Alex - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

The Currency Crisis Is In Your Head...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Culture, Economics, Innovation, Investing, Politics on 06 15th, 2010 | View Comments

What in the world do I mean by that? Of course I think the dollar and euro are broken, but what’s the alternative? Gold? Maybe, but it won’t last. Tyler Cowen partially touches on information classification in his book, but does he make the link to currencies in their traditional...

The Myth of Time...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Computation, Emergence, Levels, Social Networks on 05 16th, 2010 | View Comments

Once again, Japanese “lost decades” or massive exodus into virtual worlds? Here’s the conclusion, but I highly recommend the entire post (it may be clear as mud, but you’re gonna get dirty down the rabbit hole): “Whereas we think we are talking to each other, we are all simply...

How Darwin’s Finches and API’...

Posted by Alex in Evolution, Interconnectedness on 05 10th, 2010 | View Comments

If you weren’t wondering about this yesterday, you are – today. You need to see things from the perspective of the gene: “These API’s represent a new indirect economy where business is conducted through interconnected services. Ramji: “I believe that we’re going...

What Would Tylen Cowen’s Portfolio...

Posted by Alex in Science 2.0 on 05 9th, 2010 | View Comments

Most investors with a long time horizon are advised to allocate a considerable portion of their portfolio to risky assets with low correlation to maximize the benefits of diversification. In “Create Your Own Economy”, Tyler makes a compelling argument that autistic “disorder” plays...

Algorithm Girls Gone Wild...

Posted by Alex in Science 2.0 on 05 6th, 2010 | View Comments

“Consider the phrase “It’s a man’s world.” As a quantitative observation endlessly repeated from within a homogenized culture, this phrase refers to the men in such a culture who have to be homogenized Dagwoods in order to belong at all. It is in our I.Q. testing that we have...

Marshall “Arts” McLuhan...

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized on 05 2nd, 2010 | View Comments

- “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” This is an intellectual heavyweight title belt fight of all time: Norman Mailer vs Marshall McLuhan (1968). This video is packed with in-sights. How much violence does it take to see? Paraphrased: 3:55 – At the peak of the mechanical age,...

Science is About Language...

Posted by Alex in Language, Levels, Science 2.0, Uncategorized on 04 24th, 2010 | View Comments

How many young and old minds get turned away from science, because they’re not “numbers people”? It’s quite detrimental to progress of individual and humanity to pigeonhole ourselves into such a simplistic understanding of discovery process and one sided relationship with...

More Fundamental Healthcare Solution Tha...

Posted by Alex in Health, Incentives, Innovation, Science on 03 8th, 2010 | View Comments

“Less expensive, lower-quality innovations abound in every economic sector—except medicine” This is by far the most constructive article on healthcare, because it clearly identifies the fundamental issue in healthcare – our internal conflict. Here are the excerpts, but read the whole...

Web 3.0 Will Probably Not Look Like a We...

Posted by Alex in Innovation, Interconnectedness, Singularity, Uncategorized on 03 4th, 2010 | View Comments

A way to browse the web using pattern recognition and abstraction as opposed to links. Is this how understanding and self reflection emerge in the first place?? Why not speed that up too! (via DataMining) TED Feb 2010 – Live Labs Pivot demo and the world beyond facebook: One way to put it, is to...

Three Worldmapper Thoughts...

Posted by Alex in Incentives on 02 5th, 2010 | View Comments

As most of you probably know, Worldmapper had dozens of charts that scale country size to various statistics. Here are three maps I haven’t seen in other blogs, but found interesting and would love to hear what people think about the reasons and implications (and of course how...

Peanut Butter and “Culture Jamming...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Asymmetry, Common Knowledge, Competition, Culture, Education, Government, Incentives, Innovation on 01 20th, 2010 | View Comments

Rick Bookstaber, author of “A Demon of Our Own Design” and Senior Policy Adviser at the SEC has hit the nail on the head as far as the bank reform goes – Breaking the Banks (via Infectious Greed): “It is not the case that the largest banks are the same as other banks, just bigger“ “The largest...

Balance the past with Zeitgeist...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Common Knowledge, Cooperation, Education, Emergence, Government, Incentives, Limits of Knowledge, Markets, Mutual Knowledge, Politics, Scarcity / Abundance, Superorganism on 01 9th, 2010 | View Comments

Please watch the Zeitgeist Addendum, and RIP: Remix Manifesto Kafka gave us The Metamorphosis. We have the power to realize our own humility. Being wrong is irrelevant if you learn from your mistakes and prevent systemic risk from such errors. How can we be so content with our wisdom if we continually...

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? ...

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...

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...

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...

Oprah Knows Why You Are In Therapy...

Posted by Alex in Uncategorized on 10 9th, 2009 | View Comments

Is it any wonder most people go through more than one relationship before getting married? Do you really find the right person or figure out that it’s a system? Hollywood, what are you doing to us?!: “(OPRAH.com) — Tricia was depressed. That was her only problem. Although her life had...

Black Swans Don’t Kill People, Bla...

Posted by Alex in Economics, Limits of Knowledge on 10 7th, 2009 | View Comments

Don’t throw the data mining baby out with the black swan. It’s what you DO with the data that creates problems, not the misunderstanding according to Taleb himself. If policy makers aren’t looking at this, they’re not changing anything: “So the central lesson from...

How Viagra is Like Your Mortgage...

Posted by Alex in Economics, Evolution, Government on 10 1st, 2009 | View Comments

A superb discussion of the need and risks of financial innovation. Evolution, complexity, simplicity, and why an equivalent of an FDA approval process may be just what the doctor ordered. Unfortunately critical thinking is probably still required: “We are told, particularly in the U. S., that...

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...

« Previous Entries