Home to Dr. Jonathan Cummings’ Occasional Thoughts, Opinions, and Ideas.
Welcome to the space where I’ll share my ideas about ways to make the world a better place, commentary on the state of things, and thoughts or opinions on science, politics, decision making, and data analysis. I hope you’ll find my musing interesting or informative. I welcome your thoughts, comments, and responses.
I aim for this to be a constructive place to learn from, share with, and question one another. I want this to be a place where the ideals of free speech are upheld. However, to me freedom of speech does not freedom from consequences. Therefore I ask that you please keep the guidelines below in mind when commenting on this blog.
Commenting Guidelines
Overall the guidelines can be summarized with this. Act with empathy, responsibility, and respect. For those wanting more detail, here it is:
Ideas and arguments should be judged based on their merit. How well are they supported by evidence and how well do they accomplish an objective? This is where to be critical. But be critical in a constructive manner that doesn’t stifle creativity.
Values based statements should not be judged or argued with. Values are statements of personal feeling. While someone’s personal feelings may change over time they are personal. If you have feelings of your own you are welcome to share them too, but share them in a productive manner. We can learn from differences. Notes on how or why you feel one way can aid discovery. Providing commentary on the goodness of other peoples values does not.
Comments should be all audience appropriate. I ask that comments be made in a manner that wouldn’t leave you embarrassed if your employers, parents, grandparents, or children were to read them. This doesn’t mean I intend to police swearing, but it should be used to aid communication because the proper emphasis or meaning would be lacking without it. Mainly, don’t be mean or bigoted (obstinately or intolerantly devoted to your opinions and prejudices; especially regarding or treating the members of a group with hatred and intolerance), or a troll and you’ll be good.
I will moderate comments that do not feel meet this standard. Please let me know if you feel mine do not or in cases of repeated disrespect of these guidelines by other users.
Thanks for reading. – Dr. Jonathan Cummings