tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5570217784118040722024-02-22T18:10:33.459+00:00When Numbers WorkAidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169816681060782288noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-62653826398792308842010-06-06T02:27:00.002+01:002010-06-06T02:40:08.395+01:00Sentences to Ponder"Modern humans often prefer to believe that the activities which they most treasure have no evolutionary function – that they were accidents. This attitude helps them stay blind to those functions, awareness of which would make their treasured activities seem less noble."<br /><br />Robin Hanson<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Evolution can provide explanations for so much. But we shy away from applying it to the things that really matter to us; stories, art, friendship, love...<br /><br />To move humanity forward, some people have to pay the price. Rationality itself is a version of the "crisis of the commons" where those who see rationally do not necessarily benefit in their lifetimes; they provide the tools for future generations to improve their well being. <br /><br />Humanity reaps the reward for the few that carefully and truthfully consider the sowing of the seed.<br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-10524588910942143812010-05-11T00:54:00.002+01:002010-05-11T00:57:16.659+01:00Sentences to PonderHere's an interesting thought:<br /><br /><blockquote>This is what makes me slightly cross; we have reasons to believe some of our mental faculties should have evolved to be truthful, such as aspects of vision, but there is no reason our moral feelings should have evolved to make us benefit others consistently, so it is dishonest of us to pretend that following them somehow will.</blockquote> <br /><br /><a href="http://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/">Katja Grace</a><br /><br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Although there's a healthy dose of self awareness:<br /><blockquote>As a friend pointed out, I am hypocritically motivated by disgust at others’ hypocritical motivation by disgust. </blockquote><br /><br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-73356329019980707622010-03-17T18:30:00.006+00:002010-03-19T15:32:48.134+00:00Should You Convince People to Give Up Religion?Early Sunday closing, over the course of its history, has presumably cost the economy untold (but quantifable) billions. A simple-minded (and yes, incorrect) estimate might be that we lose 1/7 of our GDP because we choose to shut down the economy for a day. This reduction of GDP will have led to a lower standard of living, which will presumably have resulted in a great deal of harm, including a fairly well defined number of deaths. Are there any other examples of easily measurable harm done by religion?<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />As a vocal athiest, I still struggle with the question of whether it's justifiable to claim that religion has been a net force for evil. Sure, religion is obviously incorrect, and that's why I don't believe in it, but I'd really like a more defensible reason for why it's the correct course of action to d-evangelise. Given humanities general lack of interest in truth, I don't see the fact that it's patently false as a knock-down argument; particularly if the person in question has built their life around their faith. Equally I don't see the converse as obvious, people don't simply have a right to be as stupid as they want, particularly when interacting with me (yep, that is referring to that).<br /><br />Interestingly, the fact that I can ask such a question (whilst still being a vocal athiest) demonstrates that improving peoples life by converting them is not my primary objective. If pushed, I'd have to accept that this probably means that the debate over the reason for the existence of life - and the entire nature of the universe - is to give me the petty little opportunity to signal intellectual ability. Feel free to comment to get in on the self-aggrandising party.<br /><br />[c/t andy]<br /><br />EDIT: Just to be clear; I don't think this is the most important or valid criticism of religion. It's simply an effort to move the debate from unsupported assertions, that inevitably lead to circuitous arguments, to quantifiable numbers. <br /><br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-28654701254532770692009-12-22T21:17:00.002+00:002009-12-22T21:24:49.592+00:00Ecology of war: statistical patterns of insurgencyI haven't posted on this blog for a while, but this <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7275/pdf/nature08631.pdf">paper</a> inspired me to. These guys have managed to make a pretty good stab at understanding terrorist motives by simply analysing the casualty data from various wars. Here's the blurb:<br /><br />Many seemingly random or chaotic human activities have been found to exhibit universal statistical patterns. Among these is human conflict: the size distribution of casualties aggregated over entire wars follows an approximate power-law distribution. But do the events within individual wars share any common patterns? Neil Johnson and colleagues show that they do. Using detailed data sets from a wide range of conflicts, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia, they show that insurgent wars share common patterns with each other, and also with global terrorism. They explain the size and timing of violent events in terms of ecological interactions between human groups. Their model is consistent with recent hypotheses concerning insurgency and establishes a quantitative connection between insurgent warfare, terrorism and ecology. Similarities to financial market models point to a link between violent and non-violent human behaviour.Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-24669814830127089622009-09-11T14:08:00.001+01:002009-09-11T14:10:56.300+01:00Science is Real...<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty33v7UYYbw">Here.</a><br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Sure it's simple, but they get it...<br /><br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-72778771839960954482009-09-10T15:44:00.006+01:002009-09-10T16:33:34.594+01:00Lady in Red...Red is the colour most associated, at least in Western cultures*, with power and dominance. Tiger Woods famously wears a red shirt for the last day of a major. Liverpool, Man Utd and Arsenal, the three teams who have dominated the Premier League/First Division in the post war period, all wear red. Most importantly England won the 1966 World Cup wearing red. But surely this is all just a complete coincidence?<br /><br />Apparently not, according to the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327232.400-winners-wear-red-how-colour-twists-your-mind.html?page=1">latest research</a>. It seems that what colour someone is wearing can measurably influence what happens to them.<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Under controlled conditions umpires scored close <a href="http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121389363/abstract">Taekwondo bouts</a> in favour of the red competitor more often than the blue. Football teams wearing red <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02640410701736244">won</a> more often than would be expected. Women were <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/95/5/1150/">hotter</a> when they were wearing red.<br /><br />Just stop and think for a moment how unbelievable that is. It's almost certain that olympic medals and league titles have been won and lost on the basis of a kit colour. Can you imagine a referee ever owning up to giving Man Utd (red) a penalty against Everton (blue) because he thinks red is a dominant colour? <br /><br />So what's the lesson from this? This kind of research reinforces my understanding that so little of our actual motivations are consciously accessible. It means if we truly want to understand people we have to dig deeper than just what they tell us. <br /><br />That, and always wear red to a date if you want to get treated right.<br /><br /><br />*[it'd be interesting to know if these finding are culturally robust]<br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-45031600835297959672009-09-08T17:06:00.004+01:002010-03-19T15:34:50.893+00:00Establishing a Framework...To discuss the topics that we intend to on this blog we're necessarily straying into controversial territory. The problem is that, every time we have a discussion, we end up treading over the same territory with regards to the fundamentals of truth and science etc. That's why, rather than have the same discussion every time, I'm trying to build up a few posts that I can refer back to.Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-26497297114450286772009-09-07T20:58:00.005+01:002009-09-10T00:50:55.562+01:00Science is your God...I expected that my 'truth is...' post would be more controversial. After all, we're willing to debate art vs science or the technicalities of evolution at length. Yet the bigger question of 'what is truth' led to one single response. Perhaps people found it boring or trivial and obvious. Not only is this not the case, but it's implications for how we think about the world are staggering.<br /><br />I want to continue this series here by discussing the most commonly met objection - that a belief in science is no more justified than a belief in God.<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br /><br />Let's start with what is a belief and what justifies it? <br /><br />In general let's define a belief as an idea that reality works a certain way.<br /><br />We know from our understanding of <a href="http://numberino.blogspot.com/2009/09/test-post_01.html">truth</a> that the correspondence to reality is all important as far as keeping our beliefs honest. Reality is a certain way and truth is how close our mental model is to reality. We test this difference via making a prediction of an outcome then observing how close what we measure is to what we predicted. This is the scientific method. <br /><br />When it's stated this way it quickly becomes clear that the accuracy of a belief - it's correspondence with reality - can soon be tested. To understand the difference between the scientific way of thinking and the religious let's take two examples - I believe that gravity follows the inverse square law and I also might believe that when I pray God cures people (i don't but let's follow the argument that got me to my current position).<br /><br />Let's design experiments to test these beliefs. To test gravity I might stand on top of a tower and drop a ball, timing how long it takes to fall. Then I can take a completely different situation where my theory still claims to apply. I can measure the distances and speeds of the planets in the solar system. <br /><br />It's completely astounding that we can apply the same law to both these situations but that's what we predicted and, of supreme importance, it's what our experiments show us. Conclusion - it's an extremely accurate and general belief.<br /><br />My belief that God cures people when I pray is also measurable. I get together two groups of people and pray for one. It's easy to observe that when i do this it makes very little difference whether the person was in the praying or non-praying group. Both group die and survive equally. Since this is in direct opposition to our predictions it leads us to conclude that it's an inaccurate belief*.