tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75180521236072667162024-03-07T18:26:54.827-08:00The Bayesian HeresyEconomics, global development,current affairs, globalization, culture and more rants on the dismal science, and the society.
"As usual, it's like being a kid in a candy store. I'm awed by the volume of high-quality daily links in general. Thanks!" - Chris BlattmanMarshall Jevonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18150733296966489030noreply@blogger.comBlogger4621125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-33246436272303660672011-12-05T11:05:00.001-08:002011-12-05T11:19:36.006-08:00Getting beyond the OK Plataues with 'deliberate practice'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="background-color: yellow;">When you want to get good at something, how you spend your time practicing is far more important than the amount of time you spend</b>. In fact, in every domain of expertise that’s been rigorously examined, from chess to violin to basketball, studies have found that the number of years one has been doing something correlates only weakly with level of performance....<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: yellow;">Benjamin Franklin</span> was apparently an early practitioner of this technique. In his autobiography, he describes how he used to read essays by the great thinkers and try to reconstruct the author’s arguments according to Franklin’s own logic....<br />
<br />
The secret to improving at a skill is to retain some degree of conscious control over it while practicing—to force oneself to <span style="background-color: yellow;">stay out of autopilot</span>....</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Unlike mammographers, surgeons tend to get better with time. What makes surgeons different from mammographers, according to Ericsson, is that the outcome of most surgeries is usually immediately apparent—the patient either gets better or doesn’t—which means that surgeons are constantly receiving feedback on their performance. They’re always learning what works and what doesn’t, always getting better. This finding leads to a practical application of expertise theory:<span style="background-color: yellow;"> Ericsson suggests that mammographers regularly be asked to evaluate old cases for which the outcome is already known. That way they can get immediate feedback on their performance</span>.</blockquote>
<br />
-Foer, Joshua (2011-03-03). <b>Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything</b> . The Penguin Press. Kindle Edition. <br />
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<a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/12/what_ive_been_r_6.html">Arnold Kling</a> has an interesting discussion on the topic over at their blog.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Foer, citing Anders Ericcson and confirming with his own experience,
says that what is happening at a plateau is that you are doing too much
on auto-pilot. Instead, you have to jar yourself into engaging in the
activity more consciously....<br />
<br />
I wonder if there is an analogy with firms or even larger economic
units. <span style="background-color: yellow;"> That is, a firm is bound to operate on "autopilot" to a large
extent, but if it does so it will reach a plateau. And maybe firms or
larger economic units sometimes have to cut back on autopilot and do
worse for a while in order to escape a plateau.</span></blockquote>
</div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-59300208502845537802011-12-05T10:05:00.001-08:002011-12-05T10:08:06.241-08:00Advice of the Day- We're on Borrowed Time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ecommence/speeches/2011/wheelan.html">Charles Wheelan</a> commencement talk; <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What it means for you, and what I’ve found to be one the great
challenges of adulthood, is balancing present and future. <span style="background-color: yellow;">If you want to
do great things in a decade or two, you need to grind away now. You
need to do things that you would prefer not to do, to spend time on
things that you don’t particularly enjoy</span>. Frankly, that’s an important
part of your 20s. Sorry to be the bearer of that message. But you can’t
lose sight of the fact that there are no guarantees in life. If you
grind away miserably to become the CEO, no one can promise you that it
will work out that way, or that the sacrifice will be worth it even if
it does. On the other hand, if you spend most of your time skateboarding
with friends and playing video games, I can pretty much assure you that
your professional accomplishments will be limited.<br />
<br />
<br />
You have to navigate that trade-off. On this point,<span style="background-color: yellow;"> I do have advice,
which is to take joy in the journey, rather than building your life
around how good you expect the view to be when you get to the top</span>.
