Sad to hear him still phrasing this simple truth so obscurely: Not

"Because, on the scale of molecular binding site recognition, say a few tens of angstroms in length, height and width and several other features such as polarity, van-der-Waal forces, and so on, there are far fewer effectively different molecular shapes than there are kinds of molecules."

… but "Because there are fewer stories than there are facts."

"A system responding to a stochastic driving signal can be interpreted as computing, by means of its dynamics, an (implicit) model of the environmental variables. The system's state retains information about past environmental fluctuations, and a fraction of this information is predictive of future ones. The remaining nonpredictive information reflects model complexity that does not improve predictive power, and represents the ineffectiveness of the model. We expose the fundamental equivalence between this model inefficiency and thermodynamic inefficiency, measured by the energy dissipated during the interaction between system and environment. Our results hold arbitrarily far from thermodynamic equilibrium and are applicable to a wide range of systems, including biomolecular machines. They highlight a profound connection between the effective use of information and efficient thermodynamic operation: any system constructed to keep memory about its environment and to operate energetically efficiently has to be predictive."

"I could not tell you how many times I’ve encountered libertarian arguments about law that assume that individuals can and ought to use contracts to protect themselves against just this sort of contingency. Don’t worry about users clicking “I agree” to overreaching terms of service; if they truly cared about the terms, they’d negotiate for better ones. Don’t worry about people who refuse to buy health insurance; they’re making a rational choice for themselves. Don’t worry about minority shareholders, don’t worry about franchisees, don’t worry about all the other groups that find themselves on the wrong end of a bargain that always seems to tip against them in the long run—if they wanted better protections, they could and should have negotiated for them up front.

Except they don’t. They never do. And really. If the uber-libertarians of the Cato institute can’t watch out for themselves, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

"The debate is an old one. New however is the ease – though, I can assure you, editing away objects in Photoshop in a clean way is far from easy – and the extend in which manipulation can be done today. Magic Wand-ing, cloning and gaussian blur are now part even of the vocabularies of a growing number of retirees with too much spare time and an interest in photography. The expectation that a beautiful images ‘has to be manipulated’ is so ingrained that we don’t even pause to question our own paranoia.

But, rather than bothering ourselves with the question if an image is 100% ‘true’ – something that, in my own opinion will never be – we should ask ourselves if adaptations (not ‘manipulation’) are reasonable; if they add or remove something essential to the image. Erasing some zits from a model’s face is perfectly reasonable. Making eyes a little brighter can be legitimate. Blowing up boobs, lengthening legs and shrinking waists is not.

Ethics surrounding photo-manipulation is never so simple as a yes or no question and is not even a ‘thin line’; it is a mine-field in a no man’s land. That careers can be scuttled be being ‘caught’ doing so is sad, in particular because in the trench war between ‘digital compositors’ and photo-purists, there appears to be little willingness to come to a middle ground."

"Two different conceptions of emergence are reconciled as two instances of the phenomenon of detection. In the process of comparing these two conceptions, we find that the notions of complexity and detection allow us to form a unified definition of emergence that clearly delineates the role of the observer."

"Gullibility is the principal cause of bubbles. Investors and the general public get snared by a “beautiful illusion” and throw caution to the wind. Attempts to identify and control bubbles are complicated by the fact that the authorities who might naturally be expected to take action have often (especially in recent years) been among the most gullible, and were cheerleaders for the exuberant behavior. Hence what is needed is an objective measure of gullibility."

"At this point, it’s easier to understand why economists feel so defensive about challenges to the Myth of Barter, and why they keep telling the same old story even though most of them know it isn’t true. If what they are really describing is not how we ‘naturally’ behave but rather how we are taught to behave by the market—well who, nowadays, is doing most of the actual teaching? Primarily, economists. The question of barter cuts to the heart of not only what an economy is—most economists still insist that an economy is essentially a vast barter system, with money a mere tool (a position all the more peculiar now that the majority of economic transactions in the world have come to consist of playing around with money in one form or another) [10]—but also, the very status of economics: is it a science that describes of how humans actually behave, or prescriptive, a way of informing them how they should? (Remember, sciences generate hypothesis about the world that can be tested against the evidence and changed or abandoned if they don’t prove to predict what’s empirically there.)

