2009 November - The Emergent Fool

Why I Take Vitamins, and Why You Might W...

Posted by Kim Scheinberg in Nutrition, Uncategorized on 11 29th, 2009 | View Comments

Rafe has posted about his aversion to supplements. I’d like to offer an opposing point of view, with some personal anecdata behind it. I’m a 42-year-old woman, 5’1″, and 113 lbs.. I work out 3x/wk. (cardio and weight training) and walk an average of 4 miles/day. Like Rafe, I am a...

Welcome, Kim Scheinberg!...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Point of Order on 11 27th, 2009 | View Comments

Kim is one of my best friends and the single most self-aware friend I have. In terms of hearing a rational argument and seeing solid evidence, nobody updates their beliefs and practices to coincide quicker than Kim. And when the evidence shifts to suggest a deeper, more nuanced truth, so does Kim,...

Religion...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Uncategorized on 11 27th, 2009 | View Comments

In learning the history of various religions, it becomes clear that all religions are created to redress human suffering in whatever forms are ubiquitous during the founding. They are spread at a rate directly proportional to the suffering and directly proportional to the simplicity of the message. Given...

Book Review: LOGICOMIX...

Posted by plektix in Language, Mathematics, Media on 11 23rd, 2009 | View Comments

We are living in an age of, amongst other things, excellent graphic novels. One shining example, which I have just finished reading, is LOGICOMIX, a graphic novel biography of mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell. (Side note: can a biography still be called a graphic novel? Our terminology may need...

How Many Calories for a Dollar?...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Economics, Epidemiology, Health, Invisible Etiology, Nutrition, Pop!Tech, Scarcity / Abundance, Uncategorized on 11 20th, 2009 | View Comments

Michael Pollan, as always, making perfect sense: Now watch Will Allen on urban...

Cultural Relativity...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Uncategorized on 11 20th, 2009 | View Comments

When a person walks into a village and blows it up along with themselves we call it terrorism. But when a person drops bombs from a $100M fighter jet and blows up a village it’s somehow not terrorism. Why is that? This is an observation Laura made tonight that stopped me in my tracks. I don’t...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Epidemiology, Health, Media, Nutrition, Scarcity / Abundance, Science on 11 18th, 2009 | View Comments

This is based on an LA Times article here What strikes me most is how athlerosclerotic the science itself is. Or perhaps it’s just the reportage? The opening line of the article is “CT scans of Egyptian mummies… show evidence of… hardening of the arteries, which is normally...

Truthocracy – Part II – Disc...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Common Knowledge on 11 18th, 2009 | View Comments

PROBLEMS Our economic system hasn’t been self correcting through arbitrage, because markets have stayed irrational longer than one could stay solvent. Our legal system has not been just because precedents have been bluffed into existence using legal costs instead of legal arguments. Our...

Truthocracy – Part I – Reduc...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Common Knowledge, Incentives, Social Networks, Trust on 11 12th, 2009 | View Comments

-”Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Churchill (from a House of Commons speech on Nov. 11, 1947) I’ve been meaning to do a post on the Bayesian Truth Serum (Prelec), but Tyler Cowen’s post on Range...

How Complex Systems Fail...

Posted by Alex in Complexity on 11 6th, 2009 | View Comments

A summary of the 18 points from an insightul and concise (only 4 page long) paper on Complex System failure (via Infectious Greed). Number 7 and 8 explain why history rhymes: “7. Post-accident attribution accident to a ‘root cause’ is fundamentally wrong. Because overt failure requires...

Michael Martin does Soros...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Crowdsourcing, Government, Markets, Socio-technical systems on 11 4th, 2009 | View Comments

(Back from Alex’s European adventures) Michael Martin of Broken Symmetry with two incredibly insightful posts on Soros’ theory of reflexivity, distinction between social and physical sciences, and the ability of markets to regulate us as well as themselves. 1. “Are markets flawed? Or is it...