Again, by the way, the happiness research is clear. Most people
overstate how much they will enjoy that next promotion and the stuff it
can buy—because we get used to them so quickly. By next Monday, it’s
another job and a bigger TV that you still can’t find the remote control
for.</blockquote>
</div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-20625897531396607382011-12-02T11:21:00.001-08:002011-12-02T11:30:51.958-08:00The best iPad Notebook?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What are good iPad applications for taking notes?<br />
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<h1>
<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clockwork-notebook/id412184495?mt=8"><span style="font-size: small;">Clockwork Notebook</span></a></h1>
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<h1>
<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/note-taker-hd/id366572045?mt=8"><span style="font-size: small;">Note Taker HD</span></a></h1>
<h2>
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</div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-7057027062931322452011-11-20T07:32:00.001-08:002011-11-20T07:34:18.767-08:00The Mind's Eye<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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"<a href="http://www.oliversacks.com/books/the-minds-eye/">The Mind's Eye.</a>" Dr. Sacks focuses on creative people who have learned
to compensate for potentially devastating disabilities. From the
concert pianist who progressively lost the ability to recognize objects
yet managed to keep performing from memory; to the writer whose stroke
disturbed his ability to read but not his ability to write; to Sacks
himself, who suffers from "face blindness," a condition that renders him
unable to recognize people, even relatives, and, sometimes, himself.
Written with his trademark insight, compassion, and humor, the book
makes the obscure and arcane absolutely absorbing</div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-20290185170828777062011-11-20T06:35:00.001-08:002011-11-20T07:29:56.084-08:00Book Quote of the Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<blockquote>
It is no tragedy to think of the most successful people in any field as superheroes. But<span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;"> it is a tragedy when a belief in the judgment of experts or the marketplace rather than a belief in ourselves causes us to give up, as </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_Toole" style="background-color: yellow; color: black;">John Kennedy Toole</a><span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;"> did when he committed suicide after publishers repeatedly rejected his manuscript for the posthumously best-selling </span><i style="background-color: yellow; color: black;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces">Confederacy of Dunces</a></i><span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;">... </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
What I’ve learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized. For even a coin weighted toward failure will sometimes land on success. Or as the IBM pioneer Thomas Watson said, “<b>If you want to succeed, double your failure rate</b>.”</blockquote>
-<b>Mlodinow, Leonard </b>(2008-05-13). <a href="http://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Elen/">The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives </a>(p. 217). Vintage. Kindle Edition.</div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-17956196631993193962011-11-20T05:29:00.001-08:002011-11-20T05:45:15.727-08:00People to Watch- David Berlinski<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<blockquote>He is the author of numerous books, including <a href="http://www.davidberlinski.org/biography.php">The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and It Scientific Pretensions</a> (Crown Forum, 2008; Basic Books, 2009), <b>Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics</b> for the Modern Library series at Random House (2004),<b> The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky</b> (Harcourt, 2003), <b>The Advent of the Algorithm</b> (Harcourt Brace, 2000), <b>Newton’s Gift </b>(Free Press, 2000), and <b>A Tour of the Calculus</b> (Pantheon, 1996). William F. Buckley Jr. said of The Devil’s Delusion that “<i>Berlinski’s book is everything desirable; it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing, and of course vastly learned</i>.</blockquote>”MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-25728350998899897092011-11-16T11:35:00.001-08:002011-11-16T11:37:24.542-08:00Cool Alarm Clocks for iPhone<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://lifehacker.com/5860145/the-best-alarm-clock-app-for-iphone">The Best Alarm Clock App for iPhone</a>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-64515367099006099212011-11-15T02:51:00.001-08:002011-11-15T02:56:48.371-08:00Assorted Tools<a href="http://blog.contextdiscovery.com/">Wikisummarizer</a>
