Nature magazine says its good to blog...

Nature: It’s good to blog

Indeed, researchers would do well to blog more than they do. The experience of journals such as Cell and PLoS ONE, which allow people to comment on papers online, suggests that researchers are very reluctant to engage in such forums. But the blogosphere tends to be less inhibited, and technical discussions there seem likely to increase.

Moreover, there are societal debates that have much to gain from the uncensored voices of researchers. A good blogging website consumes much of the spare time of the one or several fully committed scientists that write and moderate it. But it can make a difference to the quality and integrity of public discussion.

1) I think blogging is good because it empowers someone to promote their opinions, views, or at the very least things they are reading, seeing, and thinking.

2) I believe the debate that can (but doesn't always happen as many tend to isolate within their own group) happen online is useful.  Debate helps clarify opinions, come to a better understanding of others, and helps us learn.

3) I think more academic professionals should blog...  it helps all of us learn!

 

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

This is important...

How to improve group decision making

When it operates efficiently, a group's decision making will nearly always outperform the ability of any one of its members working on their own. This is especially the case if the group is formed of diverse members. One problem: groups rarely work efficiently.

A new meta-analysis (pdf) of 72 studies, involving 4,795 groups and over 17,000 individuals has shown that groups tend to spend most of their time discussing the information shared by members, which is therefore redundant, rather than discussing information known only to one or a minority of members. This is important because those groups that do share unique information tend to make better decisions...

I was just pondering something to this effect today. I'm working slowly through the idea of a GOTNV (Get out the Non-Voter) effort. My quandry is how to get nonvoters to vote. I think there is a long term dialougue and discussion that must go on between non voters and activists. We activists have to do a lot of listening. We also have to work on our ability to discuss issue that are important to non voters in a way that they feel like they understand.

I remember one day after I was on local tv talking politics with a conservative tv host (who happens to be running for govoner now) and one of my coworkers said, "I saw you on TV."

Oh yeah... how'd I do. Did I do alright?

"I dunno man I had no clue what you guys were talking about," he said with a shrug. Which blew my mind... he totally shut us out and just watched cause he knew me I guess. But it wasn't that complex to me.

We have to rengage nonvoters and I think creating productive discussions is one way that we must begin this process. I'm going to be trying to work through this idea and do something on this issue via DFA. I'm not sure what its going to look like but if you have thoughts or feedback email me at Jim.Nichols@gmail.com.

I digress... we have to start talking outside of our circle...

"...teams who talk more amongst themselves aren’t necessarily sharing useful information. Therefore, they’re not actually coming to a better result. Rather, it’s more important what the teams are talking about, than how much they are talking," said Mesmer-Magnus.

"Teams typically possess an informational advantage over individuals, enabling diverse personal experiences, cultural viewpoints, areas of specialization, and educational backgrounds to bring forth a rich pool of information on which to base decision alternatives and relevant criteria," the researchers concluded. "However, the current findings confirm that although sharing information is important to team outcomes, teams fail to share information when they most need to do so."

This is a side note, but important for Jim as he tends to be disorganized...

Another important factor was discussion structure. Groups particularly benefited from sharing unique information when they employed a highly structured, more focused method of discussion.

One of my biggest problems as Chair of the Henry County Democrats last year was my effectiveness. Part of the trouble was how scattered I can be, I do better with structure... and when it comes to decision making structure is key...

On attention spans and Jim's hard determinism

So I was a test subject (think mouse running on that wheel thing) in a research study looking at cognitive skill deficiencies (or something to that effect) in those with bipolar disorder.

It was fun.

One of the questions she asked me was about my attention span problems. I replied bio-chemical. To which she looked at me funny, paused, looked down and then tried to follow up. I replied that since I have been tested to have adhd, and that my Psychiatrist hoped that the antidepressant I started taking would reduce anxiety levels reducing problems with attention span (and it has), that it must be neurotransmitters. She wrote it down and moved on.

Something tells me most people don't blame things on their neurotransmitters. Go figure.

was darwin wrong?

Darwin : The Genius of evolution

Its not a surprise that Darwin was wrong and in fact he was wrong at many places but he cant be blamed for all those as he did not have any knowledge about the science of microbiology and molecular evolution at that time.

But keep in mind ,the two biggest ideas in Natural selection and common descent survived all the tests for more than a century, speaks volumes about the brilliant man and his insights on subject.

Graham Lawton’s article “Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life “ talks about horizontal gene transfers in bacteria and consequences of that on tree of life. The article somewhat justify such a headline ,which talks about some very valid points that Darwin didnot and could not know , but definitely these things doesn’t go against the theory of Darwin but just fills in the gaps occurring in tree of life.

and back to my theme for the day...

But with such a strong headline tilts the balance more in favor of headline than the real content. To be honest most people read just the headline and few lines than the whole article. So i believe that editors should be more careful in selecting the titles especially on subjects like evolution which can send wrong signals to students

ex phi in Scientific American

Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?

the web of denial

Arguments from global warming skeptics

The trouble with economics

It isn't exactly science, as noted at the economist.com:

First of all, I know that we all consider economics a science, but as sub-fields go, macroeconomics is one of the least science-y. Among the reasons—too many variables, too small samples, no repeatable experiments, and so on. Consider the paper Mr Cowen would have us consider. It examines the American economy from 1955 to 2000, and it excludes all fiscal shocks but those that are orthogonal to the business cycle. What that leaves is, well, not very much. There are similar methodologies in other key papers on the subject, including that by the family Romer, and given the range of multipliers presented I don't know how one could conclude, definitively, that the science isn't there.

