Rafe Furst - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Dualism, Epistemology, Invisible Etiology, Language, Science, Science 2.0 on 03 7th, 2010 | 6 Comments

I liken cognition to a hill-climbing search on the landscape of theories/models/maps that explain/predict reality. It’s easy to get stuck on peaks of local maximality. Injecting randomness creates a sort of Boltzmann machine of the mind and increases my chances of finding higher peaks. But I have...

$100,000 Reward: Y Prize...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Incentives, Innovation, Investing, Social Entrepreneurship on 03 3rd, 2010 | 2 Comments

Inspired by the X Prize, Y Combinator’s “Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund” and Kickstarter, I am offering a $100K prize in three parts: $10K for Crowdsourced X Prizes Platform Allows anyone to offer a cash prize for achieving a goal they want achieved Allows anyone to pledge...

Why Falsifiability is Insufficient for S...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Dualism, Epistemology, Evolution, Limits of Knowledge, Models, Science on 02 26th, 2010 | 11 Comments

In my post about The Process it turns out that I stepped on a pedagogical minefield when using describing the Anthropic Principle (AP). Two preeminent physicists had a very public argument a while ago in which one called the AP unscientific because it’s unfalsifiable. I will return to that in a...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Asymmetry, Causality, Complexity, Computation, Cooperation, Dualism, Emergence, Epistemology, Infinity, Interconnectedness, Invisible Etiology, Limits of Knowledge, Mathematics, Models, Networks, Science, Symmetry on 02 24th, 2010 | 12 Comments

Imagine a multiverse, infinitely infinite. There’s just infinity. Or if you prefer, nothing. There’s no space, no time, no matter, no energy. There’s no structure whatsoever, and nothing “in” any of the universes that make up the multiverse. it’s not even clear...

The Technium...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Autocatalysis, Complexity, Emergence, Invisible Etiology, Singularity, Socio-technical systems, Superorganism, TED, Technology on 02 23rd, 2010 | No Comments

Here are the slides from his talk. My favorites are 3, 4, 8, 10, 15, 19, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 35, 37, 38, 53, 66, 68. Kevin Kelly View more presentations from...

TED Prize Wish: Teach Every Child About ...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Education, Epidemiology, Health, Interventions, Nutrition, Obesity, Scarcity / Abundance, Society on 02 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

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Four Ways to Fix a Broken Legal System (...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Government, Incentives, Socio-technical systems, TED on 02 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

This was one of my favorites of the...

Decision Education: A Call to Arms...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Education on 01 27th, 2010 | 1 Comment

“Extensive research has shown that people tend to lead either from their head or their heart. Unless we make a conscious choice to achieve the appropriate balance, we tend to do what comes naturally and solve the problem from within our comfort zone” (from the Decision Education Foundation) Those...

Whom Should I Interview?...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Creativity, Education, Networks on 01 26th, 2010 | 4 Comments

I was just interviewed by International Mentoring Network and as a thank you for my time they asked if there was anyone I would like to interview. Anyone in their network, I asked ? No, anyone in the world. Whoever it is, they will try to make it happen. Now that’s an interesting...

Synthesis of Complexity Theory...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Asymmetry, Autocatalysis, Complexity, Cooperation, Emergence, Evolution, Levels, Networks on 01 11th, 2010 | 7 Comments

As careful readers of this blog will note, I’ve been obsessed with Alex Ryan’s visualization of the way new levels of organization come into being (e.g. atoms –> molecules –> cells, etc). In an attempt to complement and extend his model, here’s a visualization of how I...

Approaching a Cure for Cancer...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cancer, Evolution, Health, Interventions, Invisible Etiology, Medical Breakthroughs, Science, Technology on 12 28th, 2009 | 3 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...

“Social Entrepreneurship has Compl...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Complex Links, Complex Quotes, Complexity, Cooperation, Social Entrepreneurship, Socio-technical systems on 12 15th, 2009 | 3 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...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Cognition, Creativity, Epistemology, Language, Limits of Knowledge, Science on 12 11th, 2009 | 11 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...

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 | 18 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...

Welcome, Kim Scheinberg!...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Point of Order on 11 27th, 2009 | 1 Comment

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,...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Uncategorized on 11 27th, 2009 | 1 Comment

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...

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 | No 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 | 10 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...

Egyptian Mummies Yield Ancient Secrets o...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Epidemiology, Health, Media, Nutrition, Scarcity / Abundance, Science on 11 18th, 2009 | 2 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...

Investing in Superstars...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Incentives, Innovation, Investing, Social Entrepreneurship, Trust on 10 30th, 2009 | 54 Comments

Imagine you are in your early twenties, out of college several years and your best friend, who recently came into an inheritance of $300K cash told you they could think of no better way to invest the money than to invest it in you. Not the company you started, not as a loan, but invest it in YOU, as if you...

Complex Systems Events & Groups...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Point of Order on 10 29th, 2009 | No Comments

There are way too many “happenings” in complex systems research, theory and application to keep track of everything, but here are a few of note that came across my desk recently… AAAI Fall Symposium – CAS & The Threshold Effect – Nov. 5 – 7, 2009 – Arlington,...

Inoculating Against the Anti-Vaccine Mem...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Asymmetry, Causality, Common Knowledge, Cooperation, Epidemiology, Memes, Mutual Knowledge, Psychology on 10 26th, 2009 | 5 Comments

The debate over vaccination is raging (c.f. Wired article) and it smacks of one of those conundrums that is unlikely to get resolved by scientific inquiry. I offer the following hypothesis and a way out of the dilemma. Hypothesis: Vaccination is something that is good at the societal level but bad at the...

Daniel Nocera’s Gift...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Energy, Health, Poverty, Scarcity / Abundance, Science, Social Entrepreneurship, Society, Socio-technical systems on 10 23rd, 2009 | 4 Comments

http://www.vimeo.com/8194089 I just saw the most important talk I have seen in 300+ TED, Pop!Tech, etc talks that I’ve watched. And at the risk of hyperbole, I will say that the worst case scenario is that Daniel Nocera simply wins a Nobel Prize (and yes, I’m willing to bet at even odds that it...

Switching Government Service Providers...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Alternative Institutions, Government, Models, Social Entrepreneurship, Society on 10 21st, 2009 | 6 Comments

Ever wish you could reinvent the entire systems of government you live under without starting a costly war, revolution or having to win an election? No? Well, Patri Friedman has (wondered, that is). And so has a growing number of seasteaders, ordinary folks (and the occasional PayPal billionaire). Or...

Comments on Human Cultural Transformatio...

Posted by Rafe Furst in Agency, Complexity, Culture, Emergence, Evolution, Invisible Etiology, Levels, Superorganism on 10 15th, 2009 | 5 Comments

This is a followup to Ben’s post on Human Cultural Transformation Triggered by Dense Populations. Too many links for this to be accepted into the comments directly… In thinking about these questions, it helps me to remind myself of the difference between evolution and emergence. Evolution...

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