Philosophers often look for holes in arguments. Some philosophers sometimes also look for holes of any and maybe any kind. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a newly updated discussion of this bottomless concept. The discussion begins by saying: “Holes are an interesting case study for ontologists and epistemologists. Naive, untutored descriptions of the world […]
When you look at the photo above, perhaps you see : 1) A delicious-looking much-loved chocolate bar renowned for its unique bubbly texture. or 2) A nightmarish and disgusting depiction of tightly clustered holes. If your reaction leans more towards the latter, it’s possible that you are suffering from trypophobia. Which is (currently being) defined […]
“Identifying patterns in the world requires noticing not only unusual occurrences, but also unusual absences.” – inform professor Anne S. Hsu and colleagues Andy Horng, Thomas L. Griffiths and Nick Chater in a new paper for the journal Cognitive Science. “We examined how people learn from absences, manipulating the extent to which an absence is […]
Wolfram Mathworld bores down into a much-discussed-by-others-but-usually-idly question about pegs and holes: The answer to the question “which fits better, a round peg in a square hole, or a square peg in a round hole?” can be interpreted as asking which is larger, the ratio of the area of a circle to its circumscribed square, or the area of thesquare to its circumscribed circle? […]