<br /><br />This is the crux of the debate. It's possible to label both the 'inverse square law of gravity' and 'prayer as healing' as beliefs but this linguistic trick does Newton a massive disservice. One is a belief that is supported by a huge amount of evidence. The other is a belief that is contradicted by all the available evidence. It's disingenuous to label both statements as beliefs because they correspond to very different approximations to the truth. Let's simply agree to label one as a fact** and the other as bullshit. <br /><br />It's this correspondence to reality that allows us separate science and religion. Imagine an alien race from the opposite side of the galaxy - however different their anatomy, their society, their values and their religion, I guaran-DAMN-tee that they still know the inverse square law***. And that's got to count for something.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*People will try to weasel out of this conclusion in so many ways. If you immediately jump to try to find ways out for prayer, please think all the details through. Do you really think that I can control who God can and can't heal by choosing to monitor their survival outcomes?<br />**I realise that this implies that a fact is not a certainty and can be slightly inaccurate. But since we can never provably attain the complete truth, a prediction supported by a huge body of evidence is as close to 'fact' as we can ever get. So we may as well label it as such.<br />***I'm aware of general relativity. How science builds on itself is the next but one post in this series. <br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-3437341866184473782009-09-02T16:54:00.030+01:002009-09-02T23:57:47.689+01:00God/Atheist Delusions or Both?In today's climate, you're either religious or atheist. The debate has been polarised from shades of grey to black and white. The past few years, there has been an explosion of best sellers by the anti-God squad, namely Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Philip Pullman, Daniel Dennett and others. They have somewhat managed to claim both the moral and intellectual high grounds. On the other side, you have the religious gang, with prominent advocates like David Bentley Hart, Peter Harrison, Francis Collins and others. They fight back fiercely with direct critiques towards the anti-God squad members. Other than being entertaining, these very vocal opinions, together with the perceived dichotomy between religion and science, polarise the world on a level that has never been seen in history. <div><br /></div><div><span class="fullpost"></span></div><div><span class="fullpost"><div>So what is the point of this blog posting. Have I gone mad and think that a blog would miraculously resolve the conflict between the two? Well, you will find out towards the end. For now, I would like to attempt to paint a more greyish picture instead of this absolute black and white one which currently sits in everyone's mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>The biggest gap between religion and science is how each apprehend reality. Both science and religion offer a version of reality. The evolutionary biologist, David Sloan Wilson, in my opinion, makes an excellent case for the persistence of religious practices in our post-enlightenment era. He proposes two types of realism, factual realism which arises through scientific or rational enquiry, and practical realism which is based on interpretation of experiences and it gives rise to adaptation. So religious belief is not detached from reality, in fact, it is "intimately connected to reality by motivating behaviours that are adaptive in the real world." He says,</div><div><br /></div><div><div>"Rationality is not the gold standard against all other forms of thought are to be judged. Adaptation is the gold standard against which rationality must be judged...The well-adapted mind is ultimately an organ of survival and reproduction. If there is a trade-off between the two forms of realism, such that our beliefs can become more adaptive only by becoming factually less true, then the factual realism will be the loser every time... Factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective."</div><div><br /></div><div>To illustrate this, imagine Marc and IQ are of the same species, competing for the same resources etc. However the resources is only enough for one. Marc, through scientific endeavour, comes to the conclusion that IQ is of the same species, competing for the same food, the food is only enough for one, hence he needs to eliminate IQ blah blah blah. IQ on the other hand simply sees Marc as an evil demon. IQ's belief motivates her to defeat this demon at all cost. So even thought it is factually wrong, IQ will have an upper hand in survival. This is a very simplified example. In real life, factual and practical realism are intertwined. It is not hard to see that practical realism must be anchored in factual realism to remain practical over the long term. In any case, whichever one that gives an edge for survival will be the preferred choice.</div><div><br /></div><div>One strong argument atheists put forward is that religion is like "mind virus", in addition to preventing rational thinking, it instigates atrocities. Indeed, throughout history, horrific acts are stemmed from ideologies, but not only from religion, there is also Nazism, Communism, Racism etc. Even in the animal world, there are conflicts between different wolf packs, gorilla troops and many others. They don't have religion.