2009 March - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

Explaining the Credit Crisis in 10 Minut...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Government, Incentives on 03 31st, 2009 | No Comments

Via my buddy Matt Watson, here is a really well done infographic explaining the credit crisis. Merely entertaining for regular readers who’ve been following the crisis. But quite informative for any of your friends who haven’t felt the need to wade through all the...

Decision Education Foundation...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Education, Poker on 03 31st, 2009 | 1 Comment

On Saturday I attended a fundraiser poker tournament for non-profit organization called DEF (Decision Education Foundation). As it’s name implies, they are dedicated to helping individuals become better decision makers via the education system. Their strategy is multifaceted, but their core goal at...

Victory Over "War on Terror"...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Government, Invisible Etiology, Media, Memes, Politics, Self-Fullfilling Prophecy on 03 30th, 2009 | 3 Comments

For those of who understand the power of self-fulfilling prophecy, there’s some good news on the foreign policy front. The Obama administration (thanks to Hillary Clinton) will not be using the phrase “war on terror” anymore, as it is widely deemed to be “overly militaristic and...

Betting on Recovery...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Economics, Markets on 03 27th, 2009 | 3 Comments

I have a bet with a friend that Dow will exceed 14,000 at least once by October 12, 2012 (he says it won’t). Click here to make your prediction on what year that will take place. Comment below on why you think what you...

Organic Farming Harms the Environment...

Posted by kevindick in Scarcity / Abundance, Society, Technology on 03 26th, 2009 | 22 Comments

One of things I object to about mainstream environmentalists is that they act as if there are no tradeoffs. For example, they simultaneously promote organic farming, argue for biodiversity , and lobby for more open space. Personally, I think the second and third are very important. In my value system,...

The Nature of Innovation...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Cognition, Creativity, Crowdsourcing, Epistemology, Science on 03 25th, 2009 | 3 Comments

One of my favorite talks of all time is Ken Robinson’s on how children are born naturally innovative and the process of schooling and growing up in our society beats it out of them by the time they are adults. More recently, Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat Pray Love fame) opened some eyes with this talk on...

Decrease Red Meat Consumption...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Health, Interventions, Media, Nutrition on 03 24th, 2009 | 2 Comments

This is not news, health professionals of all sorts have been saying this for a long time. ABC News features a recent study supporting this. A relevant footnote near the end of the article though: ...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Culture, Invisible Etiology, Language, Society on 03 24th, 2009 | No Comments

Tribes are hot. Kevin has referred more than once to the famous Dunbar number for limits on optimal human tribe size. One of my favorite books recently is Seth Godin’s book on leadership, called — you guessed it — Tribes. Yesterday I heard a great talk by David Logan, co-author of Tribal...

An Emergent Fool Experiment: Dialog on M...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 03 23rd, 2009 | 3 Comments

In the comments on this post, Rafe and I started a dialog on how well microeconomics will hold up as the world becomes more extreme. We got a little off track and privately decided it was worthwhile taking the discussion up a level. So we are trying a little experiment. We’re going to jointly write...

Willie Smits Is a Genius...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Economics, TED on 03 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments

Rafe posted this TED talk by Willie Smits without much commentary. I would like to add some. When I first started watching, I thought, “Wow, you can make a lot of hay out of simply applying Econ 101.” This was in response to the fact that they bought the former rainforest land in question,...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Socio-technical systems on 03 21st, 2009 | 5 Comments

So I just put down a (refundable) deposit on a Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid car. What do you think of this...

Behavioral Economics With Dan Ariely...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Economics, Incentives, Psychology, TED on 03 20th, 2009 | 3 Comments

If you liked this talk (as I do), check out Ariely’s 3 irrational lessons from the Bernie Madoff...

How to Change the Climate in 3 Years...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Climate, Cooperation, Culture, Economics, Education, Interventions, Social Entrepreneurship, TED on 03 20th, 2009 | 1 Comment

Oh, and re-grow the rainforrest, strengthen the social, political and economic climate, save endangered species and increase biodiversity and resilliance all at the same time without any...

