Extreme Hammocking

Extreme Hammocking pics

Confusing an instance for the concept - in review of memes book

The other day I came across this negative review of the book on memes ‘Thought Contagion’ by Aaron Lynch. The review's main criticism is this: the book is far too freewheeling with the concept of memes, using it make fairly superficial explanations of anything and everything.

But the problem is, while the criticism is really about the book, and how it uses the concept of memes, the review presents the criticism as being of the notion of memes itself. But the review doesn't actually present any criticism of the notion of memes, beyond problems with the nature of Lynch’s particular account of them.

In other words, what the review does is confuse a particular theory of memes with the notion of memes. You could say that it's confusing an instance of a concept for the concept itself. I believe this kind of mistake is very common, though showing other examples is something for later.

Article About Somewhat-Complex Ecosystem Developed Within Second Life

Article about a somewhat-complex ecosystem someone has made for the game Second Life.

Michael Bloomberg's Speech, Defending Scientific Values

New York City major Michael Bloomberg's address to graduates of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, as mentioned in Slashdot. You wouldn't normally expect, from a political person like him, such strong defence of the scientific principles of evidence and truth.

Article on Music Recommendation Engines

After seeing this Slasdot article on music recommendation engines, I've just signed up with last.fm, which seems pretty good (see the article for info on the differnet options available). I wasn't really aware of these sorts of sites, and I haven't started playing with it yet, but it sounds pretty cool.

Robert Winston: the virtues of animal testing

A sensible-sounding article by Robert Winston. "Instead of being cowed by activists, scientists should trumpet the virtues of animal testing".

Matt Inglot's on Not Having a "Real Job"

[Update: the post can now be accessed here]

Matt Inglot shares a short anecdote about people's attitudes towards an unconventional career path:

While I was busy learning about business in an unconventional way and doing so from the comfort of home, my friends were also in the process of getting their first jobs. I was then introduced to a mentality that I didn’t really understand, and still don’t. The moment they joined the workforce flipping burgers and stocking shelves they became really helpful in telling me that I should also get a job. When I insisted that I did have a job and enjoyed it very much the response was always “that’s not a real job Matt”.

...

The fear of somebody doing something different, something with an unsure ending, is so strongly built into society that virtually all the high schoolers I knew instinctively tried to tell me that I was on the wrong path. In reality they were scared, and trying to re-assure each other as a flock that their normal path was indeed the correct one.

I must admit that the way people prefix things with "real"--like "real job", "real music", "real world" etc etc--irritates me. It's usually a lazy, hollow way of criticising the things that are supposedly not "real" instances of the thing.

Research Relating to Miconceptions About Girls and Bullying

Misconceptions can be bad, because they can lead people to overlook real problems. The Daily Mail reports on some recent research that corrects some common-seeming miconceptions about girls and bullying.

Avoiding Conflation of Signifier With Signified By Understanding Why It Signifies

Seeing signifiers as the signified is, sadly, a widespread "cognitive pathology".

Understanding why the item may act as a signifier for the other item is a good way to avoid this problem. It makes you decouple the items from each other.

And since signification is invariably context-sensitive, understanding why the signification occurs allows you to appreciate that it isn't always the case and appreciate when it does and does not apply.

(I have a strong suspicion that always considering 'why' is the key to developing effective thinking skills, but that's an idea that I need to develop more).

Video of Tennis Game Using New Nintendo Motion-Sensing Controller

Aside from Freecell (a card game) on my laptop, I haven't played computer games for years. Mainly this is because I haven't had time for it, but I also haven't been that interested in the games out there (though World of Warcraft looks cool).

Now, for the first time in years, I'm excited about an upcoming computer games thing: the Nintendo Wii (formerly called the 'Nintendo Revolution'), with it's cool motion-sensing controller.

There's a general article about it here, and a video clip of a tennis game for it here. I think that looks really cool.

As Gizmodo says:

Those of you out there who doubt that the Nintendo Wii’s Remote is going to be the best thing ever: If you’re still drinking the total haterade after watching this video of ... playing Wii tennis at Nintendo’s pre-E3 press conference this afternoon, there is no love in your shrivelled heart and not even unicorns and rainbows can save you now.

Dharmesh Shah on Good and Bad Sorts of Simplicity

Dharmesh Shah has written two good articles considering the view that software should be as simple as possible. The articles try to clarify what sorts of simplicity are good and what kinds aren't. (The articles are a response to the 37signals book Getting Real, which is big on the simple-as-possible thing).

