The key way that economists model behavior is by assuming that people have preferences about things. Often, but not always, these preferences are expressed in the form of a utility function. But there are some things that could happen that could seriously mess with this model. Most frightening are “framing effects”. This is when what you want depends on how it’s presented to you. […]

One of the most important tools we have to describe people’s behavior over time is the notion of time preference, also called “discounting”. This means that we assume that people care about the future less than they care about the present. Makes sense, right? But while certain kinds of discounting cause people’s choices to be inconsistent, other kinds would cause people to make inconsistent decisions. For example, some people might choose not to study hard in college, even though they realize that someday they’ll wake up and say “Man, if I could go back in time I would have studied more in college!”. This kind of thing is called hyperbolic discounting. It would make it a lot harder to model human behavior. But the models would still be possible to make.

But what would be really bad news is if people’s time preferences switched depending on framing effects! If that happened, then it would be very, very hard to model individual decision-making over time.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what experimental economist David Eil of George Mason University has found in a new experiment.

{ Noahpinion | Continue reading }

{ More art than literature, the new book “And Every Single One Was Someone” consists of the single word “Jew,” in tiny type, printed six million times to signify the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust. | NY Times | Continue reading | via gettingsome }

Since 1955, The Journal of Irreproducible Results has offered “spoofs, parodies, whimsies, burlesques, lampoons and satires” about life in the laboratory. Among its greatest hits: “Acoustic Oscillations in Jell-O, With and Without Fruit, Subjected to Varying Levels of Stress” and “Utilizing Infinite Loops to Compute an Approximate Value of Infinity.” The good-natured jibes are a backhanded celebration of science. What really goes on in the lab is, by implication, of a loftier, more serious nature.

It has been jarring to learn in recent years that a reproducible result may actually be the rarest of birds. Replication, the ability of another lab to reproduce a finding, is the gold standard of science, reassurance that you have discovered something true. But that is getting harder all the time. With the most accessible truths already discovered, what remains are often subtle effects, some so delicate that they can be conjured up only under ideal circumstances, using highly specialized techniques.

Fears that this is resulting in some questionable findings began to emerge in 2005, when Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis, a kind of meta-scientist who researches research, wrote a paper pointedly titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.”

[…]

The fear that much published research is tainted has led to proposals to make replication easier by providing more detailed documentation, including videos of difficult procedures. […] Scientists talk about “tacit knowledge,” the years of mastery it can take to perform a technique. The image they convey is of an experiment as unique as a Rembrandt.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

“I want you to know…” or “I’m just saying…” or “I hate to be the one to tell you this…” Often, these phrases imply the opposite of what the words mean, as with the phrase, “I’m not saying…” as in “I’m not saying we have to stop seeing each other, but…” […]

Language experts have textbook names for these phrases—”performatives,” or “qualifiers.” Essentially, taken alone, they express a simple thought, such as “I am writing to say…” At first, they seem harmless, formal, maybe even polite. But coming before another statement, they often signal that bad news, or even some dishonesty on the part of the speaker, will follow. […]

Their use may be increasing as a result of social media, where people use phrases such as “I am thinking that…” or “As far as I know…” both to avoid committing to a definitive position and to manage the impression they make in print.

{ WSJ | Continue reading }

photo { Marek Chorzepa }

Psychoactive Plants in the Bible

[…]

The holy anointing oil is essentially an anxiolytic-hallucinogen. The transdermal application of it led to its absorption and psychoactive effects, even in extremely low doses. […]

Myrrh is a resin that is used widely in the bible. Myrrh contains the terpenes furanoeudesma-1,3-diene and curzarene which are Mu-opioid agonists. This opioid receptor is the same one that morphine activates. This means that inhaling or absorbing myrrh incense can cause a drug reaction.

{ NeuroBrainstorm | Continue reading }

art { Francis Bacon, Portrait of George Dyer Talking, 1966 }

A life without feelings — unimaginable. Although emotions are so important, philosophers are still discussing what they actually are. Prof. Dr. Albert Newen and Dr. Luca Barlassina of the Institute of Philosophy II at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have drawn up a new theory. According to this, emotions are not just special cases of perception or thought but a separate kind of mental state which arises through the integration of feelings of bodily processes and cognitive contents.

{ ScienceDaily | Continue reading }

related { Where in the body do our emotions lie? }

jennyapples
Looks like they did a pretty simple edit job. I’ve done more retouching on basic portrait work.

ToHelenBackAgain
Then you’re a crap photographer.

jennyapples
lololol colour balance, brightness, levels, these are all totally normal things to alter.

ToHelenBackAgain
You can’t get a good shot in the first place, you’re the problem. Photographers did not always have retouching to fall back on, and they got some pretty damned good shots without it. You are advertising that you are unable to do that.

jennyapples
After spending 15 years as a photographer and countless hours in the darkroom, I am authorized to say you don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about. Dodge and burn, fool. Dodge and burn.

