Approaching a Cure for Cancer...
Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Evolution, Health, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Medical Breakthroughs, Science, Science 2.0, Technology on 12 28th, 2009 | View Comments
James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double-helix structure recently called for a back to basics approach in dealing with cancer.  In previous post threads I’ve discussed cancer’s complexity and in particular the confounding and scary implications of somatic evolution, which underscores...
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The Truth About Generic Drugs...
Posted by danielhorowitz in Complexity, Economics, Health, Non-linearity, Science on 12 23rd, 2009 | View Comments
The truth is out there. Finally. The NYTimes has a piece on the problems and differences between generic and brand name drugs. Think they are the same? Think again. The article is excellent and I recommend everyone read it. As usual, I will quote liberally, with some of my own commentary. But there is a...
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Turning Japanese, iThink…...
Posted by Alex in Artificial Intelligence, Emergence, Limits of Knowledge on 12 16th, 2009 | View Comments
What do you know about Japan and their economy?  Their nominal GDP and stock market seem to be “losing” relative to other countries, but upon further examination you will find that the real GDP/capita has been quite reasonable throughout the period.  but what’s money got to do with it? ...
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“Social Entrepreneurship has Compl...
Posted by Rafe Furst in Complex Links, Complex Quotes, Complexity, Cooperation, Social Entrepreneurship, Socio-technical systems on 12 15th, 2009 | View Comments
That’s the title and conclusion of this paper by Jeffrery Goldstein et al which was presented at  this talk at the Skoll Foundation International Social Innovation Conference 2009.  Here’s a slide from that talk that I like: If you like the theme of “Social Entrepreneurship, Systems...
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Truthocracy – Part IV – www....
Posted by Alex in Artificial Intelligence, Common Knowledge, Creativity on 12 13th, 2009 | View Comments
I guess we already have the  “machine” built.  Its intelligence increases proportionally to # of people and time.  Next year we will celebrate it’s birthday :)  Time to get plugged in and kick out human politicians and decision makers.  Of course Rafe and Kevin have already asked the...
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Highlights from the Year in Ideas...
Posted by plektix in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Crowdsourcing, Games, Mathematics, Philanthropy on 12 13th, 2009 | View Comments
The New York Times Year in Review section always has some good ones. Some highlights for me from this year: Does feeling like a fraud make you act like one? Researchers gave experiment subjects designer-style sunglasses from boxes marked “authentic” or “counterfeit”. They then put...
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Non-Dualism...
Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Epistemology, Language, Limits of Knowledge, Science, Science 2.0 on 12 11th, 2009 | View Comments
How do we know what we know? If you grew up like me you were brought up in a culture based on a dualist metaphysics, one that asserts that there is an objective reality outside of ourselves (whatever “we” are) and that we know about it indirectly through our senses and conscious reasoning.  This...
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Convergence...
Posted by Rafe Furst in Agency, Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Computation, Cooperation, Crowdsourcing, Emergence, Evolution, Levels, Networks, Singularity, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism on 12 5th, 2009 | View Comments
As readers of my blog posts know, I talk a lot about evolutionary systems, the formal structure of cooperation, the role of both in emergence of new levels of complexity, and I sometimes use cellular automata to make points about all these things and the reification of useful models (here’s a summary...
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Truthocracy – Part III – MIT...
Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Crowdsourcing, Trust on 12 1st, 2009 | View Comments
I’ll call Rafe’s Daniel Nocera Nobel prize in <10 years and offer up that Artifical Collective Intelligence technology developed at MIT CCI will bring such breakthroughs that Daniel Nocera will be one of the last few INDIVIDUAL contributors to our inventive/discovery process.  Yes, they are...
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