<a href="http://www.contextdiscovery.com/downloads.aspx">Context Discovery Inc</a>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-42311163173701532472011-11-10T08:50:00.001-08:002011-11-10T08:54:45.557-08:00Measures of economic well-being in UK<iframe width="400" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mlvnlYxMHso" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-84882400950041802272011-11-10T03:59:00.000-08:002011-11-10T03:59:43.728-08:00PK at Workd Bank<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_2331184"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ourfounder/personal-kanban-at-the-world-bank-small-team-rapid-development" title="Personal Kanban at the World Bank - Small Team Rapid Development" target="_blank">Personal Kanban at the World Bank - Small Team Rapid Development</a></strong> <iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/2331184" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more presentations from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ourfounder" target="_blank">Jim Benson</a> </div> </div>
Just finished the book, <a href="http://www.personalkanban.com/pk/personal-kanban-the-book/">Personal Kanban- Mapping Work, Navigating Life</a>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-86326219543010491172011-11-10T03:52:00.000-08:002011-11-10T03:59:43.749-08:00Personal Kanban<div style="width:425px" id="__ss_2430897"> <strong style="display:block;margin:12px 0 4px"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ourfounder/personal-kanban-101" title="Personal Kanban 101" target="_blank">Personal Kanban 101</a></strong> <iframe src="http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/2430897" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no"></iframe> <div style="padding:5px 0 12px"> View more presentations from <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ourfounder" target="_blank">Jim Benson</a> </div> </div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-84997878034248159442011-11-09T07:35:00.000-08:002011-11-09T07:35:46.806-08:00A book worth thinking and reading<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here's <a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/10/steven-pinker-on-violence.html">Tyler Cowen's review</a>;
<blockquote>When doing the statistics, one key issue is how to measure violence. Pinker often favors “per capita” measures, but I am not so sure. I might prefer a weighted average of per capita and “absolute quantity of violence” measures. Killing six million Jews in the Holocaust is not, in my view, “half as violent” if global population is twice as high. Once you toss in the absolute measures with the per capita measures, the long-term trends are not nearly as favorable as Pinker suggests.</blockquote>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-82865163960950877562011-11-09T07:24:00.000-08:002011-11-09T07:24:21.677-08:00A New York City Firefighter's Triumphant Comeback from Crash Victim to Elite Athlete<iframe width="400" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hCIdQNvcLT0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<blockquote>The Long Run is an emotional and incredibly honest story about Matt's determination to fight through fear, despair, loneliness, and intense physical and psychological pain to regain the life he once had. <b>The book chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon</b>. "Running saved my life," Matt says, and his embrace of the running community and insistence on competing in the marathon has inspired many, turning him into a symbol of hope and recovery for untold numbers of others.</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.iwillfoundation.com/#home"> I WILL Foundation</a>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-9828850394759249042011-11-09T07:00:00.000-08:002011-11-09T07:00:36.817-08:00Photo of the Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://moreintelligentlife.com/files/images/closingtime4_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://moreintelligentlife.com/files/images/closingtime4_0.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Pictured: H. & S.J. Rowan, Secondhand Bookshop, Boscombe, Bournemouth, Dorset</a>
"Mr Rowan has been in this part of Bournemouth for many years and specialises in buying and selling maps and books—antiquarian, arts, aviation, military history, atlases and local interest. Like all good dealers, he advertises in local papers offering to visit people’s homes to view books for sale."MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-30691058346886366602011-10-07T06:32:00.000-07:002011-10-07T06:32:53.664-07:00The Education of MillionairesLearn to Invest in Yourself
<iframe width="360" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PpvGhCPhMK0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
.” <b>Bootstrapping your education</b> involves getting on solid footing financially, and then making incremental investments in your earning power, over time, out of the cash flow—so you’re constantly learning and never going into debt.
-<a href="http://twitter.com/#!/michaelellsberg">Ellsberg, Michael</a> (2011-09-29). <b>The Education of Millionaires: It's Not What You Think and It's Not Too Late</b> (Kindle Locations 2957-2959). Portfolio. Kindle Edition.
