouldn't work. So, the first lesson I guess is to have those programs installed already before upgrading to 10.

For some reason, Yahoo wouldn't login using Microsoft's new browser, Edge, nor even with the dedicated app from the store. Internet Explorer 11 was horribly slow. Switched entirely to Chrome.

The biggest possible showstopper with the Windows 10 upgrade was my very trusty Intel X-25 160gb SSD. My old Intel solid-state drive toolbox (ver 1. something) wouldn't optimize the drive using TRIM. Without TRIM I anticipated that sooner, rather than later, the drive would become unusable. Here is what I did to solve it:

Deleted the refuse left by the old toolbox on the root C: drive (*intel*.bin) 

Downloaded and ran the latest version of the Toolbox:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26085/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox

Updated the firmware (had to cross my fingers on this one):

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/18363/Intel-SSD-Firmware-Update-Tool

When I found that the Toolbox optimization still wouldn't complete (I was getting error 100), I dug around a bit and found this solution, which only consisted in deleting a hidden folder:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/44443

Success!

Fallacies in symbolic form

On this occasion I wanted to just give a few examples of argumentative fallacies and how they would look on symbolic form. Since symbols can cut through any haze, these can be used whenever possible to get clarity on what tricky arguments one is facing. Definitely not everything is here, but only some that have caught my eye. (Hope my symbols display well on your browser)

The Post Hoc

If something happens first (P) and something next (Q) one could conclude that

P→Q

4	P	From above
5	Q	From above
6	P→Q	?

Correct

4	P	From above
5	Q	From above
6	P˄Q	Conj 4,5

The most we can say is that something happens and that something else happens. 

P→Q might be True, but it cannot be logically derived from what we have here.

Appeal to Ignorance

You cannot prove you are not a communist, therefore you are one.

1	P→~Q	Premise (enthymeme. If you had proof, then you would not be...)
2	~P	P (You cannot prove…)
3	~~Q	From negating the antecedent 1,2
4	Q	Double negation 3 (Therefore you are a…)

Hmm...1 and 2 makes this one doubly wrong.

What about the ex silentio argument which is nonfallacious and looks similar?

1	Q→R	Premise  (If so-and-so was True, there would be evidence)
2	~R	Premise  (We've looked for the evidence and there's none)
3	~Q	MT 1,2 (So-and-so isn't True)[This one is valid]

Poisoning the well

These examples are taken from Madsen Pirie's How to Win Every Argument. Second lines are paraphrases. The first two seem to focus on the one making the proposal while the third on the proposal itself.

Everyone except an idiot knows…

Only an idiot doesn't know…

∀x(~Kx→Ix)

∀x(~Ix→Kx)

∀x(Ix ˅ Kx)

∀x~(~Ix ˄ ~Kx)

 ~∃x (~Ix ˄ ~Kx)

Only those who are inadequate now advocate…

Everyone except the inadequate do not advocate…

∀x(Ax→Ix)

∀x(~Ix→~Ax)

∀x(Ix ˅ ~Ax)

∀x~(~Ix ˄ Ax)

~∃x (~Ix ˄ Ax)

Choice in education is only a device…

The only thing that is choice in education is a device…

∀x(Cx→Dx)

∀x(~Dx→~Cx)

∀x(~Cx ˅ Dx)

∀x~(Cx ˄ ~Dx)

~∃x (Cx ˄ ~Dx)

The Material Conditional and its truth values

... from that thing which is false what truth can come?

Ecclesiasticus 34:4

Time for something of more substance.

(Hope that the symbols display well on your browser)

The truth table for the material conditional is:

p	q	p ⊃  q
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	T
F	F	T

One can readily understand the first line and even the second line after a moment's reflection, but why does the conditional yield a True value for False antecedents? What follows are my attempts to make sense of it.

First try:

Eminent logicians agree that these are the values, so we are justified on relying on their opinion. This being logic however, we demand proof, so:

Second try:

"P then Q" is shorthand for ~P v Q or alternatively ~(P ^~Q). If one works out the truth table for these, the result is our starting table. However, still, at a gut level feels wrong: Out of Falseness, Truth?

Third try:

If one takes a step back, it makes sense that by starting with Falseness anything goes. One can draw anything from a False starting point, for instance "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit".  From here one can go anywhere, to Mt Doom, there, and back again. Now, more seriously:

Fourth try:

Going line by line one can see: first, having the condition of the antecedent met, we arrive at the consequent; that is the least we can expect of of any self-respecting conditional. Second, we don't want having the antecedent met, and not getting the consequent; the second line covers that. The last two lines makes clear that it doesn't care, it has no provision, when the antecedent is False.  The consequent may be True or it may be False, it makes no judgment other than let it pass. Parallely:

Fifth try:

So what is actually True for a conditional when its antecedent is False? Not the conclusion, but the expresion itself, the whole conditional. Having the antecedent False doesn't spring its magic , P then Q, leaving it aloof and unblemished ("You go do your nonsense; I'll keep to myself"). From another viewpoint:

Sixth try:

Russell said that for any two propositions p and q  either p⊃q or q⊃p. If you try a few in your head you'll see he's right in some sense. I think there's some controversy here.

