Alex - The Emergent Fool

The Emergent Fool

More Fundamental Healthcare Solution Tha...

Posted by Alex in Health, Incentives, Innovation, Science on 03 8th, 2010 | No 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 | No 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 | No 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 | 1 Comment

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 | No 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 | No 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 | 1 Comment

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 | 2 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 | 11 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 | 3 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 | No 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 | No 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 | No 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 | 1 Comment

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 | 7 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 | No 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 | No 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 | 1 Comment

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 | No 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 | 4 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 | 3 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 | 3 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 | 5 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...

Education 2.0...

Posted by Alex in Alternative Institutions, Crowdsourcing, Education on 09 10th, 2009 | 2 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...

Bubble Trouble in Little China...

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