</div><div><br /></div><div>Many of the critiques towards atheists' arguments are no longer "God-based", like back in the 16th, 17th century. On the contrary, pro religion or neutral scholars are able to argue their cases through progress in philosophy and profound understanding of social anthropology which is lacking in a lot of the atheists' arguments.</div><div><br /></div><div>I did promise earlier on to reveal the answer of whether I'm mad or not. You must already have the answer (with the addition of being an idiot as well). Sure, the conflict between science and religion may not be easily resolved. However, denouncing religion should not be a path a truly liberal mind should embark on either. I cannot help but admire and fascinated by the human mind, which I'm sure it is a view shared by many here. Why don't we use the vehicle of religion, a proper, objective study of religion to help us unlock this knowledge? </div></div></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-2558296643505601032009-09-02T15:30:00.002+01:002009-09-02T15:38:54.511+01:00Thinking about Utility...Here's a post by <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/kn/torture_vs_dust_specks/">Eliezer Yudkowsky</a> that I've been thinking about today:<br /><br />"What's the worst that can happen?" goes the optimistic saying. It's probably a bad question to ask anyone with a creative imagination. Let's consider the problem on an individual level: it's not really the worst that can happen, but would nonetheless be fairly bad, if you were horribly tortured for a number of years. This is one of the worse things that can realistically happen to one person in today's world.<br /><br />What's the least bad, bad thing that can happen? Well, suppose a dust speck floated into your eye and irritated it just a little, for a fraction of a second, barely enough to make you notice before you blink and wipe away the dust speck.<br /><br />For our next ingredient, we need a large number. Let's use 3^^^3, written in Knuth's up-arrow notation:<br /><br />3^3 = 27.<br />3^^3 = (3^(3^3)) = 3^27 = 7625597484987.<br />3^^^3 = (3^^(3^^3)) = 3^^7625597484987 = (3^(3^(3^(... 7625597484987 times ...)))).<br />3^^^3 is an exponential tower of 3s which is 7,625,597,484,987 layers tall. You start with 1; raise 3 to the power of 1 to get 3; raise 3 to the power of 3 to get 27; raise 3 to the power of 27 to get 7625597484987; raise 3 to the power of 7625597484987 to get a number much larger than the number of atoms in the universe, but which could still be written down in base 10, on 100 square kilometers of paper; then raise 3 to that power; and continue until you've exponentiated 7625597484987 times. That's 3^^^3. It's the smallest simple inconceivably huge number I know.<br /><br />Now here's the moral dilemma. If neither event is going to happen to you personally, but you still had to choose one or the other:<br /><br />Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?<br /><br />I think the answer is obvious. How about you?Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-43383798257229670352009-09-01T02:07:00.003+01:002009-09-01T03:25:51.423+01:00Truth is...?The question of the nature of truth is extremely confused. People from all walks of life claim to have a monopoly on truth; priests, gurus, artists and scientists. But what does truth mean and how can we approach it in our lives?<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />I think it's fair to say that religious truth comes in the form of edicts from a higher power. Artistic truth (and I'm no expert here) tends to be more concerned with an exploration of human nature. The problem is that these definitions don't really hold fast under scrutiny. Even within one religion the 'truths' are often contradictory, never mind if we simultaneously try to take all the worlds religions seriously. Truth through art is a subject that is being debated elsewhere on this blog but I think we'd all agree that it's certainly not rigourously defined. How about we attempt our own definition of truth with which we can later return to these troublesome situations?<br /><br />Let's start with a toy example; we're given ten different maps of London. How can we tell which map is true? It's simple - we test them. If we get from where we start to where we want to go with only one of the maps, then we know that particular map is a truer representation of reality than the rest. Obviously we'd have to repeat this for as many journeys as possible to make sure that the first test journey wasn't a fluke.<br /><br />And that's all truth is - reality exists in a certain way and you have a model of it in your brain. The accuracy of correspondence between the model in your brain and reality itself is a measure of the truth of your model. How to improve the degree of truth in your model is a complicated question since humans have a number of intrinsic biases that prevent us from seeing reality as it is (this is a fascinating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases">page</a>).<br /><br />The general way to beat these biases is the to use scientific method. In a loose sense the scientific method simply dictates that you should make as strong a prediction as you can about a particular event and then perform an experiment to test whether your prediction was correct. If you correctly predicted the outcome (within the experiments degree of accuracy) then you can say that your theory has some amount of truth to it.<br /><br />The map metaphor also clarifies why the scientific method works - the journeys that we take to test our maps are the perfect analogies of scientific experiments we make to test our theories.