Various web links I found to be of interest recently:
One reason I'm not worried about the possibility that we will soon make machines that are smarter than us, is that we haven't managed to make machines until now that are smart at all. Artificial intelligence isn't synthetic intelligence: It's pseudo-intelligence.
... But it's striking that even the simplest forms of life -- the amoeba,
for example -- exhibit an intelligence, an autonomy, an originality,
that far outstrips even the most powerful computers. A single cell
has a life story; it turns the medium in which it finds itself
into an environment and it organizes that environment into a place
of value. It seeks nourishment. It makes itself -- and in making
itself it introduces meaning into the universe.
Now, admittedly, unicellular organisms are not very bright -- but
they are smarter than clocks and supercomputers. For they possess
the rudimentary beginnings of that driven, active, compelling
engagement that we call life and that we call mind. Machines don't
have information. We process information with them. But the amoeba
does have information -- it gathers it, it manufactures it.
Some disease sufferers have benefitted from fecal transplantation, in which a healthy person's stool is transferred to a sick person's colon.
Then, in January, 2013, The New England Journal of Medicine published
the results of the first randomized controlled trial involving FMT,
comparing the therapy to treatment with vancomycin for patients with
recurrent disease. The trial was ended early when doctors realized
that it would be unethical to continue: fewer than a third of the
patients given vancomycin recovered, compared with ninety-four per
cent of those who underwent fecal transplants -- the vast majority
after a single treatment. A glowing editorial accompanying the
article declared that the trial's significance "goes far beyond
the treatment of recurrent or severe C. difficile" and predicted
a spate of research into the benefits of fecal transplants for
other diseases.
New research links diabetes, heart disease risk to diet high in carbs, not fat. But note:
This work was supported by the Dairy Research Institute, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the Egg Nutrition Center.
Our genetic makeup influences whether we are fat or thin by shaping
which types of microbes thrive in our body, according to a study
by researchers at King's College London and Cornell University.
By studying pairs of twins at King's Department of Twin Research,
researchers identified a specific, little known bacterial family
that is highly heritable and more common in individuals with low
body weight. This microbe also protected against weight gain when
transplanted into mice.
Today's renewable energy technologies won't save us.
Google's boldest energy move was an effort known as RE<C, which aimed to develop renewable energy sources that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power plants do.
... As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today's renewable energy technologies simply won't work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
... What's needed are zero-carbon energy sources so cheap that the operators of power plants and industrial facilities alike have an economic rationale for switching over within the next 40 years.
Worlds largest pronunciation guide: 2,655,619 words 2,804,143 pronunciations 322 languages
"Wealth -- its uses and abuses -- is a subject that has intrigued me since my youth in the rural Midwest," West writes in the introduction to his study of billionaires. From his seat in Washington, D.C., he has grown concerned about the effects on democracy of a handful of citizens controlling more and more wealth.
But praising their intelligence can make them feel even more insecure. A self-esteem expert offers a way out of the conundrum.
They (parents) often praise the ability, the talent, or the intelligence too
much. The opposite of this is the good process praise. This is praise for
the process the child engages in -- their hard work, trying many strategies,
their focus, their perseverance, their use of errors to learn,
their improvement.
Defending Edward Snowden from criticism by Yishai Schwartz in the New Republic.
No serious defense of the surveillance state can ignores its
anti-democratic abuses, its lawbreaking, and its record of
punishing whistleblowers.
A lead editorial in The New York Jewish Week, the flagship American Jewish newspaper, center to center-right in orientation, with many thousands of Orthodox Jews among its readers and an ardently pro-Israel editorial line, bluntly asks whether the Israeli government has become unmoored from reality.
... It also means understanding that while most settlement expansion that is now taking place in the West Bank is happening in areas that will most likely come under Israeli control in the event of a final peace deal, the Palestinians haven't agreed to this division yet. Unilateral moves do not help. They certainly don't help Israel's international standing, which is lower than it has ever been, and they certainly don't help maintain Israel as a cause that garners bipartisan support in the U.S.
Research suggests that those individuals who frequently eat a given
highly palatable food derive less satisfaction from the subsequent
consumption of that same food, such as ice cream.
... In short, this study found an inverse relationship between the frequency
of ice cream consumption and the activation of the brain's reward
centers in response to ingesting an ice cream milk shake.
... In a sense, the observation is similar to the developed drug tolerance
seen among drug addicts, where the high of the second hit is never
as good as the first.
I eat ice cream every day but don't notice that effect.
Next Century Cities supports communities and their elected leaders,
including mayors and other officials, as they seek to ensure that
all have access to fast, affordable, and reliable Internet.
It is a consortium of 32 cities with the mission of making 1 Gbps
fiber-based broadband available to any community in the United States.
It is time for a new strategy, one based on sustainable, investment-led growth.
Most high-income countries -- the US, most of Europe, and Japan -- are failing to invest adequately or wisely toward future best uses. There are two ways to invest -- domestically or internationally -- and the world is falling short on both.
...
Though policy alternates between supply-side and neo-Keynesian
enthusiasm, the one persistent reality is a significant decline
of investment as a share of national income in most high-income
countries in recent years. According to IMF data, gross investment
spending in these countries has declined from 24.9% of GDP in 1990
to just 20% in 2013.
In the US, investment spending declined from 23.6% of GDP in 1990
to 19.3% in 2013, and fell even more markedly in net terms (gross
investment excluding capital depreciation). In the European Union,
the decline was from 24% of GDP in 1990 to 18.1% in 2013.
Neither neo-Keynesians nor supply-siders focus on the true
remedies for this persistent drop in investment spending. Our
societies urgently need more investment, particularly to convert
heavily polluting, energy-intensive, and high-carbon production
into sustainable economies based on the efficient use of natural
resources and a shift to low-carbon energy sources. Such investments
require complementary steps by the public and private sectors.
People think they like creativity. But teachers, scientists, and executives are biased against new ways of thinking.
In 1997, Clayton Christensen coined the term "the Innovator's Dilemma" to describe the choice companies face between incrementally improving their core business (perfecting old ideas) and embracing emerging markets that could upend their core business (investing in new ideas).
... Indeed, it turns out that our aversion to new ideas touches more than technology companies. It affects entertainment executives deciding between new projects, managers choosing between potential projects or employees, and teachers assessing conformist versus non-conformist children. It is a bias against the new. The brain is hardwired to distrust creativity.
... The researchers found that new ideas -- those that remixed information in surprising ways -- got worse scores from everyone, but they were particularly punished by experts. "Everyone dislikes novelty," Lakhami explained to me, but "experts tend to be over-critical of proposals in their own domain." Knowledge doesn't just turn us into critical thinkers. It maybe turns us into over-critical thinkers. (In the real world, everybody has encountered a variety of this: A real or self-proclaimed expert who's impatient with new ideas, because they challenge his ego, piercing the armor of his expertise.)