There is still controversy over whether war is a science or an art. Efforts to define war as entirely a science have failed. Scientific methods are essential in explaining what occurs in war, and business models aid in managing military organization, planning forces, and designing weapons. Quantifying has its place, but these methods are less suitable as one approaches the operational and strategic levels. A knowledge and understanding of war must be based on science, but its actual conduct is largely an art. Scientific and technological advances will not change that reality. The character of war may alter substantially, yet its nature in the Clausewitzian sense will remain. Seeking to make war simple, predictable, and thus controllable will collapse under the larger weight of such intangibles as the human factor and the psychological elements, which will always ensure there is a fog of war. […]

Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) warned that so-called mathematical factors can never find a firm basis in military calculations. In his view, war most closely resembles a game of cards. […]

The most dramatic changes in military theory that led to a more refined view of warfare occurred in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The major cultural trends in Germany were romanticism, nationalism, and idealism. German romanticism challenged the fundamentals of the French-dominated Enlightenment’s worldview. It was opposed to the French cultural and political imperialism. It led to the awakening of German national sentiment. German thinkers of the “counter-Enlightenment” believed that concepts of knowledge and reality are fundamentally false, or at least exaggerated. For them, the world was not simple but highly complex, composed of innumerable and unique elements and events, and always in a state of flux. […]

Clausewitz believed only in broad generalities, none of which consistently held true in the fog and friction of actual combat. […]

The principal psychological features of any war are hatred, hostility, violence, uncertainty (or fog of war), friction, fear, danger, irrationality, chance, and luck. For Clausewitz, a war was a trinity composed of primordial violence, hatred, and enmity—a blind natural force. […] He pointed out that the only situation a commander can know fully is his own. […]

Clausewitzian views on the true nature of war remain valid today. The human element is the single most critical aspect of warfare. Human nature has changed little despite vast changes in military technologies. Warfare is too complex and unpredictable an activity to be taken over by machines or explained and managed by pseudoscientific theories. Only the human brain is fully capable of reacting in a timely and proper fashion to the sudden and unanticipated changes in the situation and countering the enemy’s actions and reactions. The enemy has his own will. He can react unpredictably or irrationally.

{ Milan Vego/National Defense University Press | Continue reading }

If aliens come, we’re probably toast.

Whoever takes the trouble to come visit us is probably a more aggressive personality. And if they have the technology to come here, the idea that we can take them on is like Napoleon taking on U.S. Air Force. We’re not going to be able to defend ourselves very well.

{ Seth Shostak/IEEE | Continue reading }

related { Does the Pentagon have the right weapons to fight off an alien invasion? }

Quantum computer scientists believe quantum computers can solve problems that are intractable for conventional computers. It’s not that quantum computers are like regular computers, but smaller and faster. Rather, quantum computers work according to principles entirely different than conventional computers, and using those principles can solve problems whose solution will never be feasible on a conventional computer.

In everyday life, all our experience is with objects which can be directly simulated by a conventional computer. We don’t usually think about this fact, but movie-makers rely on it, and we take it for granted – special effects are basically just rough computer simulations of events that would be more expensive for the movie makers to create in real life than they are to simulate inside a computer. Much more detailed simulations are used by companies like Boeing to test designs for their latest aircraft, and by Intel to test designs for their latest chips. Everything you’ve ever seen or done in your life – driving a car, walking in the park, cooking a meal – all these actions can be directly simulated using a conventional computer. […]

Now, imagine for the sake of argument that I could give you a simple, concrete explanation of how quantum computers work. If that explanation were truly correct, then it would mean we could use conventional computers to simulate all the elements in a quantum computer, giving us a way to solve those supposedly intractable problems I mentioned earlier. […] Quantum computers cannot be explained in simple concrete terms; if they could be, quantum computers could be directly simulated on conventional computers, and quantum computing would offer no advantage over such computers. […]

Quantum computers work by exploiting what is called “quantum parallelism”. The idea is that a quantum computer can simultaneously explore many possible solutions to a problem. Implicitly, such accounts promise that it’s then possible to pick out the correct solution to the problem, and that it’s this which makes quantum computers tick. […] The problem comes in the second part of the story: picking out the correct solution.

{ Michael Nielsen | Continue reading }

The researchers were interested in how people jump to conclusions based on limited information. Previous work by Tversky, Daniel Kahneman and other psychologists found that people are “radically insensitive to both the quantity and quality of information that gives rise to impressions and intuitions,” so the researchers knew, of course, that we humans don’t do a particularly good job of weighing the pros and cons. But to what degree? […]

The key part of the experiment was that the participants were fully aware of the setup; they knew that they were only hearing one side or the entire story. But this didn’t stop the subjects who heard one-sided evidence from being more confident and biased with their judgments than those who saw both sides. That is, even when people had all the underlying facts, they jumped to conclusions after hearing only one side of the story.

