Hypothesis [en]

As you might have noticed by peeking at the sidebar, I’m currently reading The Web of Belief (W.V.O. Quine & J.S. Ullian). It is a little study of rational belief. What makes us believe this or that is true? How are our beliefs held together? What makes us give up one belief for another?

Truth and even reasonable beliefs cannot be deduced solely from observation or self-evident truths. In science as well as everyday life, we frame hypotheses to help hold together our web of beliefs. A hypothesis would explain, if it were true, some things that we already believe.

Hypothesis, where successful, is a two-way street, extending back to explain the past and forward to predict the future. What we try to do in framing hypotheses is to explain some otherwise unexplained happenings by inventing a plausible story, a plausible description or history of relevant portions of the world.

Five virtues count in favor of a hypothesis:

  • conservatism of existing beliefs
  • modesty – as opposed to extravagance
  • simplicity
  • generality
  • refutability

I find these are interesting criteria to measure one’s beliefs about the world upon.

Funny [en]

If you have a cat (even if you don’t), you’ll probably appreciate this Mapping of a Cat’s Brain. Bagha fits the portrait perfectly.

I first saw this brain map in India. There is a similar one for the dog – but unfortunately I was unable to find it online. Side-by-side, they’re hilarious, trust me!

Gender Wars [en]

No endless talk on the war between the sexes this time. Just a little gem I pulled out of cannboys’ Trash the Web.

Culture Shock and Virus [en]

When I started writing about my indian experience (it was a question of survival at the time) I jotted down a lot of notes about my culture shock. A compilation of all the little cultural differences that I noticed during my first weeks. Taken separately, these little things seem what they are – little. Together, they add up to create a big nasty shaking feeling: the so-called culture shock.

I was using Internet Cafés at that time (there were lots of them!), and at one point all my diskettes stopped working. That was after xoom.com had deleted the first version of my site, and Mythun‘s hard drive with all my backup data on it crashed.

Now that I’ve finally laid a hand on the culture shock notes I had managed to type up, my beloved anti-virus program started flashing and blinking and beeping (well no, it didn’t do that, since I don’t have a soundcard) – in short, telling me the file is infected. I cleaned it, and you can look forward to some more reading in a couple of days. Thank you, Inoculate PE!

Maybe that explains one or two things… hmm. Well, while you wait or run your anti-viruses, I’m going back to my greek philosophers.

India [en]

Oh, and if you enjoyed my logbook (well, even if you didn’t!), be sure to check out Eric Jain’s account of his travels there. He didn’t stay quite as long as I did, but he traveled much more – there are pictures and a map of his journey to keep you on track.

Web Gems [en]

Dug out of the web mine for you, I can’t remember exactly how or when.

While I’m here, here are a few sites that I visit rather regularly (but maybe not everyday).

  • cannboys: he walks upside down in Australia
  • bwg: the big white guy lives in Hong Kong
  • harrumph: Heather always has something to say
  • frequent ramblings: Ben does more than demystify geek jargon – the more you dig, the more you’ll get.

Groan [en]

Last night I installed IE6. I thought I was installing it alongside IE5.5 – I wanted both the browsers on my system. After reboot, I realized IE6 had been installed over IE5.5, so I uninstalled it.

Now, in Outlook Express, I get emails with blank senders (some of them, not all), and my mailing list sorting rules aren’t working anymore.

And of course my news server has been down for days so I can’t leave piles of messages on usenet to see if anybody else has the same problems…

Cinéma [en]

Je ne puis que vous recommander d’aller voir Le Chocolat – si ce n’est pas déjà  fait. Un délicieux conte de fées sur fond de petits chocolats pimentés, avec Juliette Binoche et Johnny Depp en prime.