Related:
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2011/08/31/how-to-network-your-way-to-world-class-mentors-the-thiel-fellowship-lecture-part-1/">How to Network Your Way to World-Class Mentors</a>
MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-83536498251361769832011-10-07T06:15:00.000-07:002011-10-07T06:15:24.308-07:00Money Ball<iframe width="360" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7YzHsa_9Z88" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-51530951218365068282011-09-26T11:53:00.000-07:002011-09-26T11:53:30.281-07:00Waiting for Amazon's Kindle Tablet
<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/">Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.</a>;
<blockquote>Again, the device is a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive touch screen. It is multi-touch, but from what I saw, I believe the reports that it relies on a two-finger multi-touch (instead of 10-finger, like the iPad uses) are accurate. This will be the first Kindle with a full-color screen. And yes, it is back-lit. There is no e-ink to be found anywhere on this device.</blockquote>
<a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/09/amazon-kindle-table-prime-ipad.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oreilly%2Fradar%2Fatom+%28O%27Reilly+Radar%29">
Why Amazon's Kindle tablet can succeed where others have failed.</a>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-37729190057674864172011-09-26T10:56:00.000-07:002011-09-26T10:56:43.716-07:00Art of the Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQ-2Lr2IXGmEUrWoOeVD5kq1H4LQaYdf532zmMP94WNkO_phuWBUNjZRJqfjWpt0ZVEMbXWBQiV6tw314C6CVRm7MmrCx7TfsPLYm052O96HdVs263rVBNW-eXBR_7R8PdmgQTP4t-4Y/s1600/110926_miles-aldridge-01_p323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQ-2Lr2IXGmEUrWoOeVD5kq1H4LQaYdf532zmMP94WNkO_phuWBUNjZRJqfjWpt0ZVEMbXWBQiV6tw314C6CVRm7MmrCx7TfsPLYm052O96HdVs263rVBNW-eXBR_7R8PdmgQTP4t-4Y/s1600/110926_miles-aldridge-01_p323.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/09/miles-aldridge.html">“Immaculee,” Numero</a>, 2007
MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-26200122545756014322011-09-23T00:29:00.000-07:002011-09-23T00:30:22.052-07:00Marketers target Men<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote>
Marketers are also devoting much more effort to marketing to men—or, as<a href="http://www.martinlindstrom.com/"> Mr Lindstrom</a> puts it, getting men to shop like women. In 1995 only 53%
of American men admitted to shopping for themselves. That figure has
risen to 75%. <b><span style="background-color: yellow;">Many are buying traditionally “female” products; marketers
created a $27 billion “male grooming” industry from nothing. </span></b>They
bombard men with images that were once reserved for women: think of
Abercrombie & Fitch’s buff, topless hunks. (Not all hunks are
appealing, however. The firm offered to pay a star of “Jersey Shore”, a
crass reality show, <i class="Italic">not</i> to wear its clothes.)</blockquote>
- Source: <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21530076">The Economist</a> </div>
MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-11745111322774085362011-09-18T10:19:00.000-07:002011-09-18T10:19:56.575-07:00Highly Recommended Podcast- Expert Prediction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/30/the-folly-of-prediction-full-transcript/">The Folly of Prediction</a><br />
<blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<strong>TETLOCK:</strong> <em>That experts thought they
knew more than they knew.That there was a <span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;">systematic gap between
<u>subjective probabilities</u> that experts were assigning to possible futures
and the <u>objective likelihoods</u> of those futures materializing.</span></em></div>
<div class="p1">
<strong>DUBNER: </strong>Let me translate that for you.
The experts were pretty awful. And you think: awful compared to what?
Did they beat a monkey with a dartboard?</div>
<div class="p1">
<strong>TETLOCK:</strong> <em>Oh, the monkey with a
dartboard comparison, that comes back to haunt me all the time. But with
respect to how they did relative to, say, a baseline group of Berkeley
undergraduates making predictions, they did somewhat better than that.
Did they do better than an extrapolation algorithm? No, they did not.
