In The New Statesman here. Enjoy the comments as well.
The piece is a review of two new neuroscientific interpretations, one by Damasio the other by Nicholas Humphrey. I haven’t read either yet, but they’ll be cued up on my Kindle for the trip to Berlin in April.
The Chronicle has an interesting piece here–Apparently a study conducted by the Ciber group at University College, London. The humanities and social sciences appear to be in the vanguard. Peer review is questioned and the article raises the implicit question of what journals have to offer.
As a journal editor, I’d say quite a lot. There is enormous value-added in quality control (peer review). The curation of articles with their data provides an organized way to evaluate scientific theories as they come into “fashion”.
That said, the new tools of the Net, are no doubt facilitating the informal, collaborative process of science. And I’d add to that science training.
A professor can reach out to a student over Facebook about an assignment in a way that’s fairly difficult to ignore.
The site is here. Really exciting tracks in neuropolicy and complexity models in the context of policy decisions.
If you’re a federal or private sector executive and want to learn more about these key areas fast from some of the top scientific researchers in an intelligent lay-person (think Scientific American) format, this is the week-long event for you.
I’ve been interested in the intersection of neuroscience and policy decisions for some time–particularly consequential decisions. So I’ve been thinking about a book of historical case studies where there is some clear evidence for alterations in normative brain function producing significant consequential change.
It seems to me the key is for such a book to be evidence-based and not speculative. So probably no chapters devoted to Alexander or even Napoleon.
So here’s a bleg, which historical figures would you like to read about?
So, as with Chess, the IBM artifact can now beat humans at the famous TV game Jeopardy. John Markoff’s story in the NY Times is here. Computer supremacy in Chess didn’t change the world and neither will this “triumph”. What we’re seeing is a natural evolution in machine learning algorithms and a manifestation of Moore’s Law.
Kurweil believes that this is a progression to what he calls “The Singularity”–where things become sharply non-linear and our machines may (if all doesn’t go well) decide to consume us.
The more I learn about neuroscience, and about how different our human brain architecture is from that of a digital computer, the more skeptical I become of that perspective.
Read about Albert’s List, here.
David Brooks NY Times column on my colleague Tyler Cowen’s new e-book, The Great Stagnation, seems spot on–here.
The questions are twofold:
1) What is our brain’s definition of wealth–and does it change over time or between individuals?
2) How does our brain value wealth against other things (e.g. health, knowledge, richness of experience etc.)?
These questions are central to the new field of neuroeconomics.
The relevant interactive chart is here. My take home is that the NIH budget is relatively preserved even under the House plans for a continuing resolution (CR). NSF also seems to emerge from the President’s blueprint relatively OK.
That said, I am much more pessimistic about the longer term picture. Science R&D is the part of the budget termed discretionary by Congress–and until there’s a serious plan (that includes so-called mandatory spending–i.e. like Medicaid and Medicare) then discretionary spending is going to have to take the big hits in order to produce any significant results in the deficit.
Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan…
Discoverers and Discoveries 