The article argues that the problem of mental causation—how mental states can cause physical actions—is not a genuine crisis for philosophy. It suggests that many philosophical worries about mental causation rely on overly demanding metaphysical assumptions, and that once those assumptions are relaxed, mental causation poses no special difficulty for a naturalistic worldview.
A blog post discusses a mathematical identity where pentagonal numbers can be expressed in terms of triangular numbers. It highlights that while examples don't typically prove theorems, in this case the identity Pn = T(2n−1) − T(n−1) holds, showing that three examples can suffice for proving certain relationships.
John D. Cook describes how a sequence of his blog posts often follows a hidden thread, beginning with a post about the mathematical approximation exp(−x²) ≈ (1 + cos(sin(x) + x))/2, which some commenters incorrectly attributed solely to a first-order Taylor expansion.
The nth pentagonal number Pn follows the formula Pn = (3n² − n)/2 for positive integer n. For non-positive integer n, the same formula defines a generalized pentagonal number.
Partial fraction decomposition is commonly introduced in calculus as a technique for integrating rational functions by breaking P(x)/Q(x) into simpler terms. However, the post suggests that this method has applications beyond integration that are often overlooked in a typical calculus class.