A cool demonstration of what the future may bring: a device that can read your brainwaves.
Category: Notes
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Jean-Baptiste Michel: The mathematics of history
Michel uses math to map history. Interesting and short.
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Dan Ariely: The Truth About Dishonesty
Ariely discusses how society has few big cheaters but is full of small cheaters who do more collective economic harm than all the big cheaters combined. Such “small” cheating comes as we distance ourselves (and our behavior) from the people we affect, thus making it easier to rationalize the harm we may cause them. Ariely also found, the cheating drops dramatically if the mind is primed with moral code, even if it is not a moral code we personally believe in.
RSA Animate: The Truth About Dishonesty
The Truth About Dishonesty (RSA)
Dan Ariely: Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes) (TED)
Dan Ariely: Our buggy moral code
Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our decisions? -
Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
Dutton presents a theory, based on a broad variety of intriguing insights, that our perception of beauty has far less to do with our cultural upbringing and much more to do with evolution. For example, Dutton points out that beautiful landscapes with grass, some body of water (or evidence of a body of water in the distance), trees (preferably ones that would be easier to climb), evidence of wildlife and with a path are considered beautiful the world over, even in places without such nature. This, Dutton points out, is reminiscent of the savannah environment that we grew up in.
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“The Signal and the Noise: Why so many predictions fail–but some don’t” by Nate Silver
Though a long, dense read, Silver delves into the delightful world of data analysis with full force, sometimes barely slowing long enough to give a primer to the uninitiated. Topics range from the recent housing market crash to baseball. With each examination, Silver explain how data analysis function in the given field and work he has done in the field (if not to improve the analysis itself then to review the poor work of others).
Interesting tidbit: Statistical analysis today is based mostly on the work of a man named Fisher who (in 1959) was arguing that there was no correlation between smoking and lung cancer.