May, 2009
World’s Most Ambitious Crowdsource
Everyone has heard about the Large Hadron Collider, arguably the most ambitious and complex engineering project ever undertaken, anywhere. The purpose, no less ambitious, is to answer all sorts of burning questions about the nature of the universe, including whether the Standard Model of particle physics is valid. Given such ambition and high stakes, it would surprise most people that the LHC is managed in a collaborative manner with very little hierarchy. Essentially it’s a giant, crowdsourced science experiment.…
Don't Eat That Marshmallow!
Short but brilliant TED talk by Joachim de Posada. I love the economic point he makes at the end.
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Foldit
Has anyone played Foldit, the protein-folding game that is designed to advance the science? This Wired article makes it sound like Ender’s Game meets biochemistry! Sounds like the Poehlman kid is the protein-folding equivalent of Stephen Wiltshire. I love the crowdsourcing, the meta-evolutionary algorithm of it (to find the savants), and the implications for science.…
Answer to "Guess What Species?"
Yesterday’s puzzler was to guess the species being talked about here:
One became super efficient at gobbling up its food, doing so at a rate that was about a hundred times faster than the other. The other was slower at acquiring food, but produced about three times more progeny per generation.
The answer is……
Guess What Species?
Without doing a text search (that would be cheating), guess what species is being referred to in this quote about the evolution of competing strategies:
One became super efficient at gobbling up its food, doing so at a rate that was about a hundred times faster than the other. The other was slower at acquiring food, but produced about three times more progeny per generation.
Answer in tomorrow’s post.…
Methuselah Foundation
If, like Aubrey de Grey, you believe that immortality is achievable, or you are just intrigued by the possibility, you should check out this news story on The Methuselah Foundation.
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Amazing Feats of Memory
From time to time we hear about people with “photographic” memories who supposedly can remember every detail of something they experienced. When you look into what’s really going on though, it becomes clear that this is not really the case, and their capabilities are actually limited to certain segments of their experience.…
Are Realtors Really Making Too Much?
The Freakonomics guys have been on this rant for years, and until recently, I agreed with their logic. But the mounting evidence (in my mind) is starting to swing the other way.…
Newcomb's Meta-Paradox
Tweeter, Claus Metzner (@cmetzner) alerted me to this cool area of study with this paper.
Suppose you meet a Wise being (W) who tells you it has put $1,000 in box A, and either $1 million or nothing in box B. This being tells you to either take the contents of box B only, or to take the contents of both A and B. Suppose further that the being had put the $1 million in box B only if a prediction algorithm designed by the being had said that you would take only B. If the algorithm had predicted you would take both boxes, then the being put nothing in box B. Presume that due to determinism, there exists a perfectly accurate prediction algorithm. Assuming W uses that algorithm, what choice should you make?…
Peer-Review vs. Info Prizes and Markets
I have been having a 140 character discussion with Ciarán Brewster (@macbruski) via twitter. And while it’s kind of interesting to force complex subject matter into very few characters, it is limiting the discussion, so I will summarize it so far here and hopefully others can weigh in too.…