We obviously need more "ask me anything" topics and finally I have some time to do something else on Warzone rather than playing the game.

Warning: answers may get technical and go into way more detail for no reason.
And yes, I will answer all troll questions in the most serious way.

wtf?

In my honest opinion, having many Warzone games is not likely to be positively correlated with a high number of the literal interpretation of the "f". Consequently, I believe my future looks bright.
However, I do believe the Warzone ToS forbids me to answer in more detail than that.

What does the name Math Wolf mean to you

It's actually an abbreviation of my real name, Matheus Wolfgang (although way too many people keep calling me Mathias instead).
I chose Math Wolf because I got annoyed by too many people in high school calling me Matty/Mattie, which I found condescending.

Contrary to popular belief, it has actually nothing to do with mathematics, nor with wolves. I'm a statistician, so I have a bit of an adverse relation with mathematics and especially theorethical mathematicians. And I'm more of a solitary person myself, unlike wolves, who live and hunt in packs, so I don't really feel any specific connection to the animal, other than that it looks pretty cool and therefore is ideal as a profile picture.

I don't have any emotional investment in it. I know of at least 2 other people online going by the same name (I couldn't get the name in Pokémon Go for example), and I also go by other names online.
However, I used to get annoyed by people writing Mathwolf or mathwolf, without the space or capitalisation because it's actually a real name. These days, I couldn't care less if people write it correctly as I've come to realise that 80% of people online can't spell properly anyway.

What is your favourite eye colour?

Is economics a hard science?

What is your favourite eye colour?

Interesting question, although the answer will be boring. I have none.
Unlike most men, let me just be honest. When I see a women, I won't be looking in her eyes first most likely. Not sure where I'll look, we all know what science tells us about that, but it's not the eyes.
As an exercise to myself, I just now tried to see if I know the eye colour of anyone in my reasonably close environment that do not live or have lived under the same roof as me:
* My two office mates: nope, not a clue
* Close family members of my partner: I can guess based on my partner's eye colour, but it would be an actual guess
* My closest friends: yes, for one I have a good idea. We had a videochat yesterday and my shortterm graphical memory is pretty good. The rest: nope, no clue
* Whichever movie or television star that I like: uhm... uhm... nope...

For character design on the other hand (not real people), I do like unusual colours. And some animals do have really beautiful eyes, like a lynx for example.

Is economics a hard science?

Very easy question. It isn't.
Medicine, psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, engineering all aren't either.

There are only 4 hard sciences (or more if you want to consider certain parts separately)
* physics (inluding astrophysics and astronomy)
* chemistry
* biology (although more specifically biochemistry & biotechnology, actual biology can be an edge case)
* geology (including some technical parts of geography) is often forgotten, but definitely a hard science as well (although you could argue that it's applied chemistry and I wouldn't truly disagree)

These have in common that they study basic existing structures with a natural structure that could be objectively observed if we were all-knowing and all powerful.

Hot takes:
* Mathematics itself is not a science, it's mathematics. It's the basis of all sciences. Applied mathematics can definitely found in many parts of science everywhere, but as a concept, it's still abstract and not observable. Whenever it's observable, it's part of an actual science (hard or not).
* Statistics is not a hard science either. Theorethical statistics is in essence a part of mathematics, see above
* Statistical or other data-analysis (e.g. machine learning) is the field specialised in the analysis of data in other fields, so not a hard science by itself
* computer science is often applied mathematics, and when it's applied on existing concepts, it's based on man-made structures, which to me makes it an applied science, not hard science.

Now, I mean no disrespect to economy with that. In economy, there is a lot of very useful applied science (i.e. usually called soft science) going on, and some part of economy, i.e. actuarial science and econometrics are almost or in essence applied mathematics and/or statistics.

The problem with economy however, is that it's extremely diverse. Some parts of it are extremely technical, econometrics is by all means a great source of statistical theory, while other parts are in essence philosophy and gambling.
Talking about that, medicine is the same. Clinical trial research (i.e. research in how to perform a clinical trial as efficiently as possible) can get very technical and basically be theoretical statistics / applied mathematics. However, some "reviews" in medicine are in essence, again, philosophy.

Reading that, you may think that I dislike philosophy, but I don't. It's just not a science, it's philosophy. Thinking can be fun, and you can think a lot about people think. It's a nice exercise and it helps to be open minded. But the real science about that would be neurology.

Psychology and sociology are people pretending or trying to be scientists and every now and then actually not being too shabby about it. Sadly, the majority of pyschology and sociology research is drenched in researcher bias or confirmation bias. Which is a concept from psychology, so some of them at least realise what they are doing wrong.

Engineering finally, is basically the (study of) the real-life applications of science. It's by itself obviously not a science, but lots of research done in engineering departments is actual hard science: physics, chemistry and biotechnology for example.

Whats the text equivalent of - do you like the sound of your own voice?

