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markfrankel18

The prisoner's dilemma, in real life - 0 views

kottke.org/...prisoners-dilemma-in-real-life

ToK Science prisoner dilemma psychology

shared by markfrankel18 on 09 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The prisoner's dilemma, in real life  SARAH PAVIS  ·  AUG 08 2013 You might have hear of the prisoner's dilemma, a classic example in game theory showing why individuals might not cooperate. But what you probably don't know is the name comes from a thought experiment. No one had ever actually tested it on real prisoners. Until now
markfrankel18

When are you dead? - 2011 SPRING - Stanford Medicine Magazine - Stanford University Sch... - 0 views

stanmed.stanford.edu/...article5.html

ToK psychology Science consciousness death medicine

shared by markfrankel18 on 20 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • A little more than 40 years ago, a partially functioning brain would not have gotten in the way of organ donation; irreversible cardiopulmonary failure was still the only standard for determining death. But during the 1970s, that began to change, and by the early 1980s, the cessation of all brain activity — brain death — had become a widely accepted standard. In the transplant community, brain death was attractive for one particular reason: The bodies of such donors could remain on respirators to keep their organs healthy, even during much of the organ-removal surgery. Today, the medical establishment, facing a huge shortage of organs, needs new sources for transplantation. One solution has been a return to procuring organs from patients who die of heart failure. Before dying, these patients are likely to have been in a coma, sustained by a ventilator, with very minimal brain function — a hopeless distance from what we mean by consciousness. Still, many people, including some physicians, consider this type of organ donation, known as “donation after cardiac death” or DCD, as akin to murder.
markfrankel18

Is Economics More Like History Than Physics? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Net... - 3 views

blogs.scientificamerican.com/...more-like-history-than-physics

ToK economics psychology Science

shared by markfrankel18 on 21 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • markfrankel18 on 21 Aug 13
     
    "Is economics like physics, or more like history? Steven Pinker says, "No sane thinker would try to explain World War I in the language of physics." Yet some economists aim close to such craziness. Pinker says the "mindset of science" eliminates errors by "open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods," and especially, experimentation. But experiments require repetition and control over all relevant variables. We can experiment on individual behavior, but not with history or macroeconomics."
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.
markfrankel18

In Defense of Psychology : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-conceptually-messy-psychology

ToK psychology Human Sciences

shared by markfrankel18 on 27 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • markfrankel18 on 27 Aug 13
     
    "There's a natural back and forth: we think about things a particular way, which motivates experiments, which in turn provide data, which leads us to refine and revise the way we conceptualize phenomena and theoretical entities. This dance between theory and experimentation is common to all science. In the case of psychology, it is a particularly young field. It's early days for the empirical study of many core psychological phenomena, including happiness."
markfrankel18

Welcome to the Age of Denial - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...come-to-the-age-of-denial.html

ToK Science

shared by markfrankel18 on 28 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Behind the giant particle accelerators and space observatories, science is a way of behaving in the world. It is, simply put, a tradition. And as we know from history’s darkest moments, even the most enlightened traditions can be broken and lost. Perhaps that is the most important lesson all lifelong students of science must learn now.
Lawrence Hrubes

Why Teach and Study English? : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...why-teach-english.html

ToK English humanities literature

shared by Lawrence Hrubes on 28 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The reward is that it remains the one kind of time travel that works, where you make a wish and actually become a musketeer in Paris or a used-car salesman in Pennsylvania. That one knows, of course, that the actuality is “fictional” or artificial doesn’t change its reality. The vicarious pleasure of reading is, by the perverse principle of professions, one that is often banished from official discussion, but it remains the core activity.
  • So: Why should English majors exist? Well, there really are no whys to such things, anymore than there are to why we wear clothes or paint good pictures or live in more than hovels and huts or send flowers to our beloved on their birthday. No sane person proposes or has ever proposed an entirely utilitarian, production-oriented view of human purpose. We cannot merely produce goods and services as efficiently as we can, sell them to each other as cheaply as possible, and die.
markfrankel18

Malcolm Gladwell: Do Genetic Advantages Make Sports Unfair? : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...130909crat_atlarge_gladwell

ToK gladwell ethics sports

shared by markfrankel18 on 03 Sep 13 - Cached
  • markfrankel18 on 03 Sep 13
     
    "Eyesight can be improved-in some cases dramatically-through laser surgery or implantable lenses. Should a promising young baseball player cursed with normal vision be allowed to get that kind of corrective surgery? In this instance, Major League Baseball says yes. Major League Baseball also permits pitchers to replace the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow of their throwing arm with a tendon taken from a cadaver or elsewhere in the athlete's body. Tendon-replacement surgery is similar to laser surgery: it turns the athlete into an improved version of his natural self. But when it comes to drugs Major League Baseball-like most sports-draws the line. An athlete cannot use a drug to become an improved version of his natural self, even if the drug is used in doses that are not harmful, and is something that-like testosterone-is no more than a copy of a naturally occurring hormone, available by prescription to anyone, virtually anywhere in the world."
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