<br /><br />Since we can never prove that our model exactly corresponds to reality, we can never say that we've reached the absolute truth. We can however, have a scale of truth; if I can more accurately predict the outcome of an event than you can then we can say that my model is truer. That's why it's a joke to compare science and religion in their quests for truth. Compare the accuracy of scientific predictions to those of any of the worlds religions and you'll soon see where the understanding lies.<br /><br />It isn't surprising why this is the case either. Take a normal person and ask him to make a map of London by walking the streets and he'll probably do a fairly poor job, but you'd get somewhere near where you want to go when following it. Take even a complete genius and lock him in a room in Rome and ask him to make a map of London and it will be utterly useless. Religion locks thinkers into dark rooms and asks them to make maps; science demands that they explore the streets themselves.<br /><br />This is why I don't really understand what people are referring to when they say to me "there's other ways to think that aren't purely scientific". I can see that it's true - there are other ways - but the scientific method only really requires that your beliefs correspond as closely as possible to reality. This seems to mean that the other ways of thinking must be defined as 'your beliefs do not have to correspond to reality'. Whilst that's an extremely easy criteria to fulfil I'm not sure that it's a very useful way to think.<br /><br /><br /><br />These ideas are immeasurably influenced by both David Deutsch and Eliezer Yudkowsky.<br /><br />[c/t to Andy for the discussions]<br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-89903403913090567392009-08-27T21:31:00.006+01:002009-09-01T02:13:59.720+01:00Emulating WindowsBill Gates and Richard Branson are often held up as examples of success to emulate. The success is undeniable, but is emulation possible or even desirable?<br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Countless business books, including the inspiration for this post, look at examples of successful people as a way to understand the makings of that success. What is often overlooked in these tomes is that they are post-selecting their sample - they ask people what constitutes success conditional on someone already being successful. The first question is how much they know or will tell about the causes of their success.<br /><br />This comes down to a couple of factors; there's the influence of chance (see Fooled by Randomness) and the problem of signalling. Let's face facts; had Bill Gates not gone to one of the few schools in the world with computer access in the early seventies Microsoft could never have existed (see Outliers). Even if someone knows the true causes of their success, since they aren't tied in any way to the outcomes of their advice (and may even feel a slight pressure not to reveal their secrets) the interviewee will almost certainly tell a pretty story that bears no relevance to the truth.<br /><br />Both these questions are extremely important but I see the answers as simple; people don't tell the truth about what they know, and what they 'know' has a fairly limited correlation to what happened. That's why I rarely read business books and why everyone should be extremely suspicious of their advice.<br /><br />What I think is a larger question is whether society should even consider holding these people as ideals. Why? Well it lies in the average harm done to people who try to emulate them. The Branson/Gates level extreme success is undoubtedly due to a confluence of chance and risk taking behaviour. You have to take the risks to make the most of an opportunity. But this brushes under the carpet all the other poor suckers who took the risk but for whom things didn't work out. I'd like to see some reliable statistics comparing people who took Branson/Gates risks but didn't make it. Then we could truly get an idea of whether the risk taking is actually a desirable trait in a modern society.<br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-72090607360610991852009-08-27T21:26:00.006+01:002009-08-27T21:57:27.254+01:00Regular PostingAs an administrative matter, I intend to start posting regularly twice a week; Mondays and Thursdays. Hopefully between Aida and IQ we'll be able to fill in the other week days.Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-83999031432365555852009-08-25T11:41:00.006+01:002009-09-01T02:28:26.352+01:00Alpha male"Alpha male" - a term originally coined for depicting the leader of a wolf pack, turns out to be an inaccurate and faulty view of the "biological and social role" of the animal (<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2009/08/no_more_alpha_male.php">here</a>).<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Researchers now have understood that wolf packs in natural settings are merely family groups formed exactly the same way as human families are formed. This alpha male phenomena only occurs in artificially built groups such as putting captivated wolves from various places together. This new finding appears to be a closer analogy to how our human society organises itself. Families equating to packs and when males (and female) are being put together in an artificial setting, like a work place, an alpha male/female emerges. For that reason, even though science has proved to work, the terminology can stay.<br /><br />To finish on a lighter note, whilst googling what definitions people have given to the term "alpha male", I came across a few rather amusing interpretations.