Bjorn Lomborg. Saw this guy do his “alternative” documentary on the Earth Summit last night on the beeb. Turning most global warming / natural resources / industrial polution / global economics received wisdom on its head. The individual mechanisms may well all be technically (scientifically) correct, but the long term emergent effects are much more complex, and all decision making based on such “scientific” information is entirely political. His (much challenged) claim is that well intentioned “conservationists” are typically calling for completely the wrong lines of action, whereas big bad US / Global economics / Dubya are probably doing the right long-run things, if not necessarily for the “highest” of motives. Wide-ranging issues covered in convincing pseudo-scientific style. Need to follow-up further links to this guy. Powerful themes around chaos and complexity, and pseudo-periodicity being mis-interpreted as trends over selected timescales (the Antarctic Survey Ice Core Records stuff – incidentally, housed in the next door office) Also the same lines around evolution and success of species and the effect of man on all of this. Magic stuff, [ post note ] but beware enormous quantity of scientific backlash against Lomborg since he first published in Danish back in 1998 – Notice however many of the counter-arguments are “statistical trend” based (Cf S J Gould). The Skeptical Environmentalist debate could be useful test-case for my thesis. When is bad science better than good-science ? – I wonder what anti-Lomborgers think of Wolfram ?)
Foucault – The Order of Things
Still reading – been busy recently – not too much time to research / blog, but still reading. Excellent stuff on language and taxonomies, and the organic complexity involved – all relevant.
Decision Making Chaos at NASA
Decision Making Chaos at NASA. Dr W H Jones at SpaceRef.Com (via Jorn). Interesting observation that “political considerations” force rationalisation of immediate tangibles to justify investment, even where these bear no relation to the real long term goals. (As an aside – the long term goal is apparently to get us off the planet – CF Stephen Hawking’s motivation.)
Cognition Research
Cognition Research. Noticed that Gerry Wolff’s (Bangor Uni) stuff on SP (Simple is Powerful) Theory is now being marketed at Cognition Research as SP6.1 aimed at AI / NLP applications. (Link added to side-bar and resources page updated.)
Newsweek Blogging Article
Newsweek Blogging Article. Mentions Blogger and includes quotes from Ev.
(Don’t they all ?) Interesting backgrounder.
Try this Bookworm-ometer
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Picked up from Blogger “Ivy’s Blogenspiel” aka “Ablogalypse Now” – entertaining and thought provoking.
Thinking with Meat II
Read the Apoorva Patel article (dead link). Think this is the same one “Quantum Algorithms and the Genetic Code” (tough going for a non-physicist). Anyway, first time, I had one of those WOW! moments.
Just like one I remember in schooldays when I came across that integral that links e, i and pi in a single equality – spooky how three seemingly independant irrational numbers can co-exist in a single concept, I thought (and strangely still recalled the impression 30 odd years later.) Well Apoorva’s ideas have a similar spooky trilogy – can quantum mechanics, DNA and information processing really be unified – could this really be how meat thinks ? WOW!
[The original “Thinking With Meat” link from Terry Bisson.]
Nobody’s Laughing Now
Thread on compai.nat-lang looking for predictive Markov Chain s/w to look for misinterpretation in the text of jokes, draws a humourous reponse from Darryl McCullough.
QUOTE
They all laughed when I said I wanted to build a joke-telling machine.
Well, I showed them! Nobody’s laughing now !
UNQUOTE.
Actually the post is quite interesting. (Strangely, Jim Balters threads on comp.ai all now becoming US Political flame-wars, not helped by George / Hoo Hoo.)
Foucault’s Semantic Web
Reading Michel Foucault’s “The Order of Things” (1966) first published in English in 1970, and came across his reference to “The Semantic Web”. Seems this is the origin of the expression ? A good read so far, about history and culture of language in classifying things. Interestingly in French the title is “Les Mots et les Choses” – words and things, pretty close to “word and object” (Ref Quine below) – I wonder how the translation became “The Order of Things” ?
Following-up google search on Foucault and Semantic Web I hit this interesting Philosophy Loft site at Centroid Cafe. Interesting content on Critical Thinking, Reasoning (rational, binary, dialectic) and General Philosophy, including a link to Sasha’s page (see side bar).
General Knowledge Machine Research
General Knowledge Machine Research. Link picked-up from comp.ai.philosophy
Also Generic Artificial Consciousness (GAC) and MindPixel projects. Unfortunately statistically based on the “average” mind – collecting concensus from web contributors – but interesting. Mindpixel is overtly competitive with CYC.
(Mindpixel’s featured book is Wolfram’s – New Kind of Science.)