I never said philosophy requires a love of science over a love of opinion. I never said anything at all about a love of science, that was your addition.

I drew a distinction between lovers of opinion and lovers of truth. Science is a tool towards the philosophical endeavor.

I also never said we must be void of all opinions, that would be impossible. What I am talking about is placing the self above truth. An over indulgence in the self.

Also, you seem far more bent on proving yourself, than I am. If you wish to be a lover of opinions, as long as it hurts no one, I don't care, go for it.

Some of my goals are very easy to satisfy while others take a lot of work. Although, I am not sure why you'd think I find that offensive.

I saw a valuable discussion that was not going to happen because the other thread was closed, and I intended to make it happen. It seems I was successful in that goal.

I am already familiar with strsplit, that's what I was intending to use to split them into separate columns if I had to. I was just wondering if there was a different way, as if I split them into their own columns then any modeling or graphs I make needs to account for ages in multiple different columns. Maybe I'll just split them and work through it.

Thanks, I'll start reading.

I feel I have been clear about the nature of lovers of truth and lovers of opinion. However, I have no intention of spending time trying to determine which individuals fit where in those categories.

It is gun violence data, and the values in each observation is formatted as such:

0::Female||1::Male||2::Male||3::Male

The number indicates the participant in the event, short of splitting each participant into their own column for each related variable, I am not sure how else to address this formatting.

Well I appreciate the input thus far, perhaps you could help with a dilemma in another data set I am looking at.

Ya, I used R Markdown, which allows you to add in Latex code. Then I exported to a Word Doc, but when hosting a Word Doc on Google Drive, for reasons I don't know, it does not display the Latex when viewed in the browser, so I converted to a PDF for the Google Drive link.

It was written with Latex.

There are lovers of truth and there are lovers of opinion. Most people are lovers of opinion, they indulge in the self; however, philosophers are lovers of truth, they seek the reality beyond the self.

These all roads lead to one arguments are very common, and I suppose there are several reasons people like to sell this position, but the truth is all roads do not lead to one. Some paths are better than other while some paths lead nowhere, and worst yet some paths lead people astray.

It is possible for people to be heading in the wrong direction and it also possible for people to be going nowhere. Now if that is their choice and they are not harming anyone I personally don't have a problem with that, but if the goal here is to connect with a unique reality that only intelligent beings, like humans, can experience, then to shy from science can only lessen that experience. For a normal person, perhaps that is fine, but for a philosopher? If someone is not devoted enough that they will become learned in science to deepen this experience, then I have to question their love for truth.

So, philosophy is "highly individualistic" except in cases when you decide someone is "purify it"? Promoting deep immersion into subjectivity then rejecting forms you disagree with is a contradiction.

I don't keep such lists and it is the lovers of opinion that are limiting themselves. The very nature of overindulgence in subjectivity is to limit everything to the self.

I have no idea what that means. Was I not suppose to share my thoughts?

I think a characteristics of bad philosophy is over generalizations and giving up before before even trying. Always seeking the middle of the road, and speaking in terms so wide they include everyone, because being precise takes actual work.

HexHammer is right, there are a lot of lovers of opinion that masquerade as philosophers, and it is important for these lovers of opinion to maintain that fluid form, with no clear outline, so that they can feel like they belong to all the shapes. And because they never take a solid stance they avoid being put in a position where they may fail; a defense mechanism of the ego.

No one is suggesting "one single model" for anything; however, if your statement is that there is bad philosophy then you must have reasons for thinking that. So then, what are the characteristics of "bad philosophy"?

So then you are in agreement with HexHammer. There is good and there is bad philosophy.

When you flip a coin it can land on either heads or tails, but it must land on one of them. Current realty is just simply the way things landed.

Intellectuals have an over-inflated sense of the importance of their discipline and make broad, sweeping generalizations of other disciplines they are unfamiliar with? :gasp:

There will never be a cohesive and inclusive model for inquiry. Everyone thinks that their favorite philosopher, or their chosen scientific field, is the be-all-end-all pinnacle of everything, and fuck everything else. Echo-chambers exist throughout the sciences and humanities. One person may doubt another person's self-evident truths. et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. At the end of the day, nothing changes, nobody has learned anything, and we all go home just a little more disappointed in others.

