What’s wrong with quant approaches?
You know the old story: when a celebrity gets to be Time Person of the Year, it’s time to short them. Obama received the honor twice, in 2008 and 2012 and look where that got him! Trump was Time Person of the Year 2016 so look out! In the same vein I notice that the Wall Street Journal now has a […]
Do trees have brains?
I’m sure you noticed (or maybe not) a little news item that deforestation in Brazil increased 30% in the last 12 months? So what? Does anyone care? Why should we anyway? There’s inconsequential reasons like forests create rain (through the action of emitting terpenes, inter alia) and stabilize terra firma. I have a more selfish reason; when […]
Social Science is the study of entangled brains: Discuss.
So here’s a turn-up for the books. It turns out that you don’t just get entanglement between individual photons. You can get entanglement between millions of photons simultaneously, all of them within a single object (although not necessarily so). Sounds like cods-wollop right? What am I, or the scientists who figured this out, smoking here? […]
Are birds aesthetes?
Yep, it’s true. Some species of birds can actually distinguish between Monet, Picasso and other painters. They can even distinguish between art styles painted by unknowns. Can your dog do that? Maybe that performance beats 90% or more of humans given the same task? So if you want to get the skinny, and confirm that […]
Maybe Alzheimer’s isn’t a Brain Disease?
So I guess you saw that latest failure of an Alzheimer’s drug (verubecestat from Merck)? Scratch yet another Phase III Alzheimer’s drug hopeful. Of 244 drugs tried out for Alzheimer’s between 2002 and 2012, only one was approved and it is of tiny effectiveness anyway. It’s got a 99.6% failure rate in this area. As you […]
Quantum economics – can 2 (or more) minds be entangled?
I just read “The Undoing Project” by Michael Lewis. You remember him? The author of Moneyball, the best-selling book about a new way to win at baseball. “The Undoing Project: is about the emergence of behavioral economics and behavioral finance. It focuses on the two key figures in the drama, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman and […]
Does noise cause global dysfunction in human mood?
Music streaming is hot. Everyone’s doing it. So why is it so popular? Well, the music is popular and varied, often relaxing. You can live in your own world. What’s not to like? Outside there’s a lot of hurly-burly and especially a lot of noise. Is music streaming a way to get away from the […]
Can the cognitive biases of the intelligence agencies be exploited by our enemies?
National intelligence has been a hot topic lately. That’s a bit weird given that I have been posting on artificial intelligence. Does national intelligence come even close to AI? Can we trust its analyses? OK so I have a tiny bit of first-hand experience in this. In my callow youth I was actually a junior diplomat […]
AI is heading in a wrong and terrible direction!
My recent post on AI argued that currently AI is not interesting because it’s really just more incremental thinking based on current, boring, paradigms, in effect party tricks (“AI – Let’s move beyond party tricks!”). Yep, I’ve seen the latest celebratory article in the new York Times about the amazing things they’re doing with Google Translate […]
AI – Let’s move beyond party tricks!
Right now AI is really hot. But to me it’s boring, showing no imagination. Siri still performs at the level of a very dumb 5 year old. Self-driving autos work but the tech is soooo incremental. Basically AI is all about performing party tricks. When will it get truly smart, even shocking? I am sure […]