April 2011
20 posts
NOTICE: We are emigrating over to Wordpress --... →
“NOTICE: We are emigrating over to Wordpress — better SEO. Find us there...”
1 tag
WatchCute video on free will — or not.
“We measure the impact of individuals’ looks on their life satisfaction or...”
“an emerging consensus in the neuroscience community that drug and alcohol...”
– Is the same true of impulsive/compulsive investing? Likely.
1 tag
There is No Nobel Prize for Economics: There is a...
We’re not sure why this fact has been ignored by the world and media – as well as major universities. Why has this not been fact-checked? Why has this misstatement been institutionalized?
We learned the following from Linked In contributors: “There is no Nobel Prize in Economics. The Prize that is typically referred to as the Economics Nobel is actually a prize given by the Swedish National Bank...
“75% of Americans believe in angels and that 50% think they have their own...”
“There is also much confusion about what it means to speak with scientific...”
“There is also much confusion about what it means to speak with scientific...”
“…it is the quality of connections in the brain, not the overall size, that...”
“Random events behave predictably in aggregate even if they’re not...”
“Randomness is so difficult to grasp because it works against our pattern-finding...”
“Education is an important determinant of income — one of the most important —...”
– Daniel Kahneman
“Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Aix-Marseille, emphasised the...”
“Evolutionary biologists Richard Alexander and Robert Trivers have recently...”
“Because the human brain does not change, technology must.”
“Helen Fisher, on “temperament dimensions.” She writes that we have four broad...”
“What many leading scientists, especially those who study the mind and society,...”
“Path Dependence — This refers to the notion that often “something that...”
How Free Is Your Will? -- Scientific American
So it turns out that there are neurons in your brain that know you are about to make a movement the better part of a second before you know it yourself. What does that mean?
Scientists from UCLA and Harvard — Itzhak Fried, Roy Mukamel and Gabriel Kreiman — have taken an audacious step in the search for free will, reported in a new article in the journal Neuron. They used a powerful...
“Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Lord Rees, says some of the cosmos’s biggest...”
“the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for unaided human...”
March 2011
58 posts
Fukushima: Cultural Capital, Scientific...
Three Realities: Cultural Capital, Scientific Measurements, Political Denial
The magnitude of the earthquake that hit North-East Japan was 9.0, the fourth largest on record in modern times. The earthquake and tsunami risk was on the level of once in a thousand years, for this region: the last comparable earthquake in that region occurred in 869, according to historical and archeological...
1 tag
Behavioral Economics Overreach
Behavioral Economics, like so many efforts previously to upend the hegemony of the neo-classical market model, will leave some footprints on the intellectual sands of time. However, there is no way that it can accomplish what many of its disciples seem, subliminally at least, to believe: that we should abandon the traditional model with (because of?) all its implications about private property,...
“The measurement of complexity in physics, engineering, and computer science...”
“The measurement of complexity in physics, engineering, and computer science...”
“The measurement of complexity in physics, engineering, and computer science...”
“Not only will many people happily lie to themselves if given a reason, but they...”
“Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”
– George Santayana
“most uses of punishment are very much for selfish interests, such as defending...”
“more adaptable bacteria oriented toward long-term improvement prevailed over...”
Rats can teach humans some investing savvy
“In the experiment, researchers flash two lights, one green and one red, onto a screen. Four out of five times, it’s green; the other time, the red light flashes. But the exact sequence is kept random. When rewarded for correct picks, rats and pigeons quickly discover the best strategy is to always pick green, guaranteeing an 80 percent correct-pick rate. Humans, however, tried to...
1 tag
Worms are Economists Too!
It sounds absurd to equate simple organism behaviors to humans. However, nature is miserly and always adopts (jury-rigs) (very, very) old biological systems to more complex organisms – like us. This is true of basic behavioral and nervous systems. The article below details some of these.
In addition, all animals face the same challenges of energy burgeting and movement in a three-dimensional...
WatchRobert Sapolsky: Are Humans Just Another Primate? — He is a great speaker on these matters.
“our species’ capacity for wide behavioral variability appears to be uniquely...”
1 tag
Real Science? > Skepticism Over Behavioral Econ +...
We have voiced the same concerns about a theory and set of ideas that quickly became pop and media favorites without the hard years of testing and experimentation needed by any new theory. Perhaps the British are more honest about the challenges. We favor cognitive neuroscience models and theories.
There just is no peer-reviewed evidence.
There are also some serious ethical and ideological...
How Groups Are Successful - Hint: It's Not...
This is highly relevant to investment decision making especially among employees where group decisions are often the most important.
Group IQ - The Boston Globe
Researchers are finding hints about how individual people contribute to make a group creative and successful.
Intuitively, we still attribute too much to individuals and not enough to groups.
The proportion of women in the group...
“we primates are genetically programmed to feel aggressive toward groups with...”
“People without the secure base tend to feel more hostile, aggressive, and...”
“When you are exposed to something that promotes your being in a particular mood...”
“We mistake familiarity for preference”
2 tags
WatchThis is a bit geeky but it offers a great lesson on how limited resources can be shared in primate social dominance/”leadership” structures — “carrot and stick” it appears.
1 tag
The Cultural Cognition and Understanding of Risk
This looks useful for addressing communciations issues with investment risk perceptions as well as any science and technical information based decision-making, e.g., medicine
Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to:
fit their perceptions of risk and related factual beliefs to their shared moral evaluations of putatively dangerous activities
The cultural cognition thesis...
1 tag
“Individuals more readily impute expert knowledge and trustworthiness to...”
“what most scientists believe is simply another empirical fact no different from...”
“scientific opinion fails to quiet societal dispute on such issues not because...”
1 tag
“When asked to evaluate whether an individual of elite academic credentials,...”
2 tags
"Angry Rhetoric is a Response to Uncertainty and...
This is relevant to fear around investments and retirement. More and more people have more and more uncertainty and fear about retirement challenges.
Why is that discourse so vitriolic in the first place, so hate-filled, so laden with references to ‘second amendment remedies’ and crosshairs and bulls-eyes and targeting and hoping opponents might die. Beyond just calling for cooler talk, we...
“The cultural cognition of risk is a theory that helps to explain public...”
“Myriad theories have been advanced for the limited influence of science in...”