Since the host will never open a door with the car behind it, the remaining door will have a car behind it in exactly those cases where you originally pick a door with a goat behind it. Since there is a 2/3 chance of you originally picking a door with a goat behind it, there is therefore a 2/3 chance that the remaining door has a car behind it.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can find the Month Hall problem described in the movie 21 or the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine. You can find longer explanations of it over at D!NG, Vox, and Numberphile.

I don’t have a track record for writing blog posts particularly frequently, but even if we take this into account my output over the past few months has been less than usual. The reason for this is that I’ve been working on bigger projects, two of which I’d like to share here. I lead a weekly Bible study, wherein we do our best to unpack what the Bible has to say and develop a biblically-informed worldview. Since the beginning of last year, we have gone through a number of different studies, but for two of them I ended up writing extensive notes. Both sets of notes are in their predraft phase, and have been made available as pages on this site (you can access them from the bar at the top).

The notes on the Genesis prologue cover the first eleven chapters of Genesis, and are structured similarly to John Walton’s The Lost World of X series, where each section focuses on the defense of a particular conclusion. The notes on Leviticus cover the entire book of Leviticus in about five studies, together with an introduction and an appendix. I learnt a lot from both, and I hope that by sharing them others might also learn something about these two very important parts of the bible.

Alice: I just bought a shelf from Ikea.

Bob: Strictly speaking, you bought the matter of a shelf from Ikea.

Alice: Well, that’s the thing that matters, isn’t it? 😛

Bob: Not really, since it’s the form that makes the matter a shelf.

Alice: That’s a different matter entirely, I was just —

Bob: Not so, it would be the same matter, just with a different form.

Alice: I was trying to say that there’s no disagreement of any substance here.

Bob: Agreed. For there to be a disagreement regarding substance, one of us would need to think the shelf had a substantial form.

Alice: No, I had something much simpler in mind.

Bob: Come now, you can’t seriously be considering whether the shelf is simple? It is evident that it must be a form-matter composite.

Alice: My point is that we’re talking in different categories.

Bob: Well, I wasn’t really thinking about the categories at all.

Alice: Yes, that was evident.

 

I’ve been working on a number of larger projects over the past few months, and so haven’t had the opportunity to post anything in a while. I hope to be finishing up with some of these in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I’ve collected a number of interesting links (mostly videos) for your viewing pleasure.

Robert Kuhn over at Closer To Truth has recently interviewed Eleonore Stump on a number of interesting questions: What are persons? Do they have souls? Do heaven and hell really exist? And what is God’s eternity? Be sure to also check out earlier questions to her about God’s eternity and his relation to time.

Interested in music? Vox has some great videos discussing Rap and Kanye West, and Polyphonic asks what about John Bonham makes him such a good drummer.

If you thought American Sniper was obviously a pro-war movie, it might be worth reconsidering that assumption a bit more carefully. In their video essay, Storytellers argues that it is really a subtle and careful anti-war movie, and follows this up with a response video. On the topic of war movies, Storytellers also has an interesting discussion on the movie Jarhead.

Sticking with the theme of movies, Films&Stuff discusses the first Matrix movie and how it was structured around the theme of breaking rules. NerdWriter discusses how Lord of the Rings uses music as part of its story telling and what Logan means for superhero movies. The two Franco’s and Seth Rogen do a Q&A on the Disaster Artist. And Christopher Nolan does a Q&A on Dunkirk.

If like me, you quickly became tired of the Assassin’s Creed formula, then you might be pleasantly surprised by what the upcoming installment is shaping up to be.

If you enjoy (1) Let’s Play videos and (2) difficult platformers, then I can recommend BaerTaffy’s playthrough of The End is Nigh.

If you’re interested in Game Design, then I highly recommend Mark Brown’s discussion of Ori and the Blind Forest’s Ginso Tree level.

A while back Ian Bogost gave a talk on what makes things fun, and it turns out gameifying everything is not the way to do it.

Ever wanted to be able to speak backward? Well, Kurt Quinn can, and on Smarter Every Day they put this skill to the test.

You might have heard of the recent memo by Google employee James Damore, now commonly referred to as “the anti-diversity manifesto,” but more correctly called “the criticism-of-the-mechanisms-and-measures-used-for-increasing-diversity-without-consideration-for-alternative-solutions memo.” I guess the former is pithier. The reaction has been divided, to say the least. Some people seem to have not really read it all that charitably, while others have discussed the merits and possible corrections of the approach (see particularly the discussion between Grant and Alexander, and the responses of four scientists in relevant fields). Damore himself has recently been interviewed by Bloomberg.

Ever wondered why lowercase numbers don’t exist? Turns out they do!

A while back, over at the Augustine Collective, David Nolan discusses the role of emotions in Aquinas.

Feser on how to go to hell, how to think about angels, and the Benedict option.

Finally quantum mechanics. There’s William Wallace’s review of Smith’s book The Quantum Enigma, and Aaron Wall on intepreting the quantum world.

I’ve just changed the name of this blog from “//Roland’s Comments” to “Thinking Thought Out”. I’ve also changed the tag line from “Theology, Philosophy, Mathematics, Computer Science” to the quote from GK Chesterton that inspired the new name.

I originally started this blog thinking I’d write about my four interests previously listed. On reflection, I’ve seen that I predominantly write about philosophy and theology. The previous name, which was a programming “joke”, didn’t seem to fit any more (also, while I like my new theme, I don’t like my name showing up big and bold on the front page).

I’ve added a new resources page to the blog. I’ll be updating it as I find new resources on various topics. I’ll try write posts that keep readers updated about new resources appearing.

I’m still deciding whether or not to actually maintain a blog. But if i were to maintain this blog it would contain things about my main interests:

• Theology
• Philosophy
• Apologetics
• Computer Science
• Pure Mathematics

And why not start big? I’m thinking of starting a series of posts dealing with God’s providence. Assuming I maintain this blog, of course 🙂