2009 September - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

Last.fm Meet Research Networks...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Common Knowledge, Crowdsourcing, Social Networks on 09 29th, 2009 | View Comments

Mendeley.com is doubling every 10 weeks and is on track to surpass the biggest academic databases in the world next year. What I find fascinating is that it is based on the Last.fm music algorithm/idea, which is now crossing disciplines into science of all things: “How does it work? At the basic...

Memory is Flexible for Imagination...

Posted by Alex in Medical Breakthroughs, Models, Science on 09 28th, 2009 | View Comments

Just not for “remembering” things. We are not memory machines, we are learning machines: “Reconsolidation research has helped foster a growing sense that the flexibility of memory might be functional—an advantage rather than a bug in the brain. Reconsolidation might be how we update our...

Dishonesty is the Best Policy...

Posted by Alex in Evolution, Poker on 09 24th, 2009 | View Comments

Are you bluffing enough or too much? At work, at home, with friends? Peter principle? Good guys finish last? As in poker, bluffing the bluff wins games. Now we have The Game and various pickup artists passing on the knowledge (big goofy hat required): ” …we present an evolutionary...

Science of Science...

Posted by Alex in Artificial Intelligence, Education on 09 22nd, 2009 | View Comments

A few more findings on how we discover and learn (in case you don’t have a dog as I assumed in the post about Discovery and Being Self Aware ). Computational Approaches section discusses the use of artificial inteligence to help scientists make discoveries: Scientific thinking as problem...

Discovery and Being Self Aware...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Limits of Knowledge on 09 20th, 2009 | View Comments

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward” – Thomas Edison “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. But what if we teach a man to learn? Was Thomas Edison a genius or “merely” a hard...

Networks Visualized...

Posted by Alex in Networks on 09 16th, 2009 | View Comments

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words. One can probably get a bulk deal on 292 pictures (via Marginal...

Economics Must Reflect Complexity...

Posted by Alex in Complexity, Economics on 09 15th, 2009 | View Comments

A wonderful historic analysis of economics (as a struggling social science) giving a huge shoutout to complexity: “This recognition that the economy is complex is not a new discovery. Earlier economists, such as John Stuart Mill, recognized the economy’s complexity and were very modest in their...

Are you part of a Happynet?...

Posted by Alex in Networks, Obesity, Uncategorized on 09 14th, 2009 | View Comments

Highlights from a NYT article looking into emergence in happiness, obesity, drinking, smoking in a group of 15,000 people over three decades. Friends of friends, directionality of friends, and even DNA seem to play a role in the network. Pay attention to the details and read the entire 10 page article...

The Limitations & Dangers of Incent...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Incentives, Management on 09 14th, 2009 | View Comments

If you liked this, check out these posts: Behavioral Economics with Dan Ariely Management 2.0 Executive Compensation World’s Most Ambitious Crowdsource My Favorite TED Talks of TED...

The Link Between Food & Healthcare ...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Causality, Government, Health, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Nutrition, Politics, Psychology on 09 13th, 2009 | View Comments

Also must-read this Sunday is Michael Pollan’s NY Times Op-Ed piece from Wednesday. Nice cap to my week of ranting on the dismantling of rationality when it comes to lifestyle choices that directly impact one’s health, here and...

Education 2.0...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Education on 09 10th, 2009 | View Comments

This may be the most positive thing I’ve heard in a long time. The whole article is worth reading. Here’s a teaser: “…If open courseware is about applying technology to sharing knowledge, and Peer2Peer is about social networking for teaching and learning, Bob Mendenhall, president...

“Bad people do bad things”...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Agency, Causality, Culture, Invisible Etiology, Memes, Psychology, TED, Terrorism on 09 10th, 2009 | View Comments

In listening to this account of Hemant Lakhani, convicted in 2005 of illegal arms dealing, I was reminded of another This American Life episode about Brandon Darby. Underlying both stories are accounts of seemingly incompetent, misguided, would-be bad guys who were actualized on a path of evildoing by...

Rafe Issues Challenge to Statin Industry...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Causality, Epidemiology, Health, Interventions, Nutrition, Science, Science 2.0 on 09 9th, 2009 | View Comments

I have been trying to get the straight scoop on whether statins actually decrease mortality and morbidity in a significant way and I haven’t been able to find any real evidence that they do. If you ask a cardiologist it’s clear that they believe unequivocally that statins work, mostly because...

The Problem With Processed Foods...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Nutrition on 09 8th, 2009 | View Comments

By design, most processing concentrates certain nutrients and biochemicals while removing others. This skews the natural ratios that we have evolved to eat. This leads to two phenomena which, over many years, seems like a bad idea to subject one’s body to: Over-concentration: Just because a...

Bubble Trouble in Little China...

Posted by Alex in Markets on 09 4th, 2009 | View Comments

Michael Martin (Broken Symmetry) discussed Didier Sornette group’s prediction that the Shanghai Composite was a bubble and would pop between July 17th and July 27th. The prediction was a few days off, but the lines fit so we must acquit… at least to (by) a degree (insert line about OJ here). I applaud...

Welcome, Alex Golubev...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Point of Order on 09 4th, 2009 | View Comments

We have a new blog author on Emergent Fool that regular readers will recognize from his many insightful comments. We look forward to his...

Inferring Social Security Numbers from B...

Posted by plektix in Uncategorized on 09 4th, 2009 | View Comments

An article in July’s PNAS investigates the possibility of predicting a person’s Social Security number from their birth date and place. Exploiting patterns in how SSN’s are assigned, authors Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross developed an algorithm which could correctly predict the first...

Allocating Scarce Medical Resources...

Posted by acebailey in Competition, Health, Scarcity / Abundance, Society on 09 3rd, 2009 | View Comments

Whether it is general resources after the implementation of a universal health care scheme or specific resources such as flu vaccine in the early stages of a pandemic, there will always be instances of scarcity. Who gets the resources? Youngest first? Sickest first? First in? Lottery winners?...

If You Had A Billion Dollars…...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Economics, Interventions, Philanthropy, Scarcity / Abundance, Society on 09 1st, 2009 | View Comments

If you had a billion dollars to make the world a better place, how would you spend...

Purple Balls of Death...

Posted by acebailey in Health on 09 1st, 2009 | View Comments

Imagine a lottery machine filled with one million mostly white balls and a few purple ones bouncing around. Each purple ball represents a MicroMort, a one in a million chance of you dying in the next year. Each year one ball pops out. If a purple one pops out you will die in the next year. By...