<br /><br />"...who seems most at ease with women and can essentially marry or date any woman of his choice...who join math teams or play chess at lunch are usually the beta males and may be thought less attractive by girls. It should be noted that "nerds" are becoming increasingly popular. As long-term mates or boyfriends, they stereortypically on average tend to be nicer and more respectful to girls..."<br /><br />"...being cocky and teasing a woman a little can get past her initial, 'Is this just another loser guy?' screening tests..."<br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-61082050958640396382009-08-24T14:34:00.014+01:002009-09-01T02:25:42.233+01:00"Art is the lie that reveals the truth." -PicassoI've been fascinated by <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html">Ramachandran</a>, both the scientist and the man, for a while now. His current fMRI experiments are an attempt to find out what exactly it is that visual art does to the brain, that kitsch doesn't. On the other hand, he cannot remember his wife's birthday after 22 years of marriage (according to an <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_colapinto">article</a> from The New Yorker).<br /><br />A great overview of directions of inquiry in neuroaesthetics can be found <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200907/unlocking-the-mysteries-the-artistic-mind">here</a>.<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br />In summary, this group of neuroscientists believe that great visual art both condenses and exaggerates visual stimuli in a way which mimics how neurons naturally pre-process this stimuli. It seems plausible that the auditory cortex does something similar to the auditory stimuli. <br />Now why is it the case that the olfactory stimuli never really reached an artform status? The olfactory detection is more complex (structurally) than both visual or auditory detection. What about the part of the brain that processes the olfactory stimuli, is it less important and less integrated than the visual cortex, say? Does this mean that if dogs were creating art, it would be displayed in dining halls and not in galleries?<br /></span>Aidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169816681060782288noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-80337084454004051162009-08-19T00:33:00.005+01:002009-09-01T02:32:51.761+01:00The Generation M Manifesto<a href="http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/07/today_in_capitalism_20_1.html">This</a> is adolescent posturing. It's stupid and simplistic. Let's take an example:<br /><br />"You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce."<br /><br />Does he actually think that people sat down and chose "big, fat, lazy business"? Presumably not. That would show a complete lack of understanding of human nature.<br /><br />So what does he mean by this?<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br />Let's assume, at least for now, that 'business' is fat and lazy*. Even with these fairly naive starting assumptions we could construct a nuanced and interesting question; 'How did people with good intentions end up creating these seemingly fat and lazy companies'?<br /><br />There's a huge range of literature on why humans think the way they do, much of it completely fascinating. If I were to glibly oversimplify it I'd say that most of the problems stem from the fact that it seems that the human brain was never designed to find truth; it was designed to live in a human society. This leads to all sorts of problems, mainly due to people signalling values they want to portray to others in the society rather than facing reality as it is.<br /><br />What he's done in this post is to sell people a fictional story; one that will appeal greatly to them but contains no truth or merit. That's fine so long as no one tries to act on it. But as soon as things have to be done in the real world, reality bites and anyone who tried to find meaningful content in his words would be chasing shadows.<br /><br />The irony is that he's criticising perhaps the most stereotypically 'enlightened' generation, that of the 60's - the one that would have bought in to the sentiments expressed in this post most avidly. Remember how rock and roll was going to save the world? He's updated that stupidity by 50 years.<br /><br />Is it possible that the very reason things have gone wrong is because, back when the current CEO's were in their impressionable youth, they bought into exactly the same crap he's peddling here? By making decisions on unrealistic, fairy-tale versions of reality nothing will work out the way we expect.<br /><br />People have thought long and hard about their decisions to make the world the way it is today. I offer you the modern understanding of cognitive biases and behavioural economics as a way of understanding where they went wrong.<br /><br />Unless you can offer me a new explanation of why they made their mistakes, since both you and they are human, you're probably going to screw up in exactly the same way.<br /><br /><br /><br />*breaking this down would provide more food for thought. Businesses do seem to be overly fat and lazy but how, in a competitive market place, can this happen?<br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-28678371383759382072009-08-17T00:24:00.007+01:002009-09-01T02:29:20.696+01:00The Psychology of GritThis is in response to <a href="http://numberino.blogspot.com/2009/08/psychology-of-grit.html">Aida's post</a>, but since it became fairly long i decided to promote it from a comment to a post. That should particularly please anyone reading this on google reader. You know who you are. <br /><br />I find this all very interesting. I think that Aida's intuitions are quite correct. I think that for different problems it's certainly going to be the case that different commitment levels are optimal. How can we decide what level of commitment to use for a particular problem?