The good news is that Brenner, Koehler and Tversky found that simply prompting participants to consider the other side’s story reduced their bias – instructions to consider the missing information was a manipulation in a later study – but it certainly did not eliminate it. Their study shows us that people are not only willing to jump to conclusions after hearing only one side’s story, but that even when they have additional information at their disposal that would suggest a different conclusion, they are still surprisingly likely to do so.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

Man texts, ‘I need to quit texting,’ before driving into ravine.

Researchers tracked Google keyword searches in the United States for pornography, prostitution and dating sites between January 2006 and March 2011. Porn-related keyword searches peaked during winter and early summer, a trend not seen with neutral search terms. Scientists have also documented increases in condom sales around Christmas week and during the summer months.

Smiles as signals of lower status in football players and fashion models: Evidence that smiles are associated with lower dominance and lower prestige.

A new study shows that in judging a person’s personality from their gait, you and I (and others) are likely to agree with each other. And yet our judgments would be wrong.

Hearing generic language to describe a category of people, such as “boys have short hair,” can lead children to endorse a range of other stereotypes about the category, a study by researchers at New York University and Princeton University has found.

Bilingual children outperform children who only speak one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to research.

Recent and past musical activity predicts cognitive aging variability.

Fruit flies offer DNA clue to why women live longer.

Cues to personality and health in the facial appearance of chimpanzees.

Are Butterflies Two Different Animals in One? The Death And Resurrection Theory.

Do cats in shelters acclimate faster if given a bunkmate?

The Double Dinosaur Brain Myth. Contrary to a popular myth, dinosaurs didn’t have butt brains.

MIT students reveal PopFab, a 3D printer that fits inside a briefcase.

War? YouTube app disappears from iOS 6 beta 4 as Apple breaks Google ties.

America’s funeral parlors rely on one man to provide the music. Welcome to “semi-spiritual” ambient music.

The Baltimore’s Twelve O’Clock Boyz, a hundred-strong gang who wheely dirt bikes through a city where police are banned from chasing them.

Point Cloud.

Tire trick.

Feeding seagulls laxatives ends exactly as expected.

New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that when people managed to reduce their lies in given weeks across a 10-week study, they reported significantly improved physical and mental health in those same weeks. […]

“We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health,” says lead author Anita Kelly. […]

The study also revealed positive results in participants’ personal relationships, with those in the no-lie group reporting improved relationship and social interactions overall going more smoothly when they told no lies.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

Research conducted during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens showed that competitors in taekwondo, boxing and wrestling who wore red clothing or body protection had a higher chance of winning. The effect wasn’t large, but when the statistics were combined across all these sports it was undeniable – wearing red seemed to give a slightly better chance of winning gold. The effect has since been shown for other sports, such as football. […]

The researchers had a straightforward explanation for why wearing red makes a difference. Across the animal kingdom, red coloration is associated with male dominance, signaling aggression and danger to others. […] The researchers claimed that humans too are subject to this “red = dominance” effect, and so, for combat sports, the athlete wearing red had a psychological advantage. […]

Another research group analysed data from a different sport at the Athens Olympics, Judo, but they found that contestants who wore either white or blue had an advantage.

{ Mind Hacks | Continue reading }

Top actors, writers, and athletes have agents, who help them find good jobs, in exchange for a small part of their income. But having an agent is pretty rare – why don’t the rest of us have agents?

You might think its only worth paying an agent 5% of your income for jobs where wages vary by large factors, and that most people’s wages are pretty much set by their occupation, education, etc. Not true, however. Consider: workers in the same occupation, with the same observable experience, school, etc. can easily earn 30% more, or 30% less, just based on the industry they work in. For example, in the auto industry both janitors and truck drivers make twice the salary of janitors and truck drivers in the “eating and drinking place” industry.

{ Overcoming Bias | Continue reading }

The nuclear-weapon states are the five states—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States—officially recognized as possessing nuclear weapons by the NPT. […] Most of the figures below are best estimates of each nuclear-weapon state’s nuclear holdings, including both strategic warheads and lower-yield devices referred to as tactical weapons. Russia and the United States also retain thousands of retired warheads planned for dismantlement, not included here.

China: About 240 total warheads.

France: Fewer than 300 operational warheads.

Russia: Approximately 5,500 total warheads: 1,492 operational strategic warheads, approximately 2,000 operational tactical warheads (not deployed), and approximately 2,000 reserve warheads in storage.

United Kingdom: Fewer than 160 deployed strategic warheads, total stockpile of up to 225.

United States: Approximately 5,000 total warheads: 1,737 deployed strategic warheads, approximately 500 operational tactical weapons (some 200 deployed in Europe), and approximately 2,700 reserve warheads (active and inactive) in storage.