The first article argues that software, being focused for users, has to meet their needs, and simply providing the minimal set of features can bring them up short.

The second article is a bit of an elaboration on that. It argues that while software should be made simpler by being 'opinionated' and deciding 'the little details so your customers don't have to' it shouldn't go too far and become 'stubborn' -- stubborn software is not only opinionated but it is inflexible and doesn't provide users the ability to configure the software to their preferences.

---

This stuff is related to what I've written on the nature of 'simplicity' and 'complexity':

(1) Sketching on Simplicity As Qualitative Perceptual Concept
(2) Notes on What Qualitative Perceptual Concepts Are
(3) Complexity as Qualitative Perceptual Concept
(5) Quick Drafting on Tradeoffs Between Local and Global Simplicity/Complexity
(6) Factors in Tool Complexity/Simplicity: Viewing Value as Additive
(7) Factors in Tool Complexity/Simplicity: Vertical- and Horizontal- Features
(8) Initial- and Standing- Simplicity/Complexity
I also noted down this this comment by Linus Torvalds on this matter of oversimplification.

Forbes's List of 15 Ways to Live Longer

Forbes has a list of 15 ways to live longer. Mostly usual ones you'd expect like get a pet, be optimistic etc, though a few things I found of interest:

#5 Get a VAP

It's estimated that about half of the people with heart disease--the No. 1 killer in the U.S.--have normal cholesterol levels, which raises serious doubt about the ability of traditional cholesterol tests to detect risk. But more advanced cholesterol tests, like the VAP test, made by the Birmingham, Ala.-based lab Atherotech, may remedy that. VAP measures important metrics that traditional tests miss. Regular tests only detect half of the people with heart disease, while the VAP has been shown to detect 90% of heart disease patients. That's important because lipid abnormalities can most often be rectified with medication and dietary changes. And the sooner you start making changes, the better.

Also, intresting to see this much importance put on stress:

"I think stress kills more people than just about anything else," says Dr. David Fein, medical Director at Princeton Longevity Center in New Jersey.

Taxibuses

Sounds good, if it works out in practice. As the name suggests, like a mix between a bus and a taxi. You just call up and it will come around and pick you up. Leverages tracking and scheduling technology to best allocate the requests to taxibuses:

GT promises that their system would guarantee 3-minute rapid response based upon computerized itineraries in each taxibus that instantaneously updates upon each new ride request. The computers also have GPS technology that directs drivers to their destination and adjusts continuously to accomodate new circumstances.

'Deliberate Practice' is Where Skill/Talent Comes From Says Recent Research

The New York Times reports on some recent research, by Anders Ericsson at Florida State University, into where skill/talent comes from:

Their work, compiled in the "Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance," a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

They see improvement as the result of what they call deliberate practice:

Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.

Article on Distinction Between Freedom and Democracy

An interesting article on the distinction between freedom and democracy -- how will of the majority can work against important freedoms -- and putting this in the context of the Iraq situation.

Criticisms of a Guardian Article on Technologies Affects on our Brains

The Guardian has an article indicting the effect of new technologies on our brains -- but I think it's criticisms are extremely trite. The article contains fourteen paragraphs, but the actual criticisms are only given three sentences (quoted below) and are not given any justification.

...the process of traditional book-reading, which involves following an author through a series of interconnected steps in a logical fashion. We read other narratives and compare them, and so "build up a conceptual framework that enables us to evaluate further journeys... One might argue that this is the basis of education ... It is the building up of a personalised conceptual framework, where we can relate incoming information to what we know already. We can place an isolated fact in a context that gives it significance." Traditional education, she says, enables us to "turn information into knowledge."
...
The flickering up and flashing away again of multimedia images do not allow those connections, and therefore the context, to build up. Instant yuk or wow factors take over. Memory, once built up in a verbal and reading culture, matters less when everything can be summoned at the touch of a button (or, soon, with voice recognition, by merely speaking).

Why do these images not allow these connections? No reason is given.

Does memory really matter less? No justification is given for the claim. Does being able to look up facts really mean that we remember things less? It's not obvious that it should -- for the memorisation processes are pretty unconscious, and memorisation involves understanding of the content.

Perhaps what the ability to look things up gives us is just more leverage?

And why are there no mentions of how technology may be increasing our cognitive powers? For example, the increasing sophistication of the plots of television programs, requiring greater memory and connecting the dots?

