Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

“Subtlety, intricacy, and nuance take longer to appreciate, and so add crucial seconds to the digital meme reproduction process, leading to a dominance of dumb and dumber.” -Seth Lloyd

“Unlike the simplicity of rockets, which follow Newton’s laws of motion, there isn’t a simple way to describe a tree.”

“No amount of belief makes something a fact.” -James Randi

“Therefore, an inability (or refusal) to reason honestly is a social problem. Indeed, to defy the logical expectations of others—to disregard the very standards of reasonableness that you demand of them—is a form of hostility.” -Sam Harris

“Leaving high school it should be standard issue knowledge to understand how credit cards work, compounding interest, or mortgage rates. Or percentage discounts, goods on sale and, even more basic, a grasp of numbers in general: millions, billions, trillions.” #math #maths

“Tenaciously clinging to your beliefs past the point where their falsity has been clearly demonstrated does not make you look good.” -Sam Harris. It is delightful when you find another who has captured your thoughts in eloquent language.

Hypothesis Testing ... a post for students in data analytics class:
https://hackscience.education/2025/03/18/hypothesis-testing/

A post for data analysis students:
https://hackscience.education/2025/03/21/z-scores/

A post for data analytics students:
https://hackscience.education/2025/03/21/confidence-intervals/

When you need urgent solutions, do you innovate or entrench existing solutions? Your actions say much about your #leadership

So many wonderful and passionately held beliefs and opinions necessitate the response, “Evidently this was not what the universe is doing.”

One of the most chilling lines I’ve read all week: “Big Data firms have a powerful incentive to pretend that anonymization works.” #data #digitalliteracy #DataDriven #DataScience #ethics

“What questions am I allowed to ask?” Is an important (and chilling) one to answer.

Do you want to live in a world in which you cannot change your mind?

It you have an idea, but it cannot be tested? I will reject it.

When ignorant people speak, I often smile because I think they are sarcastic... then comes that terrible realization they are being serious.

Just realize when you ask that busy person to take on your great idea that you don’t know how to do... they are already working on their own ideas... which are probably better than yours.

In the Internet- dominated world, “The wider conversation, a precondition for a healthy intellectual culture, isn’t getting through.”

Fallibilism (the realization one can be wrong) is the guiding principle of free, open, liberal, secular societies.

A need for certainty makes one a weak leader.