all of us bayesians May 31, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : supernaturalism , add a commentVia Mind Hacks, a post at Reverendbayes’s Weblog which is an article appearing in New Scientist about a postulated over-arching theory of how our brains work, starting from Bayes’s Theorem (wonderful explanation of the theorem by none other than OB’s Eliezer Yudkowsy here):
“In fact, making predictions and re-evaluating them seems to be a universal feature of the brain. At all times your brain is weighing its inputs and comparing them with internal predictions in order to make sense of the world.”
I’m a big fan of the idea of human-mind-as-hypersensitive-pattern-imposer, so this fits in well with that framework (and hence feels nice to me, making me less likely to be critical of it…). One (speculative, of course and as almost always) thing that occurred to me as I read the post was that, if our brains do indeed function along the lines of predict-and-refine, than it would be very easy for them to interpret phenomena based on predictions — which themselves are heavily influenced by our social brains’ also-hypersensitive and highly-developed theory of mind — which point have as their starting point sentient intent… In other words, the idea that there is an actively intelligent force (or forces) behind the workings of the universe stems from our brains predicting (based on prior information) that things happen because they are intended to happen. If we feel a breeze on our face, we predict that something somewhere is ‘blowing’ just as we realize that another person — or we ourselves — blowing on us causes the sensation of a breeze. Humans evolved to see supernatural spirits all around just as we evolved to see faces in clouds.
Tags for this article: bayesian , brain , cognition , evolution , mind , neuroscience , science , supernaturalism , theory of mind
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two two one b May 30, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , add a commentFor those of you who love Sherlock and don’t check up on Strange Maps (shame!) — the latest post is one of a floor plan of perhaps the most famous flat in literature: 221B Baker Street.
Tags for this article: 221b baker st , maps , sherlock holmes
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moo May 30, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , 3commentsVia FP Passport (whose Blake Hounshell says he’s skeptical about the main points), an article about voteri americanus and this most predictable of presidential campaigns by David Runciman at the London Review of Books.
Money quote:
“Followed day by day, the race for the Democratic nomination has been the most exciting election in living memory. But viewed in retrospect, it is clear that it has been quite predictable. All the twists and turns have been a function of the somewhat random sequencing of different state primaries, which taken individually have invariably conformed to type, with Obama winning where he was always likely to win… …and Clinton winning where she was likely to win.”
And, nearer the end, bringing some Joseph Schumpeter to bear:
“In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, written in 1942, Schumpeter pointed out that most people do not think much about politics at all: they simply respond to triggers in ways that require the minimum of mental effort. ‘The typical citizen,’ Schumpeter wrote, ‘drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyses in a way which he would readily recognise as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective.’ The demographic determinism of this election campaign is evidence of the ease with which the main candidates have been able to exploit the instinctive reflexes of various segments of the population, and the difficulty that their opponents have had in overcoming these reflexes with competing arguments.”
I’m not as skeptical as FP - while I do think it’s stretching to say an election can be predicted solely on census data, I am willing to go along with Mr Runciman and blame the voters.
Tags for this article: politics , society , voters
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weekly photo #81: Alien May 29, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , add a comment
This week’s photo is another from my trip a couple of years ago to Hawai’i; it’s also another from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park — Halema’uma’u Crater, which certainly looks as if it’s part of an alien landscape.
Tags for this article: art , Hawai'i , photo , volcano , volcanoes national park
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min K = max K May 28, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , add a commentVia MR, a short article at NOVA about absolute hot (as opposed to absolute zero).
Tags for this article: physics , science
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like a river May 27, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , add a commentOne of the things which crops up on the forums from time to time (no pun intended) is time — usually as an outgrowth to some theist asking about what happened “before” the big bang. At OB, Eliezer Yudkowsky has a post up which touches very directly on one of my (almost completely intuitional and certainly speculative) takes on time — that it doesn’t exist as we intuitively feel that it does; that it’s not really as necessary for physics to function as we might at first blush think it is.
The post is much better, of course, than anything I could ever write on the topic; after reading it, I’ve moved from thinking of time as not flowing at all — a simulated stream in a model train set which we only imagine is moving — to a river that is indeed flowing, but within which we are completely submerged, unable to pull ourselves out of the current — a river that exists, in its entirety, all the way from the headwaters to the mouth, all at once.
Tags for this article: atheism , physics , science , time
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weekly quote #29: PZ Myers May 27, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : supernaturalism , add a commentO! happy rat!
PZ Myers’ Pharyngula is the origin of this week’s quote, which is taken from a dissection of the argument from warn-and-fuzzy. The post is here, the quote is taken from the first paragraph after the first quote block, responding to the idea that the emotional rewards of religious belief possess some sort of beneficial power:
“Put rats on a variable reinforcement schedule in a cage with a button that dispenses electric shocks to the pleasure centers of their brain, and they will push that button with passion and energy and even, as near as we can interpret it, joy … but that is a rat that has thrown away its rattiness and has dedicated its life to a shallow, empty abstraction. It is a rat that has found its god.”
Tags for this article: atheism , qupotation , rationality , supernaturalism
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discounting climate change May 27, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a commentJames Hrynyshyn over at The Island of Doubt has a post up about the dismal science of economically evaluating the impact of global climate change. Good stuff, elaborating why exactly it’s so difficult to make good predictions about how climate change will affect us and therefore make good policy about what specifically we should do.
I don’t like the reference to discounting as a ’sleight-of-hand accounting technique’, though. I don’t entirely agree with the wait-and-see position put forth by Lomborg, and the line of thought that amounts to hoping that it gets cheaper to counter climate change in the future is, at best, a very risky policy. Moreover, anyone who claims that discounting (in the economic sense) says that it’s better to wait because it’ll be cheaper in the future is either ignorant of the economics or being disingenuous. Discounting is a well-established principal of the dismal science, but it basically says that a sum money today is “worth more” than that same sum of money in the future — which does not mean that we should wait because the technology and effort (along with, by implication, everything else) required to counter climate change will be cheaper. So while I agree with the assertion that using discounting to justify inaction in the sphere of climate change policy is completely bogus, it is bogus because it is a misuse of discounting, and not because discounting itself is bogus.
Tags for this article: climate change , economics , politics , society
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obligatory Indy post May 24, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , 3commentsSo I just returned from the local cinema, having watched the fourth Indiana Jones flick. I read several reviews of the film before going, which all but panned it, so my expectations weren’t as high as they were, say, six months or so ago when trailers first started hitting theaters.
The film opened up being rather heavy-handed in the self referential nostalgia; however, it soon settled down and, in my opinion, moved past that. Harrison Ford’s incorporation of the personality traits displayed by Sean Connery in his portrayal of Indy Sr. in Last Crusade were much more subtle than the warehouse boxes and I felt they were great (watch for Indy to use the ‘intolerable’ line). The movie did, as sequels almost always do, rely far too much on the fact that the audience already knew the characters — one of the reasons why Last Crusade is such a great sequel is that it reveals more about familiar characters, making them fresh and drawing the viewer in. The latest Indy movie does fail in that regard.
It’s also a much “bigger” movie than the others — one of the key concepts about Indy films is that they are a collective homage to the serial flicks of bygone days, which helps them along. The latest doesn’t have that feel — and the bit with the refrigerator got on my nerves.
But, overall, I did enjoy the film and felt that it was on the same general level as Temple — though not quite as good (but Temple had Short Round).
Tags for this article: art , film
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