They did for the most part a little bit worse than that. How did they do
relative to purely random guessing strategy? Well, they did a little
bit better than that, but not as much as you might hope.</em></div>
<div class="p1">
<strong>DUBNER:</strong> That <span style="background-color: yellow;">“extrapolation algorithm”
</span>that Tetlock mentioned? That’s simply a computer programmed to predict
“no change in current situation.” So it turned out these smart,
experienced, confident experts predicted the political future about as
well, if not slightly worse, than the average daily reader of <em>The New York Times</em>.</div>
<strong>TETLOCK:</strong><span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;"> </span><em><span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;">I think the most important takeaway would be that the experts are, they think they know more than they do.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: yellow; color: black;"> </span>They
were systematically overconfident. Some experts were really massively
overconfident. And we are able to identify those experts based on some
of their characteristics of their belief system and their cognitive
style, their thinking style</em></blockquote>
........<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER: </b>Hey, guess what, Sunshine? Al
Gore didn’t win Florida. Didn’t become president either. Try walking
that one back. So we are congenital predictors, but our predictions are
often wrong. What then? How do you defend your bad predictions? I asked
Philip Tetlock what all those political experts said when he showed them
their results. He had already stashed their excuses in a neat taxonomy:</div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<b>TETLOCK: </b><i>So, if you thought that
Gorbachev for example, was a fluke, you might argue, well my
understanding of the Soviet political system is fundamentally right, and
the Soviet Politburo, but for some quirky statistical aberration of the
Soviet Politburo would have gone for a more conservative candidate.
Another argument might be, well I predicted that Canada would
disintegrate, that Quebec would secede<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>from
Canada, and it didn’t secede, but the secession almost did succeed
because there was a fifty point one percentage vote against secession,
and that’s well within the margin of sampling error.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER:</b> <i>Are there others you want to name?</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>TETLOCK:</b> <i>Well another popular
prediction is “off on timing.” That comes up quite frequently in the
financial world as well. Many very sophisticated students of finance
have commented on how hard it is, saying the market can stay irrational
longer than you can stay liquid, I think is George Soros’s expression.
So, “off on timing” is a fairly popular belief-system defense as well.
And I predicted that Canada would be gone. And you know what? It’s not
gone yet. But just hold on.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER:</b> <i>You answered very
economically when I asked you what are the characteristics of a bad
predictor; you used one word, dogmatismm. What are the characteristics,
then, of a good one?</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>TETLOCK:</b> <i><span style="background-color: yellow; color: black;">Capacity for constructive self-criticism</span>.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER: </b><i>How does that self-criticism come into play and actually change the course of the prediction?</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>TETLOCK:</b> <i>Well, one sign that you’re
capable of constructive self-criticism is that you’re not dumbfounded by
the question: What would it take to convince you you’re wrong? If you
can’t answer that question you can take that as a warning sign.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER:</b> In his study, Tetlock found that
one factor was more important than any other in someone’s predictive
ability: cognitive style. You know the <span style="background-color: yellow;">story about the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox"> fox and the hedgehog</a>?</span></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>TETLOCK:</b> <i>Isaiah Berlin tells us that
the quotation comes from the Greek warrior poet<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archilochus"> Archilichus </a>2,500 years
ago. And the rough translation was the fox knows many things but the
hedgehog knows one big thing.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER: </b><i>So, talk to me about what the foxes do as predictors and what the hedgehogs do as predictors.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>TETLOCK:</b> <i>Sure. The foxes tend to have
