let knowledge tenderly caress you �or� bringing knowledge and wisdom to the victims

[kaws&effect]

Scientists have found a special kind of computer code used for error correction in internet browsers in the superstring equations that describe the fundamental laws of our universe.

It looks entirely unnatural, and physicists have no idea why its showing up.

[OCEANSECT]

^simulation argument, as stated in the video description, is one explanation

also i think its unlikely that we can make constructs that are too dissimilar from the natural world. so maybe these things he is observing have something to do with that idea. i'm sure you guys will find tons of examples to shoot this down, if any of you wanted to.

or rather, theres no reason that the "code" he is seeing isn't the progenitor of the code that we use in internet programs because its the simplest solution, and by coincidence or whatever, whoever invented it realized that it was the simplest solution.

or rather, because we exist in a universe that uses that "code" or because of that "code" then we can't really think outside of that box, and thus when pressed with a problem similar to whatever that code does, we invented the same solution as the universe uses. assuming that the code he found does something similar to what a web browser does, which isn't inconceivable.

we use the same basic idea for guidestars in space observatories, and i'm sure for many other things. if i understand what he was talking about when he was explaining what said code does in web browsers. so it seems kind of basic to our technology, which makes me think it is basic. measuring distortion and then adjusting using the measured distortion to get rid of it.

i sort of don't think we can create dissimilar objects as an extension of the idea that we couldn't create an alien intelligence, only a human one, because we can't really imagine inhuman intelligences. but idk if that really extends to cover this idea. thats my sort of disclaimer. my real disclaimer is that i'm an undergraduate art student so whatever.

super interesting tho.

[jackg]

[redX]

i found the point about athletes to be very interesting. and essentially he is right, we are selecting the best of our species to compete so of course they are 'mutants' because they have evolved in a way that makes them better than us in a certain way. but on the other hand these people are still normal in the sense that they can function as a regular human being no?

his last points about the influence seem like a bit of a cheap shot to me imo. fast food and chemicals? come on man, there obviously needs to be more research on that part but just speculating and throwing out those points just isn't properly thought through. fast food/highly processed food has been a staple in the US since the 60's (?) so having that kind of impact now seems highly unlikely imo

another point is the rate of increase in autism, he talked about the percentage increase and neglected to argue the point that many parents simply want to blame their kids weird behaviour on a condition or simply the fact that it is now easily diagnosed and more readily treated.

apart from that of course we are evolving, a good example are our molars that require removal because our lover and upper jaws are simply too small because the food we eat doesn't require large forces to chew (thus smaller bones and simpler construction of the jaw). also the arm has evolved too, in a study at the beginning of the 20th century in south africa a doctor found a statistical significant increas in the arteria mediana which is an artery that exists at the embryo state but usually vanishes. an explanation is the labor that humans perform now is primarily done with the arms and thus the arms and hands need a better supply of blood. also this artery can be found with people who have the carpal tunnel syndrome, because the additional artery requires a lot of space in an area that is already cramped with other muscles, nerves and arterys/veins...

[bfan]

on kind of the same note, I watched the documentary 'transcendent man' a few days ago. super interesting, ray kurzweil predicts that advances in genetics, nanotech, and artificial intelligence will basically allow us to create/become gods through incredibly powerful technology. I don't agree with everything he says but it definitely made me consider what will happen in the future given our rapid technological developments, and his argument about the exponential nature of a lot of things made sense to me. two things that came to mind as I was watching it were 1) the issue of economic influence on technological innovation is ignored, there has to be some sort of a market for these kind of products of whatever for them to ever become widespread and 2) potential advances in neuroscience might be so powerful that before this level of technological integration is ever realized, we will be able to reprogram the very reward pathways in our brains so that basic needs/desires/motivations are freely manipulated.

[jackg]

a little old but still so pertinent...... Edited August 6, 2012 by jackg

[e0d9n0b5]

curious incident of the dog in the night time.

i liked the other one he wrote more, about the grandpa goin bananas and doin work

[jackg]

Prospect Theory

The most cited paper ever to appear in Econometrica, the prestigious academic journal of economics, was written by the two psychologists Kahneman and Tversky (1979). They present a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk and develop an alternative model, which they call prospect theory. Kahneman and Tversky found empirically that people underweight outcomes that are merely probable in comparison with outcomes that are obtained with certainty; also that people generally discard components that are shared by all prospects under consideration. Under prospect theory, value is assigned to gains and losses rather than to final assets; also probabilities are replaced by decision weights. The value function is defined on deviations from a reference point and is normally concave for gains (implying risk aversion), commonly convex for losses (risk seeking) and is generally steeper for losses than for gains (loss aversion) (see Figure 1). Decision weights are generally lower than the corresponding probabilities, except in the range of low probabilities (see Figure 2).

Edited August 9, 2012 by jackg

[jackg]

anyone out there interested in/studying behavioral economics???

[tombrown]

that shouldn't be mind-blowing esp if you study behavioral/any type of economics. you can see that anywhere... ever been gambling?

