July, 2008

TED Talk: Robert Ballard

Exploring the oceans

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Joshua Klein

Intelligence of crows

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Paul Stamets

6 ways mushrooms can save the world

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Alisa Miller

Why we know less than ever about the world

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Dave Eggers

TED Prize Wish: Once Upon a School

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Johnny Lee

Wiimote hacks

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Jill Bolte Taylor

Powerful stroke of insight

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Neil Turok

TED Prize Wish: African Einstein

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: J.J. Abrams

Mystery Box

Click here for Discussion Forum

TED Talk: Robert Full

Animal Movement

Click here for Discussion Forum

Complex Systems Concept Summary

I figured it was time for a reset and so the following is a summary of much of the foundational posting that I’ve done on this blog so far.  As always, a work in progress, subject to refinement and learning……

Response to "Thoughts on Ants, Altruism and the Future of Humanity"

[ This is an edited version of a blog comment on Brandon Kein’s Wired Science post here ]

The question of whether we will “break through” to a superorganism or collapse through any number of spiraling cascades or catastrophic events is the subject of Ervin Laszlo’s book, The Chaos Point, which I highly recommend.  In it, he gives a sweeping view of the complex evolutionary dynamic (focusing on human society), and makes a solid argument that we are at an inflection point in history right now, similar to the “saltation” that begat multicellularity.…

TED Talk: Sherwin Nuland

Electroshock therapy

Click here for Discussion Forum

Complex Quotes: John Wheeler

“We have to learn how to use our words. It’s a fantastic thing — we humans are so easily trapped in our own words. The word time, for instance — we run into puzzles about the concept of time and then we say, oh, what a terrible thing. We don’t realize we’re the source of the puzzles because we invented the word….”

— John Wheeler…

Hive Mindstein

David Basanta’s blog has an interesting thread (quite a few of them actually).  Here’s the setup but you should read the original post, including the Wired article:

Apparently, some people are seeing some potential in cloud computing not just as an aid to science but as a completely new approach to do it. An article in Wired magazine argues precisely that. With the provocative title of The end of theory, the article concludes that, with plenty of data and clever algorithms (like those developed by Google), it is possible to obtain patterns that could be used to predict outcomes…and all that without the need of scientific models.