<br /><br />In fact algorithms for exploring state space do exist and do have to quantify 'grit'. For instance, if we want to seek the lowest potential minimum of a state space, or for the more poetically inclined, the lowest valley of a mountain range, we could choose an algorithm that bounces around wildly (low grit) or one that calmly proceeds to the bottom of it's current minimum (high grit). Which is more efficient at quickly finding the lowest valley actually depends on the specifics of the mountain range - if there's lots of local minima a calm algorithm might get trapped, but if there's an large obvious valley then a wild algorithm will bounce around and waste too much time.<br /><br /><span class="fullpost"><br />This problem is one that computer scientists have put a fair amount of effort into studying. Take the case where you have to interview candidates for a job. In this thought experiment we're going to assume that you have to accept or reject the candidate at the end of the interview - there's no phoning back later. Under these conditions what is the most effective way to get the best person?<br /><br />It turns out that the best method (and i think that this is provably the most efficient method) is to interview the first 33% of the candidates, remember the best one, then offer the job to the next candidate who is better than that. The fascinating thing is that it's been speculated that humans use a similar algorithm when picking a mate. When we're young we tend to date various different people. This is the equivalent of the interviewing the first 33% of candidates. In later years, when we decide to settle down, there is some evidence that people pick the next person who is 'better' than the best person that they dated when they were young. It shouldn't be that surprising though, as evolution has had a whole lot of time to optimise these algorithms (aside: i wonder what the most efficient algorithm is for optimising an algorithm).<br /><br />I think that we can now rephrase Aida's question. What do the potential landscapes look like for various different decisions that we have to make in life? If we know this then we can use the collected knowledge of computer science to pick the most efficient algorithm to make our choices.<br /><br />As noted above, for any activity that existed in the pleistocene era (when humanity was evolving) you probably can't do much better than your natural reactions. For other, more modern problems, we can probably greatly improve on our natural instincts. <br /><br />Taking it one step further - can we quantifiably create a potential map of the outcomes of a decision*? I think that it should be possible to create some sort of restricted map of something useful - my first instinct is to try with the job market because salary is a nice indicator of depth of valley. I'm just not sure how to quantify distance between jobs i.e. where grit would come in. Maybe job adverts describing essential and useful skills could provide a route to which jobs you can jump between?<br /><br />Any thoughts?<br /><br />*(i guess this is now straying pretty close to game theory, although it may be a slightly different approach to that taken by game theorists, certainly when they solve the simplest of their scenarios - the only ones i'm familiar with)<br /></span>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-72780829376362257332009-08-16T08:50:00.003+01:002009-08-17T15:02:07.445+01:00The psychology of gritI've been browsing Jonah Lehrer's blog recently, and an article on grit caught my attention (<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/08/grit.php"> here </a>).<br /><br />Grit is broadly defined as the resolve to continue in pursuing an aim, no matter the obstacles or distractions.<br /><br />A quick afterthought.<br />How do you model "success" depending on grit?<br /><br />A toy-model could comprise a space of "choices" at discrete time-points. There is some reward-function which is parametrized for "grit" and it determines the probability of changing a "choice" or sticking to it. Choices lead to "outcomes" at the end of the simulation.<br /><br />To me it seems - the more grit you have, the less likely you'll be to optimize the reward function by exploring the space by jumping around a little.<br /><br />How one defines the trajectory from choice to outcome should factor in that success does depend on spending some time on a project, so the reward function is increasing in time for fixed value of choice.<br /><br />But still, if grit is very high, it seems that the initial (random?) choice will be the one trajectory followed till the end. Whereas for some "optimal" value, initially the space can be explored by jumping between trajectories.<br /><br />Versions of this kind of reasoning permeate mundane things like deciding how much to work and how much to surf for fun during a typical work day, but also i guess long-term choices such as choice of career, home city, maybe in some version also the life partner, etc.Aidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169816681060782288noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-25799447434162677532009-08-11T15:25:00.004+01:002009-08-27T21:56:49.886+01:00Modelling Men at a Urinal<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:11px;">Since we're keeping this quantitative how might you model where men choose to pee at a urinal? </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande', fantasy;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:11px;">There's basically a short range repulsion and a long range attraction - normalised such that the potential minimum is two thirds of the length of the room. This is a well known problem in physics as, for instance, atoms in a solid are attracted to each other at long range and repelled from each other when they stray to close. