Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
Jonathan Haidt
It's been clear for quite a while now that red America
and blue America are becoming like two different countries
claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the
Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not
a story about tribalism; it's a story about the fragmentation
of everything. It's about the shattering of all that had seemed
solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It's a
metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but
within the left and within the right, as well as within universities,
companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
...
By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike
those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a
post that would "go viral" and make you "internet famous" for a few
days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful
comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks
of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands
of clicks to the game.
For criticism of Haidt's article see: Let Me Challenge Your Thinking.
There are many problems with social media, but just as many, or more, benefits as well. Social media's huge scope and success make it a convenient and conventional scapegoat to go after. Haidt's article is just one more exaggerated and tiresome attack.
My free advice is to be very careful about using the phrase "uniquely stupid." It's a very high bar to prove. And a barely resistible target for a critic.
Don't be fooled by media bias & misinformation.
AllSides Media Bias Ratings™ make the political leanings of hundreds of media sources transparent so that you can get the full picture and think for yourself.
There's a better path than regulation to fix stock buybacks.
The incentive compensation of senior corporate executives should consist primarily of restricted equity (i.e., restricted stock and restricted stock options). That is, restricted in the sense that the individual cannot sell the shares or exercise the options for six to 12 months after their last day in office.
Under this plan, most incentive compensation would be driven by total shareholder returns instead of short-term accounting-based measures of performance such as return on capital, or earnings per share.
Open source intelligence (OSINT) is the act of gathering and analyzing
publicly available data for intelligence purposes.
Open source data is any information that is readily available to the public or can be made available by request.
During every moment of your life, your brain gathers statistics
to adapt its model of the world, and this mode's only job is to generate
predictions. Your brain is a prediction machine. Just as the heart's main
function is to pump blood through the body, so the brain's main function
is to make predictions about the body. For example, your brain predicts
incoming sensory data: what you're about to perceive from within
(interoception) as from without (exteroception).
...
In particular, your brain updates its statistical model of the world
by integrating prediction errors in accordance with Bayes’ theorem;
hence the name Bayesian brain.
...
Predictive processing provides a framework for understanding all areas
of neuroscience and cognitive science at a computational level.
Although the Bayesian brain theory is still in its fledgling stage,
confirmatory evidence is flowing in on a weekly basis from a vast range
of different fields.
Victory marks milestone for AI as bridge requires more human skills than other strategy games.
Rather than learning by playing billions of rounds of a game, it first learns the game's rules and then improves its play through practice. It is a hybrid of rules-based and deep learning systems. "The NooK approach learns in a way that is much closer to human beings," Muggleton said.
Humans, says Dunbar, must have a method of social grooming that is 2.8x
more effective than the method used by the nonhuman primates.
But what is it?
What is our ultra efficient bonding mechanism, better than caring,
grooming, and picking fleas? It is LANGUAGE.
Many atheists think of themselves as intellectually gifted individuals, guiding humanity on the path of reason. Scientific data shows otherwise.
There is little scientific reason to believe that rationality and science are key causal contributors to atheism in the aggregate. This makes it all the more ironic that public-facing atheists who speak so reverently of science tend to be the most vocal advocates of the faulty notion that rationality is a prime driver of atheism. They've got the science wrong.