Synchronized Chaos and the Economy...

Posted by kevindick in Economics, Superorganism on 03 18th, 2009 | 6 Comments

I had a thought today when I was reading Arnold Kling’s post on always trying to fight the last war with financial regulations. We seem to reliably have financial crises. They don’t follow a schedule, but they do happen somewhat frequently. What if the financial system is gripped by the...

Sleep as the Default State...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Evolution on 03 18th, 2009 | 1 Comment

Just read an interesting essay* which changed my thinking about the role of sleep. While nobody can claim to understand exactly why sleep is necessary for mammals, most of the explanations focus on some positive, regenerative benefits that we can’t do without (e.g. maintaining the neuronal...

Two Books On Cognitive Science You Shoul...

Posted by kevindick in Cognition, Psychology, Science, Society on 03 17th, 2009 | 9 Comments

As I mentioned in this post, one of the three primary planks of my worldview is that, “…the human brain is a woefully inadequate decision making substrate.” I started adopting this posture in graduate school and have refined it with constant input from the cognitive psychology and...

Climate Shifts as a Complex Systems Prop...

Posted by kevindick in Climate, Non-linearity, Science, Stability on 03 16th, 2009 | 2 Comments

Via a post at the always terrific Watts Up with That, a pre publication version of this paper examines the non-linear coupling dynamics of the climate. Its hypothesis is based on the mathematics of synchronized chaos (sorry, no good introductory link available). ...

Read This If You Want to Understand Me...

Posted by kevindick in Economics on 03 16th, 2009 | 12 Comments

Scott Sumner has a great post at his blog TheMoneyIllusion (highly recommended in general if you’re into monetary economics). In it, he explores the difference between values and worldview. In particular, he explains how academic economists tend to have liberal values but an economic, rather than...

Placebos Work Even If You Don't Bel...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Causality, Health, Interventions, Medical Breakthroughs, Psychology, Self-Fullfilling Prophecy on 03 16th, 2009 | 1 Comment

This is one of the most important medical “breakthroughs” in recent memory. You should read the entire article, because it makes some subtle points, but the upshot is that placebo has (at least) two components, one that is triggered by conscious belief in a putative cure, and another that is...

Radical Transparency...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Common Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, Economics, Incentives, Interventions, Markets, Mutual Knowledge, Stability on 03 15th, 2009 | 2 Comments

In a March 2009 Wired article, Daniel Roth calls for radical transparency in financial reporting as the path to recovery and a more secure financial system. He argues that the reporting requirements today allow companies to obscure what’s going on and that the way to fix things is as follows. ...

TED Talk: Linked Data...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Networks, TED on 03 14th, 2009 | 3 Comments

One of my favorite talks of TED 2009 was from Tim Berners-Lee, the man often credited with (actually) inventing the Web. He’s been going on for quite a while about the coming of the “semantic web” and how it will be even bigger than the current web in terms of impact. But until his TED...

Two Sociology Books You Should Read...

Posted by kevindick in Culture, Government, Poverty, Society on 03 10th, 2009 | 1 Comment

As you’ve probably figured out by now, I prefer to base decisions on statistically significant evidence. However, in order to gather such evidence, you must have hypotheses in the form of testable models. If the models you try to test are divorced from reality on the ground, your results will be...

Preventing Cancer Through DNA Replacemen...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Causality, Health, Interventions, Medical Breakthroughs on 03 2nd, 2009 | 4 Comments

On the Cancer Complexity forum, I pose a question: if we could somehow replace all the damaged DNA in each of the cells of your body with an undamaged copy on a continuous basis, would that prevent you from getting cancer? What do you...

Brilliant or Crazy? I Really Don't...

Posted by kevindick in Alternative Institutions, Economics, Government, Markets, Self-Fullfilling Prophecy, Stability on 03 1st, 2009 | 8 Comments

Apropos of Rafe’s last post on Complexity Economics, I ran across an economic stability proposal that is either brilliant or crazy. I both haven’t thought it over enough and am probably not qualified to determine which. ...