ToHelenBackAgain
Argument from authority, which tends to be problematic in the first place (look it up, fool), and also pre-invalidated by the very subject.
Dude, this is Annie Freakin’ Leibovitz. You’re not a better authority than she is, and she screwed up massively here.

jennyapples
Have I personally offended you? I’ve seen you on here before and know you’re not a troll. Are you just a massive fucking asshole, or what is your deal? My point was that these aren’t particularly edited shots and that they were fairly true to the original photos, so the bounty on the pictures did not serve any purpose because there was almost nothing to reveal. And when I said I’ve done more editing on basic portrait work, I clearly, to anyone who isn’t you, was saying that these were edited with such a light touch that even regular old portrait work requires more editing (i.e. not much).

ToHelenBackAgain
You’re just wrong, that’s all.

{ Jezebel | Continue reading }

This chapter might have been called “Introduction,” but nobody reads the introduction, and we wanted you to read this. We feel safe admitting this here, in the footnote, because nobody reads footnotes either.

{ via Other Sociologist }

Three computer scientists at Stony Brook University in New York think they found some rules through a computer program that might predict which books will be successful. The algorithm had as much as 84 percent accuracy when applied to already published manuscripts.

If so, it comes much too late for the more than 20 book editors who turned down J.K. Rowling’s first manuscript about a boy wizard named Harry Potter.

They said it is the first study to correlate between a book’s stylistic elements and its popularity and critical acclaim.

{ Inside Science | Continue reading }

There are many philosophical questions surrounding the notion of lying. Is it ever morally acceptable to lie? Can we acquire knowledge from people who might be lying to us? More fundamental, however, is the question of what, exactly, constitutes the concept of lying. According to one traditional definition, lying requires intending to deceive. More recently, Thomas Carson has suggested that lying requires warranting the truth of what you do not believe.

This paper examines these two prominent definitions and some cases that seem to pose problems for them. Importantly, theorists working on this topic fundamentally disagree about whether these problem cases are genuine instances of lying and, thus, serve as counterexamples to the definitions on offer. To settle these disputes, we elicited judgments about the proposed counterexamples from ordinary language users unfettered by theoretical bias. The data suggest that everyday speakers of English count bald-faced lies and proviso lies as lies. Thus, we claim that a new definition is needed to capture common usage.

{ Philosophical Psychology | via Improbable }

Time travel has captured the public imagination for much of the past century, but little has been done to actually search for time travelers. Here, three implementations of Internet searches for time travelers are described, all seeking a prescient mention of information not previously available. The first search covered prescient content placed on the Internet, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific terms in tweets on Twitter. The second search examined prescient inquiries submitted to a search engine, highlighted by a comprehensive search for specific search terms submitted to a popular astronomy web site. The third search involved a request for a direct Internet communication, either by email or tweet, pre-dating to the time of the inquiry. Given practical verifiability concerns, only time travelers from the future were investigated. No time travelers were discovered. Although these negative results do not disprove time travel, given the great reach of the Internet, this search is perhaps the most comprehensive to date.

{ arXiv | Continue reading }

But it didn’t take physicists long to realise that while the Wheeler-DeWitt equation solved one significant problem, it introduced another. The new problem was that time played no role in this equation. In effect, it says that nothing ever happens in the universe, a prediction that is clearly at odds with the observational evidence.

{ arXiv | Continue reading }

A high-ranking FBI agent filed a sensitive internal manual detailing the bureau’s secret interrogation procedures with the Library of Congress, where anyone with a library card can read it. […]

“A document that has not been released does not even need a copyright,” says Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “Who is going to plagiarize from it? Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t violate the copyright because you don’t have the document. It isn’t available.”

{ Mother Jones | Continue reading }

US scientists have performed a dramatic reversal of the ageing process in animal studies. They used a chemical to rejuvenate muscle in mice and said it was the equivalent of transforming a 60-year-old’s muscle to that of a 20-year-old - but muscle strength did not improve.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

Researchers have discovered a cause of aging in mammals that may be reversible.

The essence of this finding is a series of molecular events that enable communication inside cells between the nucleus and mitochondria. As communication breaks down, aging accelerates. By administering a molecule naturally produced by the human body, scientists restored the communication network in older mice. […]

“The aging process we discovered is like a married couple—when they are young, they communicate well, but over time, living in close quarters for many years, communication breaks down,” said Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics David Sinclair, senior author on the study. “And just like with a couple, restoring communication solved the problem.”

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading | more }

The good and bad things about stories is they’re a kind of filter. They take a lot of information, and they leave some of it out, and they keep some of it in. But the thing about this filter, it always leaves the same things in. You’re always left with the same few stories. There’s the old saying, just about every story can be summed up as, “A stranger came to town.” There’s a book by Christopher Booker, he claims there are really just seven types of stories. There’s monster, rags to riches, quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, rebirth. You don’t have to agree with that list exactly, but the point is this: if you think in terms of stories, you’re telling yourself the same things over and over again. […]

So what are the problems of relying too heavily on stories? You view your life like “this” instead of the mess that it is or it ought to be.