Edited 10/20/2022 20:18:53

second q:

reading your above responses, how does a grown man write these sort of responses without cringing himself to death?

do you have any self awareness at all?

third q:

Why is this thread highlighted? seeing that this thread is just you talking to yourself like a deranged person with autism, I struggle to believe there is enough interest that this thread was upvoted organically - did you abuse mod powers to rig the upvotes?

Edited 10/20/2022 20:37:30

Do you think you'd look good with blue fur?

Whats the text equivalent of - do you like the sound of your own voice?

That would be: "look at me everyone, I'm still level 56"

second q:

reading your above responses, how does a grown man write these sort of responses without cringing himself to death?

do you have any self awareness at all?

My guess would be that this was done through putting their hands on a keyboard and subsequently pushing down the individual keys until they form a legible sentence. However, alternatives are likely possible, such as using a mobile device and hence tapping rather than typing, speech technology, or if they were a rich troll, spelling out the answers to their secretary.

You do assume that I am a grown man however, which is not proven, although given the previous answers and your knowledge of me, this may be a reasonable guess. I do believe you do not have a clue about my actual height on the other hand.

About the self-awareness. As a famous philosopher (not a hard science, remember) once said: "je pense, donc je suis". So I do believe I have quite some self-awareness. Enough at least to write about myself both in the first and third person in the same answer.

third q:

Why is this thread highlighted? seeing that this thread is just you talking to yourself like a deranged person with autism, I struggle to believe there is enough interest that this thread was upvoted organically - did you abuse mod powers to rig the upvotes?

I'm as surprised as you are. Personally, I expected it to be downvoted or just get a few troll responses and then die. The latter is still an option given your presence in the topic now of course. I don't know enough about the voting system to give an exact answer on wy the topic was upvoted. Members and people with higher levels are given more weight, so only a few of those is usually enough, or Fizzer himself may have upvoted the topic, in which case it is automatically highlighted. I did upvote the topic with this account, but that is the default whenever someone creates a topic.

I do not understand your other comments however. First of all, I am not particularly talking to myself as all people asking questions are not me. Note that my only alt is pretty obvious and declared, you can find it by clicking on the clan icon next to my name and look for the "Replicate Experiment".
Secondly, given my (luckily somewhat limited) experience with deranged people with autism, they usually don't talk to themselves. Autistic people tend to be by themselves, yes, but they are not the type of people that tends to talk out loud to themselves. Maybe you wanted to compare me to yourself, in which case I'd tell you to not be so harsh on yourself. Sure, you ramble sometimes, especially about changing the name back to Warlight, and that by now truly old story about being level 56 repetition may sound a little bit autistic indeed, but still, don't think of yourself like that, you're surely better than that.
Thirdly, I do not think mods can rig upvotes, the only way to rig upvotes is through alts, if I understand correctly. That question should be redirected to a forum mod or Fizzer however, the latter who can check who upvoted, I assume.

Do you think you'd look good with blue fur?

What a fun question!
I'm not sure, but definitely not as good as you!

It would be really nice to live in a world where everyone could experiment with things like that, trying out atypical outfits and check if they look good in them. Sadly, that's only allowed for children it seems, and even there with some restrictions.
So sadly, I don't think that I will be given a good opportunity to try your suggestion and find out for myself, hence I can only guess.

Blue is a colour that I do wear regularly and that suits me according to my partner. The fur, if done well, may match my hair in a sense, so that could work. However, there's still the issue of me being me, and despite most of my peer disagreeing, I personally do not think that I'm a very good looking person. As the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, it'll still be a pig. So I believe the answer will be subjective to the onlooker. If they find me good looking, chances are it's not worse with blue fur. But if they don't, I don't think blue fur could save the day for me.

1. people who don't understand what the phrase 'likes the sound of his own voice' means
2. people who lack self awareness

correlation or causation?

1. people who don't understand what the phrase 'likes the sound of his own voice' means
2. people who lack self awareness

correlation or causation?

It would surely be an interesting topic to research.
My hypothesis is that there would be a positive correlation.

It's unlikely however that there would be a strong direct causal link. It'd be more likely that both states would be caused by a third unmeasured, or latent variable, or combination of variables, linked to one's character, age, life experience and likely a few other traits.

While it would be very hard, and likely impossible, to find the exact effect size of any causal reasons, I'm sure that psychologists would be able to write many papers about it where they start from purely exploratory observational research, only to exitingly claim in the conclusions section that they found something pretty obvious and have proven a causal link for sure. Note that this would be wrong as causal relations can only be definitely proven either through direct experimentation (Change "A", check if "B" also changes - impossible in this case) or a clinical trial with randomisation (equally impossible in this case).

through pure observation my guess would be causation, sample of 1

I agree that philosophy is not a hard science. Actually I do not think we can categorize it as a science at all. My question, though, can we have science without philosophy? Can we have philosophy without science?

I don't think we can answer it scientifically, so need to use philosophy instead. By all means give your reason if you disagree with that.

Cheers...

What are your plan(s) for Halloween?
The day is coming up, people are getting ready for it, decorations, trick-or-treat, etc.