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande', fantasy;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:11px;">I bet this generalises to how people fill up in any circumstance e.g. in a row of seats or in a lift. Having had a quick play on google it occurs to me that the people who design tube trains and alike should factor in these considerations if they want to most efficiently fill their vehicles when the density of people is at some medium to high value. Are there any other places where it would be a benefit to improve filling density? </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande', fantasy;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:-webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:11px;">A wild idea to generalise this further might be to consider how people fit their opinions in a spectrum of ideas. Again there's the attraction of peer pressure (you want your opinions to fit with the crowd) but the repulsive force of expressing one's individuality (you want to stand out as an intellectual pioneer). Most psychological versions of experiments to test this kind of phenomena show peer pressure dominating. I don't think this invalidates the idea, though, as the construction of the experiment means there is no benefit to standing out from the crowd. Creating an experiment that includes a repulsive term to get a more realistic effect is a trickier question. There has to be two benefits; one which is gained through a correct answer, the other which is gained through being different. </span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande', -webkit-fantasy;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:11px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Lucida Grande', -webkit-fantasy;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap;font-size:11px;">(as a related aside i wonder whether anyone's tested whether personal space is room dependent?)</span></span></div></div></div>Marchttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07404115939721698803noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-557021778411804072.post-45140320263972581702009-08-10T21:04:00.002+01:002009-08-27T21:58:14.618+01:00About this blog<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There are probably well over a 100 million blogs on the web today. The one I'm about to start is not here for its uniqueness or profundity of its intended content, and hopefully not here (solely) to boost the authors' self-image. Somewhere in between, there comes coffee (addiction) and all the perks it brings. By which I mean, good conversation. Best at work, somewhere around 10.30 am, or any time after lunch. I have the good luck (or a mental cushion) to work in a building where there are few urgencies - no flying planes, crashing markets or crying babies around us. The few interruptions to the unplugged wanderings of the neuro-currents in the brains of us graduate students are of sentimental nature (although in the labs there's no mobile phone reception), and rarely cataclysmic events such as breaking mega expensive lasers and nanocantilevers or putting the wrong kind of transgenic flies to mate.<br /><br />So we have (semi)regular coffee times, and sometimes good things come out of it. Like rules for how (straight) men in toilets choose their urinal, when there is some distribution of other men around - it seems that a model which minimises the joint effect of wanting to appear self-confident (weighting 1/3) and not wanting to appear gay (weighting 2/3) describes the resulting distribution remarkably well. I didn't do the empirical research myself, but I was given the data.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Once, there was a brave new idea. For an MHC-testing based dating website. But although we went to an enterpreneuship contest with a business plan, nothing ever came out of it... until a year later, Helen Fisher, on Goodmorning America, is </span>dicussing the service with the founders of the brand new US company based on exactly the same idea. [<a href="http://www.videosift.com/video/Science-of-Attraction">Sigh</a>] </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So I thought I'd give the world a glimpse into this spooky and wonderful world of half-baked ideas, misguided beliefs and messiahanic prophecies. And we need you - the one who read this far down the page. You know who you are. The idea is to sort of keep some of these thoughts alive by putting them in electronic form and send the message in a bottle.<br /><br />Unless you've control-tabbed yourself into ted.com at this point, you'll be happy to know that this blog believes in the power of scientific method. We like numbers, coding and models, and we have a love-hate relation with art (both high and low). This is to say some (one) of us find art pretentious and manipulative aimed for seduction purposes, and some are budding artists and advocates of aesthetic self-expression.<br /><br />So there will be your usual dinner-table conversation menu of finance, neuro and behavioural economics and psychology, with a quantitative slant. So help yourself and I hope you'll have fun.<br /><br /><br /></span>Aidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169816681060782288noreply@blogger.com1