Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently:

• AIs Have Mastered Chess. Will Go Be Next?

  Randomness could trump expertise in this ancient game of strategy.

• Inside Marc Maron's Garage

  About one of my favorite podcasts WTF with Marc Maron.

• To change attitudes, don't argue -- agree, extremely

  Contradicting people's beliefs often doesn't change them, but agreeing with them just might.

  Researchers found that showing people extreme versions of ideas that confirmed -- not contradicted -- their opinions on a deeply divisive issue actually caused them to reconsider their stance and become more receptive to other points of view. The scientists attribute this to the fact that the new information caused people to see their views as irrational or absurd, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  
  "For example, the fact that they are the most moral society in the world is one of the most basic beliefs of Israeli society," Halperin said. So when the researchers showed participants a video that claimed Israel should continue the conflict so that its citizens could continue to feel moral, people reacted angrily.

  I wonder how many minds have been changed by The Colbert Report.

• Sometimes, Early Birds Are Too Early

  Procrastination Can Be A Positive Thing - Matt Richtel, NYT

  They could pick up a bucket near the start of the alley and carry it to the end, or they could pick up a different bucket that was closer to the end of the alley, walk a few steps and put it down.
  
  In particular, Dr. Rosenbaum said, people are seeking ways to limit the burden to their "working memory," a critical but highly limited mental resource that people use to perform immediate tasks. By picking up the bucket earlier, the subjects were eliminating the need to remember to do it later. In essence, they were freeing their brains to focus on other potential tasks.

• The Trouble With Brain Science

  Gary Marcus

  An example is the discovery of DNA, which allowed us to understand how genetic information could be represented and replicated in a physical structure. In one stroke, this bridge transformed biology from a mystery - in which the physical basis of life was almost entirely unknown - into a tractable if challenging set of problems, such as sequencing genes, working out the proteins that they encode and discerning the circumstances that govern their distribution in the body.
  
  Neuroscience awaits a similar breakthrough. We know that there must be some lawful relation between assemblies of neurons and the elements of thought, but we are currently at a loss to describe those laws. We don't know, for example, whether our memories for individual words inhere in individual neurons or in sets of neurons, or in what way sets of neurons might underwrite our memories for words, if in fact they do.

• How Much Do Our Genes Influence Our Political Beliefs?

  Why do so many poor, working-class and lower-middle-class whites - many of them dependent for survival on government programs - vote for Republicans?

  Identical twins are more likely than fraternal twins to share traditional values with their twin siblings, suggesting a biological link on cultural outlook.
  
  The significance of the different correlations for identical and fraternal twins, Ludeke added, is that "when we see identical twins who are this similar, while fraternal twins are much less similar, we have a good indication that genes account for some of the difference between people for the trait in question."

• Ghostery: Transparency + Control = Privacy

  Browser add-on to see which companies are tracking you.
  Read about one user's experience using it at Pando.com

• The Curse of Smart People

  Smart people have a problem, especially (although not only) when you put them in large groups. That problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly anything.
  
  Here's the problem. Logic is a pretty powerful tool, but it only works if you give it good input. As the famous computer science maxim says, "garbage in, garbage out." If you know all the constraints and weights - with perfect precision - then you can use logic to find the perfect answer. But when you don't, which is always, there's a pretty good chance your logic will lead you very, very far astray.

• The Price of Wine

  Blind tastings and academic studies robustly show that neither amateur consumers nor expert judges can consistently differentiate between fine wines and cheap wines, nor identify the flavors within them.

• Why aren't there more retractions in business and economics journals?

  A new paper has catalogued retractions over the past few decades in business and economics journals -- and hasn't found very many.

• How often do economists commit misconduct?

  This study reports the results of a survey of professional, mostly academic economists about their research norms and scientific misbehavior. Behavior such as data fabrication or plagiarism are (almost) unanimously rejected and admitted by less than 4% of participants. Research practices that are often considered "questionable," e.g., strategic behavior while analyzing results or in the publication process, are rejected by at least 60%. Despite their low justifiability, these behaviors are widespread. Ninety-four percent report having engaged in at least one unaccepted research practice. Surveyed economists perceive strong pressure to publish. The level of justifiability assigned to different misdemeanors does not increase with the perception of pressure. However, perceived pressure is found to be positively related to the admission of being involved in several unaccepted research practices. Although the results cannot prove causality, they are consistent with the notion that the "publish or perish" culture motivates researchers to violate research norms.

• Things I Learned About Life While Daytrading Millions of Dollars
  James Altucher
  1. You can't predict the future.
  2. Hope is not a strategy.
  3. Uncertainty is your best friend.
  4. Taking risks versus reducing risk.
  5. Diversification.
  6. Say "no."
  7. Health.
  8. Laughter.
  9. "This is crazy" means you're crazy.
  10. It doesn't matter if a trade (or a day, or a life) is good or bad.
  11. It's never about the money.

Some recent links from the world of medicine.

• Antioxidant vitamins don't stress us like plants do - and don't have their beneficial effect.

  Warding off the diseases of aging is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. But evidence has mounted to suggest that antioxidant vitamin supplements, long assumed to improve health, are ineffectual. Fruits and vegetables are indeed healthful but not necessarily because they shield you from oxidative stress. In fact, they may improve health for quite the opposite reason: They stress you.
  
  That stress comes courtesy of trace amounts of naturally occurring pesticides and anti-grazing compounds. You already know these substances as the hot flavors in spices, the mouth-puckering tannins in wines, or the stink of Brussels sprouts. They are the antibacterials, antifungals, and grazing deterrents of the plant world. In the right amount, these slightly noxious substances, which help plants survive, may leave you stronger.
  
  Parallel studies, meanwhile, have undercut decades-old assumptions about the dangers of free radicals. Rather than killing us, these volatile molecules, in the right amount, may improve our health. Our quest to neutralize them with antioxidant supplements may be doing more harm than good.

  [Added 07/19/2014]
• Why Doctors Order Too Many Tests

  Too many tests can be hazardous to your health for several reasons

• Wikipedia Medical Articles Found To Have High Error Rate

  Most Wikipedia articles representing the 10 most costly medical conditions in the United States contain many errors when checked against standard peer-reviewed sources. Caution should be used when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care.

• Can homeopathy 'work' even when there's no evidence?

  The really interesting question is how can we possibly have something that people think works when for all intents and purposes, from a scientific perspective, it doesn't?

• The other downside of antibiotics: Killing the useful bacteria

  Author Martin Blaser looks at how antibiotics are reshaping our inner ecosystem.

• The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

  Are butter, cheese and steak really bad for you? The dubious science behind the anti-fat crusade.