Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently:

• The Pitchforks Are Coming... For Us Plutocrats

  Memo: From Nick Hanauer
  To:       My Fellow Zillionaires

  If we don't do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn't eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

• The Disruption Machine

  What the gospel of innovation gets wrong.
  Jill Lepore, in The New Yorker June 23, 2014

  And the response, Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation'

• SpiderOak

  Store. Sync. Share. Privately (and Securely)

• Death Switch

  Secure access by others to your online data after you die.

• What's So Bad About a SuperPAC?

  Lawrence Lessig, lawyer and reformer plan to fight money with money.

  Or more precisely, to change the way we fund elections, both directly and through SuperPACs, we needed a SuperPAC. We need, in other words, a powerful political engine to build the support that this movement will require. And we need one quickly.

  For more information on how to help fight the influence of money in politics see, MAYDAY PAC
• Pulling back the curtain on Dr. Oz

  Rant by Erin May at Harvard policy lab

  Given his education and influence, there's no excuse for the unsubstantiated claims and sensational language that is so pervasive on his show. I'm not sure whether it's willful blindness or calculated deception that causes him to disregard rigorous scientific standards. But the result is that many of his recommendations are akin to the cure-all elixirs peddled by door-to-door salesmen in the patent medicine era of the late 1800s.

• Spurious Correlations

  Tyler Vigen illustrates how correlation does not imply causation.

  The next time someone tells you about a coincidence they cannot explain, point them to this web site.

• Is Atheism Irrational?

  Kelly J. Clark in Big Questions Online.

  Is atheism's connection with autism the silver bullet that proves once and for all that atheists are irrational? Given the complexities of both the human mind and human culture, it is impossible to tell.

• The secret to desire in a long-term relationship

  Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, TED talk.

  In long-term relationships, we often expect our beloved to be both best friend and erotic partner. But as Esther Perel argues, good and committed sex draws on two conflicting needs: our need for security and our need for surprise. So how do you sustain desire? With wit and eloquence, Perel lets us in on the mystery of erotic intelligence.

• The Enron-Style Accounting That Deprives Americans Of Economic Growth

  John Tamny in Forbes

  Of course, the fact that GDP registered growth is the first clue that it's a more-than-worthless number. Diane Coyle, author of a new book 'GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History', wouldn't agree that the number is worthless, but she does acknowledge that it does not measure human wellbeing or welfare. No it doesn't, and while Coyle doesn't hide her bias in favor of the hubristic conceit that says economists can credibly measure country economic activity, her book is still an important read for, if nothing else, revealing to readers just how unwittingly fraudulent the practice of economics is.

• 'How Not To Be Wrong' In Math Class? Add A Dose Of Skepticism

  Jordan Ellenberg, author of 'How Not To Be Wrong - The Power of Mathematical Thinking' interviewed on NPR's ALl Things Considered.

  Ellenberg tells NPR's Robert Siegel how he believes math courses should be taught and what sets math apart from other school subjects.

• A Cell Phone App To Detect Cancer

  DermoScreen, developed by University of Houston professor Dr. George Zouridakis and the MD Anderson Cancer Center, works simply enough. Users snap a picture of a potentially problematic mole or lesion, then the app automatically analyzes the picture using algorithms based on the same criteria used by professional dermatologists to identify cancerous growths--namely the so-called ABCD rule, 7-point checklist, and Menzies' method.
  
  But here's the crazy thing: Early testing of the technology has shown it to be accurate about 85% of the time, which is similar to the accuracy rate for trained dermatologists--and more accurate than non-specialist primary care physicians.

• The End Is A.I.: The Singularity Is Sci-Fi's Faith-Based Initiative

  I'm not arguing that machine sentience is an impossibility. Breakthroughs can't be discounted before they have a chance to materialize out of thin air. But belief in the Singularity should be recognized for what it is -- a secular, SF-based belief system. I'm not trying to be coy, in comparing it to prophecy, as well as science fiction. Lacking evidence of the coming explosion in machine intelligence, and willfully ignoring the AGI deadlines that have come and gone, the Singularity relies instead on hand-waving. That's SF-speak for an unspecified technological leap. There's another name for that sort of shortcut, though. It's called faith.

• The Five Biggest Threats to Human Existence
  1. Nuclear war
  2. Bioengineered pandemic
  3. Superintelligence
  4. Nanotechnology
  5. Unknown unknowns

  Note that climate change is not in the top five.