[…]

Three states—India, Israel, and Pakistan—never joined the NPT and are known to possess nuclear weapons. […]

India: Up to 100 nuclear warheads.

Israel: Between 75 to 200 nuclear warheads.


Pakistan: Between 90 to 110 nuclear warheads.

[…]

North Korea: Has separated enough plutonium for roughly 10 nuclear warheads.

{ Arms Control Association | Continue reading }

How many times over could the world’s current supply of nuclear weapons destroy the world?

None. Zero.  As in: We don’t have enough nukes.

{ Quora | Continue reading }

Today the notion of all-out nuclear war is rarely discussed. There are concerns about Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programmes and fears that terrorists might get hold of a nuclear bomb. But the fear of a war in which the aim is to wipe out the entire population of an enemy has startlingly diminished.

In 1962, the concept of mutually assured destruction started to play a major part in the defence policy of the US. President Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, set out in a speech to the American Bar Foundation a theory of flexible nuclear response.

In essence it meant stockpiling a huge nuclear arsenal. In the event of a Soviet attack the US would have enough nuclear firepower to survive a first wave of nuclear strikes and strike back. The response would be so massive that the enemy would suffer “assured destruction”.

Thus the true philosophy of nuclear deterrence was established. If the other side knew that initiating a nuclear strike would also inevitably lead to their own destruction, they would be irrational to press the button.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

{ Horace Goldin sawing a woman in half. The magician’s secrets were revealed in the 1930s when he went to court to defend his signature illusion, much like Apple’s secrets are being brought to light in a patent lawsuit the company has brought against Samsung. | NY Times | full story }

The near-death experience (NDE) is a phenomenon of considerable importance to medicine, neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry, philosophy and religion. Unfortunately, some scientists have been deterred from conducting research upon the NDE by claims that NDE’s are evidence for life after death, and sensationalist media reports which impart the air of a pseudoscience to NDE studies. Irrespective of religious beliefs, NDE’s are not evidence for life after death on simple logical grounds: death is defined as the final, irreversible end. Anyone who ‘returned’ did not, by definition, die — although their mind, brain and body may have been in a very unusual state. […]

All features of a classic NDE can be reproduced by the intravenous administration of 50 - 100 mg of ketamine.

{ Karl Jansen | PDF }

People who have had NDEs describe—like some religious visionaries—a tunnel, a light, a gate, or a door, a sense of being out of the body, meeting people they know or have heard about, finding themselves in the presence of God, and then returning, changed. […]

Since at least the 1980s, scientists have theorized that NDEs occur as a kind of physiological self-defense mechanism. In order to guard against damage during trauma, the brain releases protective chemicals that also happen to trigger intense hallucinations. This theory gained traction after scientists realized that virtually all the features of an NDE—a sense of moving through a tunnel, and “out of body” feeling, spiritual awe, visual hallucinations, and intense memories—can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a horse tranquilizer frequently used as a party drug.

{ The Daily Beast | Continue reading }

previously:

A near-death experience is very similar to an out-of-body experience, which is where people think they’re floating away from their body, turned around seeing their body lying there. In a near-death experience, there is often a tunnel of light you go down towards meeting your maker. […] Other researchers write target numbers or words on pieces of cardboard and place them on top of cabinets and wardrobes in hospital wards, in the hope that somebody having a near-death or out-of-body experience will look down and see them. To date they haven’t. Which again suggests that this is an illusion rather than a genuine experience.

{ Richard Wiseman }

artwork { Lisa Black, Fixed Pheasant Wings }

Whenever a successful writer gets busted for “cheating,” the narrative always involves the collective wondering of why they would take such a risk. We saw this with the downfall of Jayson Blair and Johann Hari, and most recently with Jonah Lehrer. For example, Erik Kain called Lehrer’s actions “strange and baffling.” Curtis Brainard at CJR straight-up asks what’s on everybody’s mind: “Following the revelations of self-plagiarism, outright fabrication, and lying to cover his tracks, we were bewildered. How could such a seemingly talented journalist, and only 31 years old, have thrown it all away?”

What’s interesting is that this question takes a noble view of the offender. The implication is always that the person got to the top on their merits, and then drastically changed their behavior due to situational pressures. People rarely consider that the offender might have risen to the top because they’re predisposed to bending rules or inhabiting the gray areas in an advantageous way. […]

Why assume that everything the offenders accomplished up until their downfall was based purely on virtuous actions?

Furthermore, research on the fundamental attribution error (FAE) predicts that people would not attribute the mistakes of somebody like Lehrer to situational pressures. The FAE describes the tendency to believe that a person’s behavior and mental state correspond to a degree that is logically unwarranted by the situation. […] Situational factors tend to be ignored, and that means when somebody cheats, we tend to assume that they have always been, and forever will be, a cheater.