Seventh try:

If you're still not convinced maybe you're right after all. Let's look at the alternatives and see if there' something better. Alternatives have been offered to fix the conditional and I'll look at just two of them here: giving the Truth table other values to better reflect natural language conditionals and getting into modal.

Other values:

There's an interesting article by Fulda⁰  which analyzes different possible truth values  for the conditional making it seven sets in all+ old material conditional. For my part implication #4 looked at first like the best candidate since its gives a False values for the False antecedents. It quickly becomes apparent that adopting it would bring even graver problems . Here's its Truth table:

p	q	p ⊃  q (4)
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	F
F	F	F

For starters, the third line apparently makes the fallacies of denying the antecedent and affirming the consequent disappear. Then, we'd get some funky cause and effect relationships:

I aced Logic last year. The grape harvest in France shot up that same year. Then, If I ace Logic, the grape harvest will shoot up.

If next year the harvest looks chancy, I can picture France's grape growers in session drafting a letter earnestly asking me to hit the books and save their livelihood. I claim no such power.

What if we change back the third line?

p	q	p ⊃ q (2)
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	T
F	F	F

If I shoot a man through the heart, then I'll kill him on the spot.

If I were to shoot him  and he dies for sure; so far so good.

If I shoot him through and he survives, that cannot be.

If I abstain from from shooting and he dies anyway; ok (maybe he had a medical condition)

It is not the case that I don't shoot him, and he doesn't die; that cannot be. Wait! Someone else could shoot him down for me. So having the fourth line all False is absurd.

Let's see if flipping the Truth value with the third helps:

p	q	p ⊃ q (3)
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	F
F	F	T

The third line says that it can't be that he can continue living even when I abstain from shooting.  The table is tantamount to affirming that I have power of life and death over him and no one else. Once more, that's a bit much beyond me.

Going Modal:

Some philosophers were bothered at the time by the paradoxes material conditional (which are a different can of worms) or by how it could be strengthened. Notably, Lewis came up with the modern strict conditional and opened the field of modal logic. Are strict conditionals better?

According to Stanford¹ paradoxes, now modal, popped up anyway and according to Girle²  "none of these [material] 'paradoxes' are problematic in and of themselves".

Also according to Girle³, to some, the material conditional appears to be no problem for math, so why bother?

Judging from Konyndyk⁴ what modal logicians regard as strict Truths,  it appears as if their field is very restricted especially since it doesn't include the usual suspect (ie physical necessity). Since logical Truths are included and material conditionals are tautologous, It appears to me that necessary Truths support the material rather than step away from it. I need someone shed some light on this point.

According to Barker⁵, a) Lewis overstated his case since Russell never drew anything in the Principia Mathematica from a False antecedent, ie he only drew Truth from Truth ; and b) Russell used the word 'implication' because he couldn't come up with a better term.

0 Fulda, J 2010, 'The Full Theory of Conditional Elements: Enumerating, Exemplifying, and Evaluating Each of the Eight Conditional Elements', Acta Analytica, 25, 4, pp. 459-477, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 June 2015.

1 Sanford, D 1989, If P, then Q, Routledge, p73

2 Girle, R 2009, Modal Logics and Philosophy, Acumen, Durham, GBR. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [2 June 2015] p89.

3 Girle, R 2003, Possible Worlds, Acumen, Durham, GBR. Available from: ProQuest ebrary. [2 June 2015] p33.

4 Konyndyk, K 1986, Introductory Modal Logic, University of Notre Dame Press; 1st edition

5 Barker, SF 2006, 'Lewis on Implication', Transactions Of The Charles S. Peirce Society, 42, 1, pp. 10-16, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 1 June 2015.

My dumbest book purchase

I guess everyone has made a purchase that has regretted ever since. My case is nothing dramatic but it still stings. My purchase: Time Life's Mysteries of the Unknown.

This dates back to around 1992. There was a the school book fair and somehow the Time-Life folks managed to set sales appointment with my dad and I at our home. The representatives, two of them, managed to sell to us a way overpriced set for the list price of $100. Ouch. I don't know what got into my dad's head when he forked the money, but he rationalized the purchase by saying well we didn't have anything on these topics in our library.

Two aspects have stuck to me all these years. One is how one of the representatives slunk through my then weak defenses by stating that one of my friends, Solomon, had already bought a set. Never checked with Solomon, but I think that that the salesperson lied in stride. The other is that we didn't negotiate the price at all.

Oh, and it wasn't the complete set. What I got was just slightly more than half the volumes. From what I read on wikipedia, the whole collection was available  at the time.

The contents aren't all that good either. We already had some volumes of the Science Library, and probably assumed that Mysteries were on par. The artwork is fine and gives nice effects, but the text is boring and not really appealing. Most of the 'real life' cases are from England if I remember rightly. I think that the best volume was that on Transformations where vampires and werewolves are explored.

My incomplete set still sits there, mostly unread, but it taught me some lessons on money management, so I guess that the net effect was positive.

A more lively treatment of the paranormal and the occult can be enjoyed with the Hometown Tales podcast (one of the first!).  There have been no new episodes of late but, by the looks of it the complete archive is still available on iTunes.