[jackg]

I don't think its mind blowing, just interesting.

edit: also the idea that we feel loss and gain of the same value dis-proportionally I think is counter initiative and very interesting especially coming out of the neoclassical economic paradigm.

Edited August 9, 2012 by jackg

[tombrown]

don't want to derail the thread too much but i think one mistake you made was to assume we are rational in the first place. if you are still in school you should try to take something like experimental econ if it is offered.

Edited August 10, 2012 by tombrown

[jackg]

Apologies If I wasn't clear, I wasn't stating that I think people are rational, I think people are far from rational and modern studies of the brain suggest that most decisions are post rationalized after initially being processed emotional. I was simply stating that comparative to the neoclassical economics paradigm (which has been dominate for the last 100 years) the idea that a human being doesn't just maximize utility or that everything isn't just supply and demand forces is interesting.

[t3hcoke]

rationalization is the excuses made strong i.e. it may seem valid at the time but you know its not later...

e.g. actions speak louder than words.

[jackg]

Asymmetric Dominance

In marketing, the decoy effect (or asymmetric dominance effect) is the phenomenon whereby consumers will tend to have a specific change in preference between two options when also presented with a third option that is asymmetrically dominated. An option is asymmetrically dominated when it is inferior in all respects to one option; but, in comparison to the other option, it is inferior in some respects and superior in others. In other words, in terms of specific attributes determining preferability, it is completely dominated by (i.e., inferior to) one option and only partially dominated by the other. When the asymmetrically dominated option is present, a higher percentage of consumers will prefer the dominating option than when the asymmetrically dominated option is absent. The asymmetrically dominated option is therefore a decoy serving to increase preference for the dominating option. The decoy effect is also an example of the violation of the independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom of decision theory.

[wurm]

Probably saying this on the wrong forum but it's kind of sad how much marketers know about psychology (and take advantage of it).

[jackg]

^ very on point. i guess having a better understanding of the brains shortcomings helps you to combat the marketers manipulative techniques....

[jackg]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ12imRY0Og

[bfan]

wifi speeds increasing exponentially

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/138424-increasing-wireless-network-speed-by-1000-by-replacing-packets-with-algebra

parkinson's is transmitted from cell to cell

www.nature.com/news/misfolded-protein-transmits-parkinson-s-from-cell-to-cell-1.11838/

fmri studies find that psilocybin decreases brain activity instead of increasing it

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/17/1119598109.abstract

this dude thinks it's because consciousness becomes scaled down due to the fractal like nature of everything

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/upsidedown.htm

[sawyer]

ugh, had to look this guy up after reading the sensational title of this one, i knew it was going to be tripe

his training and ed in harvard is in government and business, not biology. so first of all he's talking outside his own area of knowledge. that was my first clue. i watched the vid and he plays fast and loose with the term "evolution" and his understanding of biology is--like so many others--a confounding of old, enlightenment stuff (darwin, taxonomy) and new observations made under the heading of "genomics". people draw on this past tradition and project backwards onto it the new stuff, and what results is often this messy, ambiguous mush. people think they are talking about the same thing when they say stuff like "species" or "evolution" but they are not.

the first error many make is to assume that a certain percentage difference in the gene code is what constitutes differences between species. this first of proceeds on an outdated "essentialist" view of species, and second quantitative measures do not reliably predict or tell us about the qualitative information in these genes, which is the stuff that really makes a difference. third, i will mention that not all genetic code becomes expressed in one's appearance. remember maybe if you had a biology class in HS or university how blue eyes are a recessive allele? you may have the genes for being either blue eyed or brown-eyed, but because blue is recessive, you are outwardly brown-eyed. even though you have the gene for blue eyes, you are not perceived as "blue eyed."

there is of course debate, but the smallest non-arbitary distinction between forms of life on earth is a function of its ability to produce fertile offspring (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/species/ section 3). this is probably the least controversial dividing line between one "species" and another, if we are to maintain species as a "real" category. so when this bro says "rapid evolution of the brain" it doesn't make sense, because the brain is not its own organism. even if the brain were to change around and remain in the body of homo sapien sapien, we'd remain the same species.

i will also mention his trusting of the data on autism. there is similar to observations of autism problems with trusting data on cancer. is it just that more people going to the doctor, being diagnosed, being observed, or is there truly a rise in the instance of autism?

i would go on, his argument has a lot of problems, but those are the most glaring to me. this and most ted talks ive seen are sensationalist landfills of idle fantasy with a particular fetish for technology.

[sawyer]

good news everyone!

based on the properties of the experimentally observed higg's boson, it's been calculated with a 95% confidence interval that our universe's electroweak vacuum is very likely metastable!

note that the paper came out in august of last year, and the presses are all afire following this panel yesterday, where some implications were discussed

[philosophiliac]

the higgs boson can bite my shiny metastable ass

[boy better know]

icelandic engineers may have found a way to harness energy from volcanos

 

http://qz.com/172642/why-volcanoes-are-the-energy-source-of-the-future/

 

http://io9.com/drilling-surprise-opens-door-to-volcano-powered-electri-1512303454