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Showing posts from 2021

Frederick Soddy - Money vs Man

Many seem to have forgotten, today, the contribution by Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) to macroeconomy and monetary policies. Maybe because Soddy, Nobel Prize in 1921 " for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes ", has long remained famous for chemistry. However, at a time when neoclassical economics (based on the metaphor of equilibrium between supply and demand) and evolutionary economics (based on a metaphor from biology, where innovations play the role of mutations) were consolidating into the two pillars of macroeconomic thinking we all know, he humbly offered a third way: an economics rooted in physics, in the laws of thermodynamics (you already now of our keen interest for this approach, and of our attention for the work of Ole Peters ), fathering what today we would call " ecological economics ". A few days ago the  UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purp

Africana philosophy

On History of Philosophy you can consult a terrific collection of podcasts (~50 hours) about Africana philosophy, ranging from ancient philosophy to the modern day Major themes include African oral traditions, reactions to the depredations of colonialism and enslavement, political philosophy and philosophy of race developed in the twentieth century, and the emergence of Africana thought within academia... you should absolutely browse and listen to them when you have a bit of time: https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/africana-philosophy  

True wisdom by Tim O'Reilly on web3.0

..." Let’s focus on the parts of the Web3 vision that aren’t about easy riches, on solving hard problems in trust, identity, and decentralized finance . And above all, let’s focus on the interface between crypto and the real world that people live in, where, as  Matthew Yglesias put it when talking about housing inequality, “a society becomes wealthy over time by accumulating a stock of long-lasting capital goods.” If, as Sal Delle Palme argues, Web3 heralds the birth of a new economic system, let’s make it one that increases true wealth—not just paper wealth for those lucky enough to get in early but actual life-changing goods and services that make life better for everyone." ...read the full reflection on  https://www.oreilly.com/radar/why-its-too-early-to-get-excited-about-web3/

Dunning-Kruger effect? Not even wrong...

  It is misquoted, especially with the heightening of social tensions around health policies, so often now, that it's worth reminding oneself what the "Dunning-Kruger effect" is NOT. To leave the explanation to people more apt than we are, here we recommend two references: https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/   https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real   If the Dunning Kruger effect (should we accept it exist) is not what everyone seems to think it is about ... what is then people's perceived experience really anchored on? Just a working hypothesis: we are witnessing the results of a difficulty in evaluating the sources of our knowledge, when the media to which we are exposed give us the delusion of consulting "sources" despite rather offering us ( most of the time ) "opinions", sometimes quite far from the sources themselves.  If one places a lot of trust in its "sources", having the invest

Observing Many Researchers Using the Same Data and Hypothesis Reveals a Hidden Universe of Uncertainty

  Beautiful, thought-provoking preprint! We recommend you keep this at hand. Abstract: How does noise generated by researcher decisions undermine the credibility of science? We test this by observing all decisions made among 73 research teams as they independently conduct studies on the same hypothesis with identical starting data. We find excessive variation of outcomes. When combined, the 107 observed research decisions taken across teams explained at most 2.6% of the total variance in effect sizes and 10% of the deviance in subjective conclusions. Expertise, prior beliefs and attitudes of the researchers explain even less. Each model deployed to test the hypothesis was unique, which highlights a vast universe of research design variability that is normally hidden from view and suggests humility when presenting and interpreting scientific findings. For full-text click here .

State loan to CAC 40 companies, Pandora Papers and the impoverishment of the single mother: the deviances of an amoral contemporary welfare

by Deborah Liebart , and Marco Manca . This article can be cited by the DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6647214 Licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0   "Hardship" by bafdias is licensed under CC BY 2.0 It's bad to be women in a State that substitutes welfare with resilience... According to the latest france Stratégie report, of October 2021, the tax reform implemented in recent years has not had the expected results[1]. There is no measurable effect of the trickle-down theory... in fact, there is an enrichment of the richest and a pauperization of the poorest.   The invalidity of this theory was already noted in the past: the IMF acknowledged in 2015 that this theory was not based on any objective scientific fact[2]. It has been observed on several occasions that the more tax allowances are introduced for the wealthiest, the richer they become without anything benefiting the most modest, even as the negative impact of inequality is now wide

Leveraging Machine Learning for efficient agent-based simulations & application on biomedical cases

 Our very own Taghi Aliyev  has presented about the state of the art and ideas for the future in the application of Machine Learning to optimize and accelerate agent based simulations, at the BioDynaMo workshop 2021 In case you have missed his lecture, here is the recording:

The not so invisible hand : raise, fall and current resuscitation efforts of antitrust norms

By Deborah Liebart and Marco Manca .  Licensed under the CreativeCommons BY-NC-SA 4.0  DOI:  10.5281/zenodo.5111425 While public debts have increased drastically with the health crisis 1 , states are seeking to broaden their tax bases. It is in this context that the debate on antitrust laws and GAFAs is reopening in the United States but also in Europe through the national and supranational laws of the OECD 2 . The issue of antitrust and GAFAs has been debated at the G20 3 . Are unicorns turning into hydras? Could a regulatory policy re-stabilise the system?   " Giving hands " by afagen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0   If the concept of the Smithian invisible hand as it is used today claims to naturally, spontaneously, settle monopolies, we have long discovered that without antitrust legislation, there is no natural equilibrium tending to fairly regulate the market. Competition is necessary for the economy to run smoothly in order to defend the interests of consumers. At