First thoughts on "Average is Over"…

I’ll have more complete thoughts later, but at least initially:

–Cowen’s premise is The Great Stagnation wont subsequently be followed by a future technical revolution (like the Cognitive Society [pdf] that I have recently pushed in my work with the National Science Foundation). I don’t necessarily buy that. The fact that so many billionaires are putting their money (and big money) on space exploration may be a hint to a future less austere than the one Tyler puts forward in the book.

–I learned a huge amount about chess and computer programs that play chess. The notion of human-computer teaming (freestyle chess competitions) is definitely part of the Cognitive Society idea and I think Cowen is spot on.

–I think Tyler is wrong about science–at least the life sciences which I know something about: we are becoming ever less stove-piped. The big discoveries are being made across disciplines. Further, with regards to a payoff for lowering health-care costs, a cure for Alzheimer’s disease alone, would put a significant dent into that piece of the budget pie. Because of my own involvement with what’s going on in molecular neuroscience, I see that day coming–I don’t assume the status quo for years to come.

That said, Average is Over is Tyler’s best book that I’ve read to date. It’s an excellent read.

What I’m reading….

Tyler Cowen’s new book, Average is Over, NPR story is here. I’ll have more when I’m done with the book, but it certainly raises painful questions about inequality in a society where intelligent machines are ubiquitous. Consider it an antidote to Abundance.

UVA’s future: a state affiliated university?

Jenna Johnson’s Washington Post story is here. The actual panel report is here. The notion is that UVA would give up its approximately $150M state appropriation in return for a qualitatively more independent status, allowing it to be more agile in attracting the best students and faculty.

As the WAPO story makes clear, there’s likely to be substantial pushback.

The US research university at the crossroads….

Fordham’s Leonard Cassuto, in the Chronicle, here. Read the comments!

Social networks and power (we are all flexians now)….

Terrific long piece on my Mason colleague, Janine Wedel in Pacific Standard, here. Krasnow Institute money quote:

Maciej Latek, a tall, Polish-born computational social scientist whose day job is creating risk models for contentious environments like international borders, stands at one end of the table in a pressed oxford shirt and tapered blue jeans. He projects a diagram, or what anthropologists call a network map, of dots and lines onto the wall. The map depicts all transfers exceeding $50 million that occurred between 2009 and 2012 from pension funds to hedge funds, showing the origins, destinations, and size of the transactions.

Maciej is of course one of our own here at the Krasnow Institute’s Center for Social Complexity.

The collapse of the public sector under Obama…

From Derek Thompson at The Atlantic, here. There are two charts and they tell pretty much the whole story: this administration has presided over a very large collapse in public sector jobs. Much of that of course is the result of how the Great Recession played out in the states and localities, but it’s also reflecting a macro-change towards smaller government supported by a distinctly libertarian streak that seems to be growing here in America.

How that will play out long-term here in the Washington DC metropolitan area should be interesting…

Recovery? What recovery?

Tyler nails it in today’s NYT’s column. Young people are taking it on the chin. Here’s the relevant blogpost and chart from Marginal Revolution.

For those of us involved in higher education, these data are really disturbing. Tyler talks about some young folks “breaking out of the trap” through entrepreneurship (i.e. startups). Unfortunately, on a population basis, that doesn’t build a middle class. Harvard Business School’s Shikhar Gosh points out that 3 out 4 startups that take on venture capital fail (and those are the lucky ones that actually get funded). And with student debt at astronomical levels, new graduates can’t exactly max out their credit cards to get a business going.

Assessing risk in public safety policy

Bruce Scheier’s excellent and timely essay is here. Excellent because he really nails the problem that our human cognitive capabilities are not particularly up to accessing the probability of Black Swan events, and timely because of the impending anniversary of events that played out here and in New York twelve years ago.

NeuroX redux in the New Yorker….

Adam Gopnik on the NeuroX wars in the New Yorker, here. Money quote:

Philosophy may someday dissolve into psychology and psychology into neurology, but since the lesson of neuro is that thoughts change brains as much as brains thoughts, the reduction may not reduce much that matters.

From today’s Guardian: Looks like a sagittal section of a mouse brain?

Stem cell scientists at Edinburgh and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna grew this organoid, or tiny ‘brain’, which measures just 4mm across. Photograph: Madeline A Lancaster/PA

The Guardian story is here. The original paper was just published in Nature and…like the NYT… it’s not available right now, odd target for a denial of service attack, but there you go.