LONDON, May 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — CoinGeek Conference is created to foster enterprise blockchain adoption and support technology to enable a new data ecosystem. Doing something that has never been done before requires opening doors to experts with many differing viewpoints, past conferences brought in the likes of Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales who had previously expressed the opinion that he would never allow Bitcoin to be used on his platform.
With the goal of hearing diverse opinions that spawn meaningful discussions, CoinGeek Zurich (June 8-10) can now confirm that both Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Nicholas Taleb will address those assembled on and offline with their thoughts, on where the value should come from in Blockchain and Digital Currencies.
Mahmoud Rasmi (@decafquest): finished his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Salamanca Spain. Between 2013 and 2020, he taught philosophy and cultural studies at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University. Now, he has decided to venture into the virtual world in order to give affordable classes online to people who are interested in studying philosophy in a non-academic setting.
Here’s a sample class on Stoicism from an Introduction to Philosophy online course:
Philippe Caponis (@philippecaponis): Philippe holds an MS in Physics and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Paris. He taught philosophy at the American University of Beirut and Lebanese American University. He is interested in better understanding how scientific theories illuminate (and often reshape) philosophical debates about the nature of space and time, identity and material constitution.
Here’s a talk by Philippe titled: Three Philosophical Lessons from Modern Physics:
Dates and Schedule:
4 weeks, once a week, 2 hrs per session.
The course will start on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, and will end on Tuesday, June 29, 2021.
Course Schedule: Tuesdays at 8:00 pm Beirut time (7:00 pm CET time).
Synchronous online course via Zoom.
Asynchronous: if you can’t attend, you will have the option to watch the recorded lectures.
Price: USD120$
Capacity: 30 seats (raised to 35)
Important information:
You will receive the link to the sessions a few days before the course starts.
Those based in Lebanon can make the payment via Bank transfer (please contact me to provide you with the details).
Since we are not an institution, you will not be able to claim credits for the course. Many of you might also already be busy with your jobs and daily routine; as a result, we won’t be assigning any homework, exams, or papers. However, if any of you wishes to be assessed on the course material covered, we can arrange for the proper method and format in private.
The sessions will be recorded and uploaded to the DecafQuest YouTube channel as hidden. The links will be made available on google classroom to those registered.
Please find below a tentative syllabus:
This series will serve as an introduction to the traditional philosophical problems about the structure of reality and our attempts at understanding it. It surveys a variety of topics in metaphysics and epistemology through selected essays largely free of technical terminology. The concepts covered in this first course are perception, skepticism, time and mind.
Discussions will mainly revolve around the following questions: does sense perception enable us to gain knowledge about the world? can we be certain about the existence of the external world or the existence of things outside of us must be accepted merely on faith? What do we mean when we say that time passes? Are past and future events real? What is the nature of the mind? Is it non-physical or a mere product of brain processes?
L1: Perception
Locke
Berkeley
Kant
L2: Skepticism
Descartes & Hume
Moore & Wittgenstein
L3: Time
McTaggart
Putnam
L4: Mind
Descartes & Malebranche
Smart
Nagel
L5: TBA Q&A with Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy
We saw that 1) many metrics are stochastic, 2) what is stochastic can be hacked. This is the simplification of my work showing that “p-values are not p-values”, i.e. highly sample dependent, with a skewed distribution. For instance, for a “true” P value of .11, 53% of observations will show less than .05. This allows for hacking: in a few trials, a researcher can get a fake p-value of .01.
A maximally simplified presentation of how metrics are random variables, and how they can be gamed. Uncorrelated variables will produce a correlation in samples.
The Gates Foundation is financing genetically modified mosquitoes to control natural mosquitoes. This quick video: 1) Discusses the Four Pest Campaign by Mao that helped kill 15-50 Million people around 1960. 2) Explains why genetic modification has nothing to do with natural selection or animal breeding. Scientism is not science.
Santa Marina — Karl Popper — Herman Hesse’s Sidharta — Mutua Muli — Porsche’s no substitute
Santa Marina
In my ancestral village in the Northern Levant, on top of a hill, stands a church dedicated to Santa Marina. Marina is a local saint, though, characteristically, some other traditions claim her –such as Bithynia or other Anatolian provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire.
A maximally intuitive presentation on what correlation is not, with maximally simplified concepts. [Note that I improvise 100% and I don’t prepare] There is a more technical lecture to come.
The CLT allows anyone (including ignorant economists and psychologists) to do statistics by using prepackaged recipes coming from the Gaussian. What are the foundations? How does it work? Where does it not work?
