ellauri096.html on line 124: Most of these philosophical advances are reactions to the use of probability by scientists. In the twentieth century, editors of science journals began to demand that the author’s hypothesis should be accepted only when it was sufficiently probable – as measured by statistical tests. The threshold for acceptance was acknowledged to be somewhat arbitrary. And it was also conceded that the acceptance rule might vary with one’s purposes. For instance, we demand a higher probability when the cost of accepting a false hypothesis is high.
ellauri141.html on line 507: Kipling himself confessed that ‘every Latin quantity was an arbitrary mystery’ to him, that his teacher Crofts ‘loathed me as to Latin’ and that he had construed the beginning of the Cleopatra Ode (1.37) very badly on one occasion. It was M'Turk/Beresford who composed the Latin elegiacs translating Gray’s Elegy which Stalky and Beetle needed to prepare.
ellauri184.html on line 659: Mercy as a basic principle of premodern jurisdiction was always an arbitrary act that took place more or less by chance. If things went wrong, culprits could be released and innocent people could be condemned. By whose criteria, one may ask.
ellauri264.html on line 534: In place of Karo´s three standard authorities, Isserles cites "the later authorities" (chiefly based on the works of Yaakov Moelin, Israel Isserlein and Israel Bruna, together with the Franco-German Tosafists) as criteria of opinion. While the Rosh on many occasions based his decision on these sources, Isserles gave them more prominence in developing practical legal rulings. By incorporating these other opinions, Isserles actually addressed some major criticisms regarding what many viewed as the arbitrary selection of the three authorities upon whose opinions Karo based his work.
ellauri270.html on line 329: Even though the villagers value tradition, many of the specific parts of their traditions have been lost with time. This suggests that the original purpose of the lottery has also been forgotten, and the lottery is now an empty ritual, one enacted simply because it always has been. When we later learn the significance of the slips of paper, it seems horribly arbitrary that they are simply made by a person the night before.
ellauri270.html on line 381: Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves’s calm continuation of the lottery’s ritual shows that they are numb to the cruelty of the proceedings. Tessie’s protests imply that she doesn’t see the choice of the marked slip of paper as fate or some kind of divine decree, but rather as a human failing. Perhaps she sees, too late, that the lottery is only an arbitrary ritual that continues simply because a group of people have unthinkingly decided to maintain it.
ellauri270.html on line 393: The inhumanity of the villagers, which has been developed by repeated exposure to the lottery and the power of adhering to tradition, still has some arbitrary limits—they are at least relieved that a young child isn’t the one chosen. They show no remorse for Tessie, however, no matter how well-liked she might be. Even Tessie’s own children are happy to have been spared, and relieved despite their mother’s fate. Jackson builds the sense of looming horror as the story approaches its close. WTF, Tessie is clearly the odd one out, so the outcome of the lottery was fortunate!
ellauri285.html on line 768: differential equations used by Losada to calculate the critical positivity ratio use parameters taken directly from Lorenz´s simplified, illustrative, and arbitrary models for fluid dynamics, with Losada giving no rationale for his choice of parameters;
ellauri285.html on line 770: use of different arbitrary parameters would give different positivity ratios, thus the precise values for the lower and upper critical ratios based on the arbitrary parameters, Fredrickson and Losada´s 2.9013 to 11.6346 ratios, are meaningless;
ellauri381.html on line 599: The great writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn predicted the current situation in Ukraine almost half a century ago. The Nobel laureate wrote: "With Ukraine, things will get extremely painful. Some regions on the left bank of the river Dnepr clearly lean more towards Russia. As for Crimea, Khrushchev's decision to hand it over to Ukraine was totally arbitrary."
ellauri409.html on line 516: For Montaigne, firstly, the religious tradition (at least in the institutional form handed down to us) is not necessarily a source of the truth in that even the writings of traditional authorities such as God or Jesus may not be relied on. This is because the meaning of a piece of writing is inherently arbitrary: "once you start digging down into a piece of writing there is simply no slant or meaning, straight, bitter, sweet or bent - which the human mind cannot find there".
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 571: It didn’t matter that the list was arbitrary. What mattered was that it sent me on a path where I would look for rules and principles everywhere, learn to tell the difference, and continue to build my life around them as I went. Like never pee against the wind.
12