Why then do writers tend to give Lehrer the benefit of the doubt by focusing the pressures of his situation? […] I think it’s fair to say that because of the nature of the industry most writers do have a personal interest in understanding why writers fabricate, how they should be judged, and what the consequences should be. […]

I think it’s worth mentioning Seth Mnookin’s recent post highlighting previously unknown errors made by Lehrer. Mnookin concludes by essentially saying that Lehrer is a cheater, and has always been a cheater.

{ peer reviewed by my neurons | Continue reading }

{ Thanks Jessica }

{ Grizzly Bear, Yet Again }

Research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified variations in brain scans that they believe identify portions of the brain that are responsible for intelligence.

As suspected brain size does play a small role; they said that brain size accounts for 6.7 percent of variance in intelligence. Recent research has placed the brain’s prefrontal cortex, a region just behind the forehead, as providing for 5 percent of the variation in intelligence between people.

The research from Washington University targets the left prefrontal cortex, and the strength of neural connections that it has to the rest of the brain. They think that these differences account for 10 percent of differences in intelligence among people. The study is the first to connect those differences to intelligence in people.

{ Medical Daily | Continue reading }

“Our research shows that connectivity with a particular part of the prefrontal cortex can predict how intelligent someone is,” suggests lead author Michael W. Cole. […]

One possible explanation of the findings, the research team suggests, is that the lateral prefrontal region is a “flexible hub” that uses its extensive brain-wide connectivity to monitor and influence other brain regions in a goal-directed manner.

“There is evidence that the lateral prefrontal cortex is the brain region that ‘remembers’ (maintains) the goals and instructions that help you keep doing what is needed when you’re working on a task,” Cole says. “So it makes sense that having this region communicating effectively with other regions (the ‘perceivers’ and ‘doers’ of the brain) would help you to accomplish tasks intelligently.”

{ Washington University in St. Louis | Continue reading }

images { 1 | 2 }

related { Women Score Higher on IQ Tests for the First Time in History }

The first Target store opened in the U.S. in 1962. […] Target found itself having to investigate things like slip-and-falls, shoplifting, theft by employees, and the like. To do so, they created a centralized investigation unit in their Minneapolis, Minnesota headquarters. And over time, this unit became more and more advanced. Today, it and a sibling outfit in Las Vegas are, combined, one of the more sophisticated crime labs out there. And even that may be an understatement. In 2006, an FBI agent familiar with the labs told the Washington Post that “[o]ne of the nation’s top forensics labs is located at Target’s headquarters building in downtown Minneapolis. They have abilities and technology that far surpasses many law enforcement agencies in the country.”

{ Now I Know | Continue reading }

artwork { Jasper Johns, White Target, 1957 }

This study focuses on the relative frequencies of various sexual activities and the ways in which those activities are portrayed in homosexual and heterosexual pornographic films. Many anti-pornography arguments are based on the alleged oppression and degradation of women in pornography. Others (Salmon & Symons, 2001) have suggested that the main focus of pornography is not about contempt for women and that if it was, gay pornography should differ dramatically from heterosexual pornography. This paper tests that hypothesis. Sixty films that ranked amongst the most popular heterosexual and homosexual DVDs were examined with regard to the types of sexual activities that occur and the interactions between the participants. We found few major differences in pornography aimed at a homosexual versus heterosexual male audience, other than those that reflect the different anatomy involved, and none that reflect an anti-female agenda.

{ Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology | Continue reading }

photo { Juergen Teller }

When analyzing cremated remains it is important to be aware of the broader burial and not focus so narrowly on the remains themselves if one wants to be able to understand the funeral process. We can learn a lot about the funeral from the bones themselves when they have been burned. The coloring on the remains, the amount of warping and the completeness can reveal fire temperature, how the body was placed on the pyre, whether it was clothed or was burned as dried bone, and if there were any problems with the burning (such as interruption by weather or incomplete incineration). However, often when cremation remains are collected there are macrobotanical or charcoal fragments which can further aid in interpretation by revealing details of the actual pyre construction.

Moskal-del Hoyo (2012) discusses the charcoal remains from Polish cremation necropoli in a new article from the Journal of Archaeological Sciences. She posits that analysis of the wood remains from pyre construction could be revealing about the identities of the individuals and the various necropoli.

{ Bones don’t lie | Continue reading }

Sex differences in relationship regret: The role of perceived mate characteristics

[…]

Regret reported by men in both study 1 and study 2 varied as a function of the perceived attractiveness of the participants’ actual and potential mate. Regret reported by women in study 2 varied as a function of the perceived stinginess of the participant’s mate and perceived wealth of the participants’ potential mate. Study 3 found that sex differences in type of regret (with men regretting inaction more than women) occurred only when the mate presented in the scenario was described in ways consistent with mate preferences. Together these findings suggest that regret differs between the sexes in ways consistent with sex differences in mate preferences.

{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading }