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Lawrence Hrubes

Mathematicians and Blue Crabs - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...ematicians-and-blue-crabs.html

math science ecology models prediction environment statistics animals

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 03 May 15 - No Cached
  • The math behind these formulas may be elegant, but applying them is more complicated.
  • For instance, it was long believed that a blue crab’s maximum life expectancy was eight years. This estimate was used, indirectly, to calculate crab mortality from fishing. Derided by watermen, the life expectancy turned out to be much too high; this had resulted in too many crab deaths being attributed to harvesting, thereby supporting charges of overfishing.
  • Although a definitive cause has yet to be identified, one thing is clear: Mathematical models failed to predict it.
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  • Randomness is built into biological processes, so predicting a population is never going to be like calculating the interest on a bank account. The best we can do is use available science to make educated guesses about various outcomes. “The models we use are not universally predictive in the sense that Newton’s laws are; they are more like the weather forecast,” says Dr. Miller.
Lawrence Hrubes

Fighting ISIS With an Algorithm, Physicists Try to Predict Attacks - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ts-try-to-predict-attacks.html

science math human sciences SocialScience prediction terrorism social networks

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 20 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • And with the Islamic State’s prolific use of social media, terrorism experts and government agencies continually search for clues in posts and Twitter messages that appear to promote the militants’ cause.A physicist may not seem like an obvious person to study such activity. But for months, Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami, led a team that created a mathematical model to sift order from the chaotic pro-terrorism online universe.
  • The tracking of terrorists on social media should take a cue from nature, Dr. Johnson said, where “the way transitions happen is like a flock of birds, a school of fish.”
  • The researchers also said there might be a spike in the formation of small online groups just before an attack takes place.
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  • Both Mr. Berger and Ms. Patel noted a tricky question raised by the research: When is it best to try to suppress small groups so they do not mushroom into bigger groups, and when should they be left to percolate? Letting them exist for a while might be a way to gather intelligence, Ms. Patel said.
markfrankel18

Why the One Appealing Part of Creationism Is Wrong : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...t-of-creationism-is-wrong.html

TOK science creationism prediction

shared by markfrankel18 on 21 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • In the first place, science doesn’t involve merely telling stories about history. If it did, scientific explanations might not have any claim to a higher level of veracity than religious stories. The stories that science does tell have empirical consequences, and make physical predictions that can be tested. In this sense, all science is historical science. We make observations about past events, based on everything from data gathered in the laboratory yesterday to remnants of phenomena, like meteor impacts or stellar explosions, which may have happened billions of years ago. We then use them to make predictions about the future, about experiments or observations that have not yet taken place. To quibble about how long ago the original data was generated is to miss the point
Lawrence Hrubes

I Had My DNA Picture Taken, With Varying Results - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...aken-with-varying-results.html

TOK science DNA biology genetics ethics prediction tests

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 30 Dec 13
     
    "So I decided to read the tea leaves of my DNA. I reasoned that it was worth learning painful information if it might help me avert future illness. Like others, I turned to genetic testing, but I wondered if I could trust the nascent field to give me reliable results. In recent years, a handful of studies have found substantial variations in the risks for common diseases predicted by direct-to-consumer companies. I set out to test the tests: Could three of them agree on me? The answers were eye-opening"
Lawrence Hrubes

Visit to the World's Fair of 2014 - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...asi-v-fair.html

technology prediction future TOK

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 22 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 22 Apr 14
     
    Isaac Asimov's predictions, in 1964, of what the world would be like 50 years later, in 2014. More often right than wrong...
markfrankel18

What Economics Can (and Can't) Do - The New York Times - 1 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...what-economics-can-and-cant-do