a rather eclectic, opportunistic approach to forecasting. They’re very
pragmatic. A famous aphorism by Deng Xiaoping was he “didn’t care if the
cat was white or black as long as it caught mice.” And I think the
attitude of many foxes is they really didn’t care whether ideas came
from the left or the right, they tended to deploy them rather flexibly
in deriving predictions. So they often borrowed ideas across schools of
thought that hedgehogs viewed as more sacrosanct. There are many
subspecies of hedgehog. But what they have in common is a tendency to
approach forecasting as a deductive, top-down exercise. They start off
with some abstract principles, and they apply those abstract principles
to messy, real-world situations, and the fit is often decidedly
imperfect.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<i> </i></div>
<b>DUBNER: </b>So foxes tend to be less dogmatic
than hedgehogs, which makes them better predictors. But, if you had to
guess, who do you think more likely to show up TV or in an op-ed column,
the pragmatic, nuanced fox or the know-it-all hedgehog?<br />
<div class="p1">
<b>DUBNER:</b> You got it!</div>
<b>TETLOCK: </b><i>Hedgehogs, I think, are more
likely to offer quotable sound bites, whereas foxes are more likely to
offer rather complex, caveat-laden sound bites. They’re not sound bites
anymore if they’re complex and caveat-laden.</i></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-43038161780110084632011-09-18T08:43:00.000-07:002011-09-18T08:43:19.531-07:00Neuroscience of Personality and Love Therapy<iframe width="400" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MGfhQTbcqmA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<a href="http://www.radiancehouse.com/">Radiance House</a>
<a href="http://www.socialbot.com/">Social Bot</a>
<a href="http://www.darionardi.com/">Dario Nardi</a>
Check out their<a href="http://www.radiancehouse.com/itemRH_800.htm"> iPhone apps</a>.MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-24820151968661303322011-09-18T06:11:00.000-07:002011-09-18T10:21:50.913-07:00Steven Levitt on Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7Fw3lEMFofY" width="400"></iframe></div>
MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-41245959909508659362011-09-17T05:57:00.001-07:002011-09-17T05:57:20.439-07:00Chart of the Day- STDs in US<iframe width="400" height="325" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" src="http://www.google.com/publicdata/embed?ds=z79r63l7auplt5_&ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=rate&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=disease&idim=disease:274:280:273:320&ifdim=disease:parent:&tstart=464209200000&tend=1221591600000&hl=en&dl=en_US&icfg&uniSize=0.035&iconSize=0.5"></iframe>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-46938179631235867832011-09-11T01:49:00.000-07:002011-09-11T01:49:01.328-07:00Google Infographic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0gA9ChSkT8_7lWD6z1_hG1VRRn2_5TfAffw11uPfWGUmHXIvTLJjLaXhhvccTkWI9CnEcIgsf2i7yoTiu0rxFkZRVSpgQ0aMFCNkvnJBG3-stTFQSEXJLjTSE5rHlV9pVg8wXdhWwnYM/s1600/google.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0gA9ChSkT8_7lWD6z1_hG1VRRn2_5TfAffw11uPfWGUmHXIvTLJjLaXhhvccTkWI9CnEcIgsf2i7yoTiu0rxFkZRVSpgQ0aMFCNkvnJBG3-stTFQSEXJLjTSE5rHlV9pVg8wXdhWwnYM/s1600/google.jpg" /></a></div>From <a href="http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/02/06/the-massive-size-of-google-infographic.html">Smashing Apps</a></div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7518052123607266716.post-930248892845787712011-09-11T01:36:00.000-07:002011-09-11T01:36:17.351-07:00Random Blog- Logic is Variable<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ho7-z7YM9wnsq0KdZG4iRRc5XmsLb-z_3ZEu3nrg0VVTou90WEKUbSQJrKlQ2vdbrHv_s7Gr_eJYEzYdxInCAYaIZmFFfR90FXS7gbNnN5rSVzPieXBTGTDKjehZRa5eLySPy6nF4YA/s1600/boy-in-flood-waters1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ho7-z7YM9wnsq0KdZG4iRRc5XmsLb-z_3ZEu3nrg0VVTou90WEKUbSQJrKlQ2vdbrHv_s7Gr_eJYEzYdxInCAYaIZmFFfR90FXS7gbNnN5rSVzPieXBTGTDKjehZRa5eLySPy6nF4YA/s320/boy-in-flood-waters1.jpg" width="320" /><span><span style="background-color: yellow;"></span></span></a></div><br />
From the <a href="http://logicisvariable.blogspot.com/2011/09/that-flood-of-2010.html">Pakistani blog</a>-<br />
<blockquote>A phrase written on sand by a small boy who lost his parents in flood,"<b style="background-color: yellow;">Dear River, I will never forgive you, I will never forgive you, even if your waves touch my feet million times</b><span style="background-color: yellow;">.</span>"</blockquote></div>MAIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247733552386947018noreply@blogger.com0