If I had to criticize philosophers and scientists for one thing, it's that they tend to make things into a big narrative, with philosophy or science being the "ultimate" that eclipses any other discipline. Philosophy does, in my opinion, technically hold the cards as the "ultimate", but it's often so impotent and slow-moving that you might as well just give the torch to someone more competent. If science is to be the model for everything and anything (as naturalism wishes it to be), then scientists need to be philosophically literate. Before, we had scientist-philosophers, who really were the model intellectuals, and who held a deep respect for philosophy. Nowadays you just have douchey wannabes spouting racist and sexist hate-speech and pretending it's science, parading around and T-bagging dissenters. Rah-rah, we're the best! Rah-rah! — darthbarracuda

So then you do see them as separate paths?

To be honest if I look at these data some more, or similar data it will be in a classical framework. I need to practice Bayesian methods, as to be well rounded, but I disagree with it philosophically.

I did consider doing something with the location in a model, but I am not sure that will happen. I think I need to move this inquiry to border terms and look at gun violence over all. The focus on mass shootings was to appeal to current public discourse, but I don't feel it is the right place to look for the full picture. Gun violence overall is what we should be looking at. When I find a decent data set I'll start looking at that.

Before your post such "trash" was not a part of this thread.

Scientific conclusions which are not subjected to logical investigation — Galuchat

I am sorry, but no valid scientific conclusion is void of logical coherence.

Well I think this proves that this place is a waste of my time. Goodbye.

So "importance" is relative to text length? I don't think you really believe that.

Simple was the best approach for that topic. I wanted to see how people responded with the open ended question before framing my own context. As doing such at the start of a thread can push things towards my bias. I actually thought that thread out, as I always do when I host a thread; however, I don't feel like trying again; you killed the mood.

Also you may want to let things grow a bit more before deleting them. Just my suggestion, but perhaps allowing a conversation to develop could be just as beneficial or even more so than throwing a wall of text at people.

Just ponder my question for awhile, as personally I think it is your perception that is "devoid of any substantive content" here.

My question was not only an important question but one that is not so easy to answer. However, if you want to kill your own already dying forums, that is of course your choice.

I guess your English is also lacking, as that was pity.

I am sorry your understanding of the topic is so limited.

I know what lemon essence is, I don't know what an "essence of man" would be. — Bitter Crank

It is a gay thing.

I also think all math is a lie but I am in love with the simplicity and order it offers.

That said, however, it should be pointed out that statistical conclusions are not considered facts, they are considered evidence which should be considered with other evidence.

I have never met anyone on the statistician's journey to disagree with the idea it is a science.

But I understand your reservation. On my first day in intro to statistics the instructor called it a science and I challenged him to prove it, so right there in class we looked up the common definition of science and talked about it. That class was mostly math, but as you push on it is clear that you are learning how to apply the scientific method on empirical data using statistical methods.

I consider mathematics a science, but statistics comes with some extra baggage the other big two don't. When you study statistics you have to study a series of classes that are more focused on the conceptual rather than mathematics; this is in addition to all the math you have to learn. It is the scientific method as told by statisticians.

It falls under the umbrella of what is know as a data science. Statistics aims at proper scientific methods for the collection and analysis of data. This analysis can be on observational data or data collected from an experiment. It uses hypothesis testing and modeling to help researchers reach a conclusion.

There is no doubt in my mind that statistics is a science and if you studied it more I have little doubt you would disagree.

I wonder how many people here would consider statistics a science.

I am no fan of psychology and have openly mocked it for being too subjective but to say it is not a science is just ignorance. Science is something we work towards, an approach, an aim, and they at least are moving in that direction.

To be honest, I think some here have a misconception of science. Not everything is wired down to the quantitative or empirical, some of it is arbitrary and most of it is simply our best guess. Also I would like to point out that the term "rational" is not empirically falsifiable, nor is it quantifiable.

Occam's Razor itself is a reasoned suggested approach which is not based on direct hypothesis testing; instead it is nothing but a guideline or a rule of thumb.

Don't get hung up on what is "qualitative" and what is "quantitative" too much, it is really only important to make such distinctions when you are doing statistical modeling or something similar. People just grasp on to the word quantitative because they think it makes them sound scientific or more official, but they all too often make the mistake of assuming it means numbers are in in the area.

If you can't separate them out, just talk about things plainly like you normally would, you may not realize it but you were already taught the difference just by learning how to talk and do basic math. You know what time is and you know what colors are, you don't need extra labels just to talk about those things.

The qualitative (aka categorical) is about making conceptual difference based on the quality of something. Normal force is different than weight force. The fact we can calculate them does not change the conceptual difference.