TOK economics

shared by markfrankel18 on 16 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • It would seem that in situations like the current Greek crisis, we should be able to rely on economics to tell us which policies are most likely to work. But does the discipline have sufficient predictive power to play an important role in our debates about public policy?
  • The problems that we want economists to help us solve are more like predicting how leaves will fall on a windy day than predicting how objects will fall in a vacuum. Economic phenomena are affected by a very large number of causal factors of many different kinds.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC World Service - The Science Hour, The Medical Scandal Engulfing Top Swedish University - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/p03jdr3y

science prediction economics human sciences

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 21 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Predicting the Next Financial CrisisWhy do financial crises occur – and when will the next one come? In the past, economic theory has failed to answer these questions. In this week’s Science Journal Perspectives, economists, physicists, epidemiologists, climate scientists and ecologists call to establish a new early warning system to avoid future global financial crises. They argue that the methods used by scientists to predict weather, traffic or disease epidemics should be used to simulate the financial systems, which could help to avoid the failures we have seen in the past. Professor Doyne tells Jack how the analysis of complex networks could and should be applied to the economy.
Lawrence Hrubes

A world empire by other means - www.economist.com - 0 views

www.readability.com/...e1prrjxq

TOK language English globalization protectionism extinction

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 23 Dec 13
     
    "IT IS everywhere. Some 380m people speak it as their first language and perhaps two-thirds as many again as their second. A billion are learning it, about a third of the world's population are in some sense exposed to it and by 2050, it is predicted, half the world will be more or less proficient in it. It is the language of globalisation-of international business, politics and diplomacy. It is the language of computers and the Internet. It is now the global language. How come? Not because English is easy."
Lawrence Hrubes

Complexity theory and financial regulation | Science - 0 views

science.sciencemag.org/...818.short

economics human sciences SocialScience prediction

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 21 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Traditional economic theory could not explain, much less predict, the near collapse of the financial system and its long-lasting effects on the global economy. Since the 2008 crisis, there has been increasing interest in using ideas from complexity theory to make sense of economic and financial markets.
markfrankel18

What Is Economics Good For? - NYTimes.com - 2 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...what-is-economics-good-for

ToK economics Human Sciences Science

shared by markfrankel18 on 26 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • It’s easy to understand why economics might be mistaken for science. It uses quantitative expression in mathematics and the succinct statement of its theories in axioms and derived “theorems,” so economics looks a lot like the models of science we are familiar with from physics.
  • But economics has never been able to show the record of improvement in predictive successes that physical science has shown through its use of harmless idealizations. In fact, when it comes to economic theory’s track record, there isn’t much predictive success to speak of at all.
Lawrence Hrubes

The Ethical Quandaries You Should Think About The Next Time You Look At Your Phone | Fa... - 3 views

www.fastcompany.com/...bout-the-next-time-you-look-at

ethics technology

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 29 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • To what extent can we and should we aspire to create machines that can outthink us? For example, Netflix has an algorithm that can predict what movies you will like based on the ones you've already seen and rated. Suppose a dating site were to develop a similar algorithm—maybe even a more sophisticated one—and predict with some accuracy which partner would be the best match for you. Whose advice would you trust more? The advice of the smart dating app or the advice of your parents or your friends?
  • The question, it seems to me, is should we use new genetic technologies only to cure disease and repair injury, or also to make ourselves better-than-well. Should we aspire to become the masters of our natures to protect our children and improve their life prospects?AdvertisementAdvertisement This goes back to the role of accident. Is the unpredictability of the child an important precondition of the unconditional love of parents for children? My worry is that if we go beyond health, we run the risk of turning parenthood into an extension of the consumer society.
Lawrence Hrubes

BBC News - Climate change explained in six graphics - 3 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...60-8bc3-4741-99f0-2e4f76ca02bb

science models prediction climate

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 10 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Find out how and why the Earth's climate is changing
  • Lawrence Hrubes on 10 Dec 15
     
    graphic representation of climate change
Lawrence Hrubes

A New Form of Stem-Cell Engineering Raises Ethical Questions - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-synthetic-embryos-sheefs.html

ethics science biology life research

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 22 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • As biological research races forward, ethical quandaries are piling up. In a report published Tuesday in the journal eLife, researchers at Harvard Medical School said it was time to ponder a startling new prospect: synthetic embryos.In recent years, scientists have moved beyond in vitro fertilization. They are starting to assemble stem cells that can organize themselves into embryolike structures.Soon, experts predict, they will learn how to engineer these cells into new kinds of tissues and organs. Eventually, they may take on features of a mature human being.
markfrankel18

