Findings of the week

From Janne in Osaka - when does a political party become mindless?

And a study in the benefits of bounded rationality from the New York Times: sometimes, learning is costly, so it’s only for the environmentally challenged. Hey, damn it! We humans are environmentally challenged. Are we smart enough for it?

Back from Hell, or the Wonders of Connectivity

The couple of avid readers I have (dear, dear people, what’s life worth without you?) might have noticed my month long silence. I wasn’t home. I was in Miluim. Military reserve duty.

I was in the Palestinian Occupied territories. It was hell, for all the wrong reasons. I should (and will) write about it soon. But for the time being, I only wish to remark upon the wonders of modern connectivity.

Heresy

Ahha! I’ve made it to level 6! Busted even John Wilkins!

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

EyezMaze

I not the gamer I used to be, now that I have a toddler to take care of. So finding a computer game which is both fun for my 3-year-old boy and interesting enough for me is not easy. We tried the incredible machine - which is a very very cool game. But my toddler is a tad to young for it, and he enjoys the much more after I show him how to finish the levels.

Another great download is phun - basically a Master’s degree work by Emil Ernerfeldt, which enables you to build all kinds of stuff - from bouncing balls to rockets and strange machines. If only I had Phun when I was a boy!

But both Phun - great fun that it is - and the incredible machine were made for children - not for toddlers. Toddler games are usually unimaginative, silly, and utterly dull. Toddlers need large buttons with an easy operation. They need compensation when they get stuck or do the wrong thing. If your character just dies or explodes, they cry. They need something more emotionally- friendly, where a wrong move still gives an interesting outcome, or better some insight on what the right thing to do was. Where do you find such a game?

Then comes ON.

I don’t know his name, but his creations are just what I sought for. They are witty, hilarious, ingenious, interesting, sometimes hard - but always trivial to function. These flash games are all that is good in computers and can’t be made without one. Most of his games are played by pressing on large, well defined buttons. It always does something - your job is to discover the correct order in which to press the buttons.

A challenge for Militant Atheists - The St. Petersburg Revelation 2000

Dan Dennett is a wonderful philosopher. And I don’t say that just because he always agrees with me (yes, this is a joke). I say so especially thanks to his ability to make things simple and eloquent - and that, I think, is the hall mark of a true philosopher. But that is stuff for another post.

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

 

Really, Dennett is great. go YouTube and run a search (bear in mind that some good lectures are under Dan Dennet). Go to Ted and see. In this lecture, given while Dennett received the “Richard Dawkins Award” at the AAI 07 conference in Washington, D.C., he makes some interesting claims regarding religious beliefs. I won’t get into detail (just go and hear the man) - but for this one thing that bugs me:

How do you, an atheist, approach a person who just had a divine revelation? What can you say to him?

Now let’s be specific about it. The following is a real story. I know these people. Here goes.

The St. Petersburg Revelation 2000

and on to world domination!

Just got to 666 hits on this blog. Yes, my readers, soon we shall spread our evil all over Transylvania! Ha Ha Ha!!!

Astrology - why it used to be resonable and why it ain’t so anymore

Once upon a time, Astrology was a big thing. Astrologers ruled the world. Now they clatter in the back pages of second-rate magazines. Why were they so big and what’s happened to them?

We shall begin by following a line of thought that was very strong in many parts of the classical world. So strong, it was reason enough to deport Anaxagoras from Athens (he was advocating the stars were nothing but “hot stones in the sky”). The Epicureans made the fight against this view a focal point of their moral philosophy.

So, imagine you live in a society with a technology which is less than modern - there are no cars, no planes, etc. Now, observe: what things have “innate movement” (to borrow the Aristotelian term)? Living things, of course. Only living things can move without being moved by an external force.

Our second observation is this: all living things decease (given enough time).

All? Well, look at the sky - there you will find heavenly bodies moving perpetually in well-ordered paths. If living things are the only candidates for self-induced movement, then the heavenly bodies must be alive. They are also perpetual, hence immortal. They also seem to be moving in a nice circular fashion; hence they must be highly intelligent sentient beings (they know geometry! And circles are the most perfect of geometric forms).

TED | Talks | Howard Rheingold: Way-new collaboration (video)

Howard RheinGold - on collaboration.

from www.ted.com posted with vodpod

How to cheat on a poll without actually lying

As you can read on various blogs (I did on Mark Chu-Carroll’s), there is some fuss over Washington State Republican caucus. Apparently, the GOP stopped counting votes on 87%, declaring McCain a winner before all votes got counted, and said the final results would be determined sometime next week. Now I won’t get into the gory details of the Republican party’s election methods (and gory they are, what a mess!). Some people, however, claim none of it matters. After all, was this really cheating? Isn’t the GOP right? They’ve counted 87% of the caucus. McCain has an edge, so what’s the chance that the total caucus will be different?

Well, today we shall answer that first question. Bottom line: it does matter, it was cheating, and pollsters do cheat like that all the time.

This is election lesson no. 1:

What if Huckabee did have an edge? Suppose, hypothetically, that he had 55% of the votes, and that the other 45% were McCain’s. The chairman, who is a McCain supporter, supervises the votes counting. There is a very simple thing which he can do if he wants McCain to win - he can wait for a McCain to gain a temporary advantage, then stop the count, and declare McCain the winner. If you like riddles, you should try this question out, and then skip to the end of the post: what are the chairman’s chances of success?

Brillinat findings of the week: philosophy

At last, moral philosophy made simple: click!

And a comics version by Saint Gasoline:

Found at Evolving Thoughts.
Explanations can be found at Creative Synthesis.