From time to time, I may write something that seems worth preserving but that is either too short or too boring to be considered an essay. Here are some instances.
- Lucas's "theorem"
- Some people think that Gödel's theorem proves the impossibility of artificial intelligence, or refutes mechanism as applied to humans, or something. There's an error in the alleged proof, which I describe here.
- Why the ontological argument doesn't work
- There's a famous argument for the existence of God, attributed to Anselm of Canterbury. Unfortunately, it's no good. Here are some reasons why.
- The advantages of Usenet's quoting conventions
- I think, like most people, that the way in which most Usenet articles quote their predecessors is better than the available alternatives. Once upon a time I encountered someone who disagreed in a manner that annoyed me enough to write this.
- A famous instance of "irrationality" reconsidered
- There's a famous experiment that points out one way in which most people are irrational. I recently read an interestingly garbled presentation of the experiment and its results, which is discussed here along with the usual version.
- The alleged verbosity of Lisp
- Lots of people think Common Lisp is a verbose language. Here's a brief debunking of one more precisely expressed claim along those lines.
- What makes a good church website
- Someone in the newsgroup uk.religion.christian once asked "What do you look for in a church website". I don't think they were expecting such a long answer as I gave them.
- Estimating remaining download time
- Bram Cohen asked for an algorithm that estimates how long it will take for a download to complete, and that doesn't exhibit certain disagreeable artefacts. Here is one. (It could be used for things other than downloads.)
- On Faith
- Some remarks on the much-misunderstood notion of "faith", with particular regard to when it's rational and when it isn't.