{ Tyler Cowen/LessWrong | Continue reading }

Features of fictional folk are more extreme than in reality; real folks are boring by comparison. Fictional folks are more expressive, and give off clearer signs about their feelings and intentions. Their motives are simpler and clearer, and their actions are better explained by their motives and local visible context. Who they are now is better predicted by their history. […]

In real life, coincidence happens all the time. But in fiction […] Your readers will refuse to believe it.

{ via overcoming bias | Continue reading }

photo { Mick Haggerty, Mickey Mondrian, 1976 }

Taylor argues that this view of the self forces on us the obligation to “live up to our originality.” Artists become high priests of this new religion, paradoxically modeling modes of individual inimitability.

But nothing has done more to substantiate this aspiration than consumerism. It has aspired to manifest the fathomless depths within as an endless plentitude of goods to acquire to express the self and limit it at the same time.

{ Rob Horning | Continue reading }

installation view { Cai Guo-Qiang, Heritage, 2013 | GOMA, Brisbane, Australia | + photos }

What if the universe had no beginning, and time stretched back infinitely without a big bang to start things off? That’s one possible consequence of an idea called “rainbow gravity,” so-named because it posits that gravity’s effects on spacetime are felt differently by different wavelengths of light, aka different colors in the rainbow. […]

“It’s a model that I do not believe has anything to do with reality,” says Sabine Hossenfelder of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

Research in recent years has suggested that young Americans might be less creative now than in decades past, even while their intelligence — as measured by IQ tests — continues to rise.

But new research from the University of Washington Information School and Harvard University, closely studying 20 years of student creative writing and visual artworks, hints that the dynamics of creativity may not break down as simply as that.

Instead, it may be that some aspects of creativity — such as those employed in visual arts — are gently rising over the years, while other aspects, such as the nuances of creative writing, could be declining. […]

The review of student visual art showed an increase in the sophistication and complexity both in the designs and the subject matter over the years. The pieces, Davis said, seemed “more finished, and fuller, with backgrounds more fully rendered, suggesting greater complexity.” Standard pen-and-ink illustrations grew less common over the period studied, while a broader range of mixed media work was represented.

Conversely, the review of student writing showed the young authors adhering more to “conventional writing practices” and a trend toward less play with genre, more mundane narratives and simpler language over the two decades studied.

{ University of Washington | Continue reading }

What makes Spinoza’s philosophy unsustainable in Goldstein’s view is the fact that “in its ruthless high-mindedness, it asks us to renounce so many passions. (Among the passions we must renounce is romantic love, which, Spinoza deduces, will almost always end badly…)” Any love that is dependent on something that must inevitably change and cannot truly be possessed — such as another person — Spinoza explains, is asking for trouble.

{ Salon | Continue reading }

George E. P. Box is famous for the quote: “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” […]

In my experience, most models outside of physics are heuristic models. The models are designed as caricatures of reality, and built to be wrong while emphasizing or communicating some interesting point. Nobody intends these models to be better and better approximations of reality, but a toolbox of ideas. Although sometimes people fall for their favorite heuristic models, and start to talk about them as if they are reflecting reality, I think this is usually just a short lived egomania. As such, pointing out that these models are wrong is an obvious statement: nobody intended them to be not wrong. Usually, when somebody actually calls such a model “wrong” they actually mean “it does not properly highlight the point it intended to” or “the point it is highlighting is not of interest to reality”. As such, if somebody says that your heuristic model is wrong, they usually mean that it’s not useful and Box’s defense is of no help.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are abstractions, these sort of models are rigorous mathematical statements about specific types of structures. These models are right and true of their subjects in any reasonable definition of the words. They are as right or true as the statement that there are infinite number of primes; or that in Euclidean geometry, the tree angles of a triangle sum to two right angles. When somebody says that an abstraction is wrong, they mean one of two things:

1. It is mathematically false. […]

2. Or, the structure you are applying it to does not meet the requirements of the abstraction. For example, in general relativity, space is non-Euclidean, so triangles don’t sum to 180 degrees.

{ Theory, Evolution, and Game Groups | Continue reading }

I think you are missing out on some ideas on complexity. […] What makes you think that something mathematical is comprehensible? You already invoked one simple form of incomprehension: undecidability in computing. […] As to a belief that the universe is not “mathematical”: well, what else could it possibly be? Many mathematicians define mathematics as the sum-total of all possibility; to say that something isn’t mathematical is tantamount to saying it isn’t possible. Since there is nothing else that it could be, by law of excluded middle, it must be.

{ Linas Vepstas | Continue reading }

Hmmm, no edit-button to correct my post. Some footnotes, then: […]

Box’s quote is kind-of the mirror image of Kolmogorov complexity, which states that a model is useful only if it is smaller than the thing being modelled, and, what’s more, that there are things that cannot be modeled.

{ Linas Vepstas | Continue reading }