Sea of Japan vs. East Sea: The school textbook change that has Japan furious at Virginia. - 1 views

www.slate.com/...ge_that_has_japan_furious.html

TOK textbook history language

shared by markfrankel18 on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • he Washington Post reports that an “obscure textbook bill that elicited threats from Japan and drew busloads of Korean activists to the Capitol was headed Wednesday to Gov. Terry McAuliffe for his signature.” The bill requires all new Virginia textbooks to mention that the Sea of Japan is also known as the “East Sea.” McAuliffe promised to make the change on the campaign trail while attempting to win votes from Northern Virginia’s growing Korean community, who claim that the name was wrongly popularized while Korea was under Japanese occupation. It has predictably irritated Tokyo, with Japan’s ambassador to the U.S. warning that it could harm Japan-Virginia business relations. New York and New Jersey are reportedly considering similar bills.
markfrankel18

On the Face of It: How We Vote : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...-the-psychology-of-voting.html

ToK psychology human sciences voting

shared by markfrankel18 on 19 Nov 13 - Cached
  • In 2003, the Princeton psychologist Alexander Todorov began to suspect that, except for those people who have hard-core political beliefs, the reasons we vote for particular candidates could have less to do with politics and more to do with basic cognitive processes—in particular, perception. When people are asked about their ideal leader, one of the single most important characteristics that they say they look for is competence—how qualified and capable a candidate is. Todorov wondered whether that judgment was made on the basis of intuitive responses to basic facial features rather than on any deep, rational calculus. It would make sense: in the past, extensive research has shown just how quickly we form impressions of people’s character traits, even before we’ve had a conversation with them. That impression then colors whatever else we learn about them, from their hobbies to, presumably, their political abilities. In other words, when we think that we are making rational political judgments, we could be, in fact, judging someone at least partly based on a fleeting impression of his or her face.
  • Starting that fall, and through the following spring, Todorov showed pairs of portraits to roughly a thousand people, and asked them to rate the competence of each person. Unbeknownst to the test subjects, they were looking at candidates for the House and Senate in 2000, 2002, and 2004. In study after study, participants’ responses to the question of whether someone looked competent predicted actual election outcomes at a rate much higher than chance—from sixty-six to seventy-three per cent of the time. Even looking at the faces for as little as one second, Todorov found, yielded the exact same result: a snap judgment that generally identified the winners and losers.
markfrankel18

Time-shifting man predicts the future › Dr Karl's Great Moments In Science (A... - 0 views

www.abc.net.au/...3834436.htm

ToK psychology perception

shared by markfrankel18 on 18 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • "Time" is something that both philosophers and physicists have been wondering for about, well, a long time. And now, the neuroscientists have joined in. They have found a man who, when he looks at you, hears what you are saying to him before your lips move.
  • Now you might not realise this, but in terms of vision you are always living 0.3 second (or 300 milliseconds) behind reality. That's how long it takes between when the incoming light lands on the cells in your retina, and you get that full magnificent wraparound 3D colour sensation that we call vision.
  • We don't notice this delay in reality because we have evolved to be able to deal with this. We can anticipate actions or patterns through experience.
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  • So how come we normally see the lips moving at the same time as we hear the voice? Almost certainly, it's because our brain deliberately inserts a delay of about 200 milliseconds on the audio circuit. Now sure, there would be an advantage in being able to hear dangerous things, such as the killer kangaroo bearing down upon you that extra 200 milliseconds earlier. But all of us are a product of an evolutionary pathway that decided it was more important for us to be able to easily communicate with our fellow humans, than to hear the killer kangaroo that 200 milliseconds sooner. After all, we humans are quite pathetic as a hunting animal. We can't run very quickly, our eyes are not very sharp, and neither is our sense of smell. Our claws are silly little fingernails, and our teeth are not very good at ripping and tearing. But thanks to our amazing brain, we can organise ourselves into groups and so we have become masters of the planet. So, getting back to Mr PH, if the sound of the outside world was deliberately electronically delayed by 200 milliseconds, suddenly audio and vision were in sync for him again. And when the neuroscientists did an MRI scan on his brain, they found damage in areas that were well-placed to disrupt audition and/or timing.
markfrankel18