Steve Pavlina on How to Wake Up Immediately When Your Alarm Goes Off

Steve Pavlina gives some sensible sounding advice on how to get up immediately when your alarm goes off. The article is a bit long-winded, but the point is basically this:

Even though you really would like to get up when the alarm goes off, trying to convince yourself of this at the time just doesn't work very well. You're tired, you don't feel like getting up -- and your brain is just too foggy to effectively fight that.

Instead, he suggests forgetting about your conscious mind and training your subconscious mind to get you out of bed when the alarm goes off, by the only way it can be trained: through practice. So practice lying in bed and jumping up as soon as the alarm goes off, and if you practice it enough it'll become automatic.

Paul Graham on Discarding the Assumption that it's all About Us

[Update: the blog post can now be found here]

In this post, Paul Graham starts writing about what drives bloggers to blog but ends up talking about the following. It's a very good read.

...The history of ideas since people first started writing them down is a history of gradually discarding the assumption that it's all about us.

...The idea that we're the center of things is difficult to discard.

...So if you want to discover things that have been overlooked till now, one really good place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief that it's all about us. And expect to encounter ferocious opposition if you do.

In relation to my PhD research, I actually think that the reason people haven't been able to understand information is because of this kind of thing, more specifically taking certain elements of their perception for granted.

This has to do with what I wrote the other day about people not being able to understand information because they are looking for a declarative understanding of it rather than a fully imperative one. A fully imperative one forces you to fully take your perception out of the picture.

Steve Grand: Moving AI out of its infancy: Changing our Preconceptions

[Update: the article can now be found here]

An excellent article by Steve Grand, on where he thinks AI needs to go. It's like a summary of the main points in his book "Growing Up With Lucy".

The main points he makes are:

• The purpose of the brain is to compensate for all the time it takes for the nerve signals to travel to it and back again.
  
• Brains don’t make decisions
  
• Brains perform coordinate transforms
  
• Nervous tissue is a new state of matter
  
• The more complex a robot is, the easier it is to make progress

Things We're Poor at Imagining, Concerning Higher-Rung Skills

Another bit of sketching on laddered skills...

There are some things we are poor at imagining, concerning higher-rung skills.


Our ability to develop a higher-rung skill.

We often ask ourselves the question: could I develop my skills beyond their current level to a higher-rung? Our nature seems to be such that, by default, we feel that we can't.

I think this is a flaw in our nature. It's very difficult to really know that you can't develop the skill. All you can really do is work at it, and keep on working at it -- and invariably, if you do this, you will end up being able to do it.

The lesson is: expect to feel that it's not possible, and take no notice of it.

Why do we think we can't? I think a lot of the cause is that we can't see how we could develop them further. But the thing is, you can't see how it happens. It just does, given the appropriate practice.

I think it's also, in part, because we tend to think if something isn't possible at present then that's because it is not possible, full stop. It's clear, if you look at history, that people always tend to think this. Human flight? Ridiculous! Being able to instantaneously talk to someone on the otherside of the world. Impossible! etc etc.


Whether still-higher rungs exist.

Do any higher rungs exist, beyond the highest level of skills that people currently have? This is really just a variation on the previous item.

We like to think we can tell, and we tend to always think the answer is 'no', but it's very difficult to actually rule out the existence of higher-rungs.

Sure, we may not be able to see how there are any, and at present no one may be able to go futher, but these are poor indicators of the actual nature of the task and what is possible.

An example I like is the case of ollies in skateboarding. That's when the skater is skating along and jumps into the air with the board stuck to their feet - or at least, that's how it looks.

Before the ollie was invented, if you had asked people whether they thought such as thing was possible, I think they would have said: no, it's not possible, it can't be done; none of the experts can do it; I can't see any way that it could be possible.

But that's the thing: you can't imagine it. I doubt the invetor created it by thinking of the idea and then going out and praticing it. It probably evolved out of something they once did, perhaps by acident.


What a higher-rung skill enables

We seem to think that we imagine correctly about what a higher-rung skill, that we don't yet have, would enable us to do. We seem to think that what's required for imagining it is the appropriate amount of effort.

While it may be possible to do in some cases, the general case is simply not possible. The only way is to actually have the skill and see what you can do with it. You can't imagine what would happen if you had the skill.

Essentially, being able to do that would require that you could properly simulate having the skill - and that's more complicated than just having the skill, which you don't.