Wake up and smell the java
maybe love is a like a wave function collapsing when observed. amber streetlights and skyways — once quiet as cobblestone blackened, rough and marked. maybe love is like a wave function, etchings on cave walls, ashy rags, turbines, bellowing smoke, buzzless warmth but now, jagged crossroads. none of us can reconcile our bodies pressed in…
Social Contract
A term and philosophical concept originating in French enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s 1972 treatise, The Social Contract. In an ideal and just society, people would have equal access to resources, education, technology, etc.. However in a world with scarcity, whether inherent or artificially imposed, there is a strong incentive to satisfy wants or desires through…
Elite-overproduction
I’ve known about this concept and Peter Turchin, Russian population ecologist turned global historian, for some time now. Turchin approaches history in a uniquely quantitative manner which has drawn the attention of many a blogosphere intellectual, and very recently on Ribbonfarm. The concept of ‘elites’ and their ‘supply vs demand’ is one aspect of Turchin’s…
Ideasthesia
An explanation posited by Danko Nikolić, a neuroscientist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, that the experience of synaesthesia (the mixing of sensory inputs, e.g. seeing a colour when hearing a sound) may be mediated semantically. In order words, it is the idea of the input, not the direct experience of the input itself…
Omnigenetics
A model that posits that every gene in the genome contributes to (some?) complex traits.
Dark Side of The Moon
First of all, a great album. And more than being a figure of speech, the actual phenomenon of the moon’s dark side is pretty interesting. The moon is tidally locked — it’s orbital period (how long it takes for one thing to orbit another thing) matches its rotational period (the rate at which the moon…
Linguistic Relativity (aka Sapir-Worf hypothesis)
Basically, this is the idea that the language we speak shapes our thoughts and our perception of the world. Linguistic relativity is actually a rather old concept with a long history harking back to Plato. It makes sense intuitively, that how we would describe something is necessarily linked to what we notice and thus affecting…
Trappings of Power
The idea that external traits or superficial characteristics commonly associated with the powerful are in fact poor indicators of who has in practice wields the most influence. A contentious example of this for instance could be the American political system. The president and members of congress occupy seats of traditional and formal power. However, corporations,…
Berkson’s Paradox
A kind of survivorship bias in that when there are two positively correlating traits that are (ostensibly) negatively correlated in a population that selects for these traits. For instance, GPA and SAT scores. Although it would seem at first glance that having a higher SAT score doesn’t lead to higher grades in a particular college,…
Bayesian
Allows description of the probability that an event will occur based on the condition that another belief or beliefs hold true. Lets you quantify uncertainty: what about my hypothesis can I reasonably believe given that the assumptions I have made are true?
patrick 林香麟 