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Showing posts from December, 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 .