The Ten Smartest Poker Players

[Vince Lepore]

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The evidence 'that nothing teaches you how to reason more than philosophy' should be available from those that practice philosophy - Philosophers - is this not the case

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No, it is not the case. Philosophers are men that reason. A philosophy is a concept. Each philosopher that you mentioned were expert "reasoners". Of that I will agree. How they became expert in their field is more to the point of this discssion.

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Looking through history at what science has produce and what philosophy has produce and the overall effects of each, it is my opinion that Science wins in being more logical and based on the best reasoning. Others may, of course, disagree with this hypothesis

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Science has produced trinkets and toys for man's enjoyment and quality of life. Philosophy has produced the societies we find throughout the world. Whether or not science wins the "being more logical" test does not prove nor disprove whether or not philosophy is the best place to learn to reason.

Your arguement, in fact, is more akin to philosophical discussion than hard science's logical deduction. You are reasoning as a philosopher would rather than a physicist.

Vince

[Zeno]

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No, it is not the case. Philosophers are men that reason. A philosophy is a concept.

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Scientists are men that reason. Science is a method.

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How they became expert in their field is more to the point of this discssion.


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Agreed. And how is that accomplished for each discipline?

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Science has produced trinkets and toys for man's enjoyment and quality of life. Philosophy has produced the societies we find throughout the world.

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But doesn't science profoundly effect society and philosophy? Take two modern examples - DNA testing and man's first flight to the Moon.

But aside from all this, we will simply talk past each other without an agreed definition of what Science is or is not and the same for Philosophy.

Have you ever set up a laboratory experiment to test something, or conducted, say, analysis of materials? Or reasoned out the best method to measure a variety of parameters in real time of a snow avalanche? How would you set it up? What instruments would you use? If useful ones are not available, could you design and build what you needed. How accurate and precise would it need to be? What's the margin of error? How do you measure the margin of error? How do you collect and store the data for your experiment? What does the data mean? Will it show anything that is not already known or accounted for? And most important of all, where do you get all the money to do this fun experiment up in the mountains where you get to ski around and have fun?

How much reasoning power and logic does setting up an experiment like this take?

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Your arguement, in fact, is more akin to philosophical discussion than hard science's logical deduction. You are reasoning as a philosopher would rather than a physicist.


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That's because I'm both a scientist and a philospher. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

-Zeno

[Zeno]

Great post. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

I agree to all the stipulations, but request the right for final editorial authority on any published material, whether in paper or electronic form.

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Andy Fox will oversee the project.

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Which means, of course, that he will get paid for doing nothing more than make snide comments, and the project, no doubt, will be over budget in the first few days because of poor planing.

-Zeno

[Cheeseweasel]

What about the late Stu Ungar? Genius or savant?

[Justin A]

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Cool how you realized it doesn't have to be first. Maybe you deserve to be on it.

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So who's smarter, you or William Chen?

And btw, laurentia just made the best debut on this forum of all time. First post and he's already impressed Sklansky.

Justin A

[Vince Lepore]

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doesn't science profoundly effect society and philosophy?

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Especially philosophy, but what's your point?


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an agreed definition of what Science is or is not and the same for Philosophy.


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Science is a method. Philosophy is a search for knowledge and truth.

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Have you ever set up a laboratory experiment to test something, or conducted, say, analysis of materials? Or reasoned out the best method to measure a variety of parameters in real time of a snow avalanche? How would you set it up? What instruments would you use?

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There is but one instruement necessary to reason. The mind. Or is that the brain? Science needs tools, philosphy uses science's results but the brain is the philosophers sole necessity.

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That's because I'm both a scientist and a philospher

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I'm not.

Vince

[Ulysses]

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Cool how you realized it doesn't have to be first. Maybe you deserve to be on it.

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I think it's not unreasonable to think that #3 might be able to tell who was smarter of #1 or #2.

[Sredni Vashtar]

ED "I think it's not unreasonable to think that #3 might be able to tell who was smarter of #1 or #2."

Especially if the gap were large or obvious. Also if the one and two agreed upon the order.

But this Laurentian point brings up the legitimacy of these lists anyhow. (not that a hundred others haven't already [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ) If there is some objective unequivocal way to measure people to correctly order this, than never mind number three on the list being able to do it, many in the same league with the tools, education and information should be able to. Something has limited scientific value or is not recognized if it can not be repeated or demonstrated by many scientists.(1) If you are to argue that only number one or two on the list could formulate such objective tests, then this could be true only if others couldn't create different tests that ranked
people differently. (Different tests, which rank people differently, could be both be objective and measure reasoning ability. They could just have different questions or weight them differently.)

Note that Sklansky's top ten smartest in history list, that one thing that all of the listees possessed (in addition to extraodinary reasoning ability) was enormous creativity and insightfulness. So even if there could be at least somewhat reasonable ways to measure reasoning (since these are questions where there are clear answers, there just may be some question as to what types of questions and how to weight them), the difficulty in measuring this creativity, especially at that extreme level, is a task best left to the gods. And if it weren't for this creativity, would Sklansky or any of us even know who these scientists were?

If (obviously) these lists are subjective, then that brings up another problem. If one needs to be at least number two on list to make such a list, and it is subjective, who is to really say who number two is? Perhaps number three is smarter than number two, but two doesn't "get it".

Now none of this really matters. If you are a kid going to school, learn how to read, write and do math. Then you will be able to learn anything within your natural abilities. AFter that, follow your passion, but throw in as much science as you can even if you hate it. And please, if you are the next Mozart or Shakespeare (or even a great chef), don't let anyone discourage you from your greatness. Transcend the lists.


SV

(1) This really doesn't have anything to do with the thread, but just an interesting point. Let's say EL Diablo had a pyschic event. He knew in advance something was going to happen, and it did. Hence, he defied known science. Which shouldn't surprise us given his avatar. Let's say we accept that as a given, as true. It still doesn't have much value or scientific credibility. It would have to occur again and again, and be shown under controlled conditions to be become worthwhile in a scientific way. A good scientist wouldn't say it was impossible, just that the laws of known science don't allow for it. The probability of having occured though would be tiny in comparison to other such factors.

[andyfox]

When Sklansky makes his smartest ferrets list, there'll be no doubt about who's number one.

And it isn't close.

Regards,
Andy

[danj]

That's just the U.S. - about 64 million people in the world w IQs of 140 or higher. So what makes a great poker player? It can't just be their ability to think or reason because I'm guessing that 99.9% of those people have that ability.