Which is why it's important to have a good, qualitative model of the mechanisms involved to supplement the data analysis. Greg Mankiw gave us a potential model for a way in which tax cuts might boost private investment, but it's not clear that his narrative is superior to those explaining just how deficit-funded government investment might work. In short, the data, on its own, isn't compelling enough in such cases to justify policy.

with Mark Thoma also noting:

We have very little U.S. historical data for time periods when the economy is in a depression, so we don't know a lot about the effectiveness of policy in this framework. It's hard to find decent data about the economy prior to 1947 (and make that 1959 for data on money), and we haven't had that many recessions in that time period. And more importantly, we haven't had the deep kind of recession that depression economics is intended to address. When most of your data (half in any case) is from good times, it is not surprising that the empirical evidence finds that crowding out is an important consideration. If we had lots of episodes like the current one to look at, then I would have more confidence in these results, but we don't. Parameters such as the responsiveness of investment and money demand to changes in the interest rate, the marginal propensity to save, etc., can all change drastically in deep recessions, and that means that the results from empirical investigations covering other time periods won't be very informative. I don't think we know much at all from the econometric evidence about the success of fiscal policy in deep downturns. We'll know more in the future because we'll be able to look back at this one, but for now policymakers are flying pretty blind. What we can examine is the experience of the Great Depression, and when you do, the case for fiscal policy is strong.

Go read the rest of Marks Post Depression Economics: Normal Rules Don't Apply, as it takes apart a lot of what conservatives are saying right now... and has an awesome example for answering the question about government spending crowding out private investment.

We are animals

A reminder from Greta Christina

This is the point I want to make. It's a point that most of us know and understand consciously... and yet it's a point that we have a striking tendency to forget.

We are animals.

I'll say that again:

We. Are. Animals.

We are an animal species: in the primate order, in the mammalian class, in the vertebrate sub-phylum. We are a product of evolution; a product of nature.

Yes, we're animals with an unusual ability to shape our environment. But it's an unusual ability -- not a unique one. Other living things have made dramatic physical impacts on the planet as well. Coral, for instance. Earthworms. And, of course, plants. Plants breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen made a huge, radical change to the atmosphere of the planet. (A change that, so I've read, was a serious ecological threat to plant life, until animals came along and re-balanced the ecosystem.)

And yes, humans are the dominant life form on the planet right now. But even that doesn't make us special. Other life forms have been dominant in the past: trilobites, for instance, and dinosaurs. They were around for tens of millions of years. We've been the dominant species for what -- ten thousand years? Less? In geological terms, we're not even a blip.

It's so easy to think of human beings as somehow apart from nature. It's deeply woven into our language and our way of thinking. Nature versus nurture. Nature versus culture. Natural versus man-made. Is such- and- such plant a native, or was it brought to this region by people? Is X (global warming, homosexuality, the tendency of twenty- something human males to get into stupid accidents) caused by human beings and human culture, or is it natural? It's a way of thinking that's very pervasive. Even among people who aren't talking about religion. Even among atheists.

When people talk about evolution, for instance, they -- we -- often do it as if human beings were evolution's pinnacle, the goal it's been inexorably moving towards... as opposed to just one tiny, short-lived twig on an enormously huge, four- billion- year- old tree. Ditto when we talk about the food chain. There's a decided tendency to talk about the food chain as if it all headed straight into our mouths.

And it's a way of thinking that shows up a lot when science collides with politics or morality. When the question comes up of whether human gender roles are born or learned or both, we tend to forget that we are animals -- and that most animals have some sort of innate gender- differentiated behavior when it comes to sex and reproduction. When the question comes up of whether human homosexuality is born or learned or both, we tend to forget that we are animals -- and that homosexual behavior has been observed in hundreds upon hundreds of other animal species. We don't think of zoology as applying to us. We think of ourselves as different.

Freedom

Freedom: an Experimental Analysis

Consider the following case:

Tanya lives in a small, newly created country in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most important issue in the region is the treatment of a disenfranchised minority that lives throughout the country. Tanya truly dislikes the minority and wants to further damage them if she can. While public opinion concerning the minority varies greatly, the government has taken the side of the minority. Consequently, a ban has been placed on any action or public speech that is intended to hurt the disenfranchised minority. In other words, the government has made laws against hurting the minority, but Tanya wishes she could hurt them.

Now ask yourself: 'To what extent do these laws diminish Tanya's freedom?'

Once you have decided on the answer to this question, consider a very similar case with one important difference: Tanya wants to help the disenfranchised minority.

Tanya lives in a small, newly created country in Eastern Europe. Perhaps the most important issue in the region is the treatment of a disenfranchised minority that lives throughout the country. Tanya truly cares about the minority and really wants to help them if she can. While public opinion concerning the minority varies greatly, the government has sided against the minority. Consequently, a ban has been placed on any action or public speech that is intended to help the disenfranchised minority. In other words, the government has made laws against helping the minority, but Tanya wishes she could help them.

Now ask yourself the same question again: 'To what extent do these laws diminish Tanya's freedom?'

During an experiment I conducted in which participants were presented with these two cases, I discovered an very interesting result. Participants thought that Tanya's freedom was much more diminished in the second case than in the first. In other words, subjects thought that people's freedom was much more diminished when they were prevented from doing something morally good than when they were prevented from doing something morally bad. After noticing this interesting result, I conducted two other studies which further confirmed the interesting effect found in the first survey.

Anythoughts... in regard to the Positive and Negative Liberty debate?


"A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him." --George Orwell

the color of your dreams...

New Studies on Black and White vs. Colored Dreaming