The Brain on Trial - Issue 5: Fame - Nautilus - 0 views

nautil.us/...the-brain-on-trial

ToK human sciences psychology brain consciousness bias

shared by markfrankel18 on 23 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Now we are regularly bombarded with new insights into how the unconscious guides our behavior. At the same time, neuroscience has largely debunked the idea of an autonomous self that has the final say in decisions; few science-savvy folks still believe there is a “ghost in the machine,” a little homunculus in the brain who is watching our perceptions or thinking our thoughts. Some philosophers even question whether the conscious mind plays any role in our thoughts. In short, present-day neuroscience has pulled the rug out from under the concept of “the rational man.”
  • If you are asked why you chose the violin, your answer is unlikely to be an accurate reflection of the unconscious competition that led to your choice. In effect, the decision happened to you. Your brain developed a “violin neural circuit” in the same way that fame makes some actors, musicians, and novelists superstars while others, for reasons that are never entirely clear, are relegated to obscurity.
  • Imagine that you are a juror assigned to the sentencing phase of a person convicted of first-degree murder. The defendant is a 33-year-old woman who has confessed to shooting her boyfriend in the head, then stabbing him nearly 30 times before unsuccessfully trying to decapitate him with a butcher knife. Initially she tells police she hadn’t been present, that her boyfriend had been killed by “unknown intruders.” When she can offer no evidence to substantiate her alibi, she then confesses, arguing self-defense and that her boyfriend had submitted her to prior physical and mental abuse. On a national TV news show, she predicts that no jury will find her guilty, yet after a several-month trial, you find her guilty of first-degree murder. It is now sentencing time. Your assignment is to determine whether the crime warrants the death penalty or a life sentence without parole, or a lesser sentence with the possibility of parole.
Lawrence Hrubes

Louis C.K. Against the Common Core : The New Yorker - 1 views

www.newyorker.com/...k-against-the-common-core.html

education testing tests prediction standards human sciences TOK maths math

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 01 May 14 - No Cached
  • “Students who already believe they are not as academically successful as their more affluent peers, will further internalize defeat,” Carol Burris, a principal from Rockville Centre, wrote in the Washington Post last summer, calling on policymakers to “re-examine their belief that college readiness is achieved by attaining a score on a test, and its corollary—that is possible to create college readiness score thresholds for eight year olds.” This week, teachers at International High School at Prospect Heights, which serves a population of recently arrived immigrants from non-English-speaking countries, announced that they would not administer an assessment required by the city. A pre-test in the fall “was a traumatic and demoralizing experience for students,” a statement issued by the teachers said. “Many students, after asking for help that teachers were not allowed to give, simply put their heads down for the duration. Some students even cried.”
markfrankel18

How Our Minds Mislead Us: The Marvels and Flaws of Our Intuition | Brain Pickings - 1 views

www.brainpickings.org/...daniel-kahneman-intuition

TOK intuition perception

shared by markfrankel18 on 23 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • One of the most fascinating examples of heuristics and biases is what we call intuition — a complex cluster of cognitive processes, sometimes helpful but often misleading. Kahneman notes that thoughts come to mind in one of two ways: Either by “orderly computation,” which involves a series of stages of remembering rules and then applying them, or by perception, an evolutionary function that allows us to predict outcomes based on what we’re perceiving.
  • There is no sharp line between intuition and perception.
  • Coherence means that you’re going to adopt one interpretation in general. Ambiguity tends to be suppressed. This is part of the mechanism that you have here that ideas activate other ideas and the more coherent they are, the more likely they are to activate each other. Other things that don’t fit fall away by the wayside. We’re enforcing coherent interpretations. We see the world as much more coherent than it is.
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  • The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence [but] of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct.
markfrankel18

Daniel Kahneman: 'What would I eliminate if I had a magic wand? Overconfidenc... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...aniel-kahneman-books-interview

TOK bias reason

shared by markfrankel18 on 01 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Not even he believes that the various flaws that bedevil decision-making can be successfully corrected. The most damaging of these is overconfidence: the kind of optimism that leads governments to believe that wars are quickly winnable and capital projects will come in on budget despite statistics predicting exactly the opposite. It is the bias he says he would most like to eliminate if he had a magic wand. But it “is built so deeply into the structure of the mind that you couldn’t change it without changing many other things”.
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