Or is economics instead a technique of operating within a world that economists themselves have largely created? Or is it, as it appears for so many of the Austrians, a kind of faith, a revealed Truth embodied in the words of great prophets (such as Von Mises) who must, by definition be correct, and whose theories must be defended whatever empirical reality throws at them—even to the extent of generating imaginary unknown periods of history where something like what was originally described ‘must have’ taken place?"

"The multiverse view in set theory, introduced and argued for in this article, is the view that there are many distinct concepts of set, each instantiated in a corresponding set-theoretic universe. The universe view, in contrast, asserts that there is an absolute background set concept, with a corresponding absolute set-theoretic universe in which every set-theoretic question has a definite answer. The multiverse position, I argue, explains our experience with the enormous diversity of set-theoretic possibilities, a phenomenon that challenges the universe view. In particular, I argue that the continuum hypothesis is settled on the multiverse view by our extensive knowledge about how it behaves in the multiverse, and as a result it can no longer be settled in the manner formerly hoped for."

"Since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of events, minor in themselves, and unlikely to have counted for much in the past, that fit the frame “Republicans=delusion”."

"The friction between the quant and the poet could be represented by focusing on a few bickering individuals, or by trying to divide the greens up into Two Cultures. But it could also, perhaps more honestly and productively, be represented as a tension that is present within all. None of us is wholly, or even primarily, rational and analytical, and none of us is quite devoid of poetry either, though it is sometimes hard to find it. These divisions are themselves stories that we, in this particular culture, tell ourselves about how humans work. The quants and the poets are both needed, but I would argue that, right now, the poets ought to take the lead – if indeed that is ever something that poets are capable of. We have no shortage of arguments about numbers and machines, but we do have a great shortage of workable stories. That is to say: stories that don’t just have happy endings, but have convincing plots as well."

With respect to the DSM-5, I am agnostic about the diagnostic criteria for individual conditions, such as panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder; in the end, I am not certain that either of these categories capture nature or will even appear in the DSM-6. When it comes to individual diagnostic categories, I would recommend that the DSM-5 take a conservative approach, leaving criteria unchanged unless compelling new evidence suggests that a change would be beneficial. Whatever the ultimate approach to the DSM-5, it is critical that the scientific community escape the artificial diagnostic silos that control so much research, ultimately to our detriment.

"The modeling of complex systems such as ecological or socio-economic systems can be very challenging. Although various modeling approaches exist, they are generally not compatible and mutually consistent, and empirical data often do not allow one to decide what model is the right one, the best one, or most appropriate one. Moreover, as the recent financial and economic crisis shows, relying on a single, idealized model can be very costly. This contribution tries to shed new light on problems that arise when complex systems are modeled. While the arguments can be transferred to many different systems, the related scientific challenges are illustrated for social, economic, and traffic systems. The contribution discusses issues that are sometimes overlooked and tries to overcome some frequent misunderstandings and controversies of the past.…"

"We consider the problem of choosing between several models in least-squares regression with heteroscedastic data. We prove that any penalization procedure is suboptimal when the penalty is a function of the dimension of the model, at least for some typical heteroscedastic model selection problems. In particular, Mallows' Cp is suboptimal in this framework. On the contrary, optimal model selection is possible with data-driven penalties such as resampling or $V$-fold penalties. Therefore, it is worth estimating the shape of the penalty from data, even at the price of a higher computational cost. Simulation experiments illustrate the existence of a trade-off between statistical accuracy and computational complexity. As a conclusion, we sketch some rules for choosing a penalty in least-squares regression, depending on what is known about possible variations of the noise-level."

"What is it that mathematicians accomplish?"

"Both McLuhan and Heidegger are unequivocally pessimistic about technological change. I wonder if it’s not possible to do further damage to their ideas by blurring their warnings together. I wonder if McLuhan isn’t also talking about reframing thought as a reified and externalized storehouse of “raw material”. Certainly, when you watch digital addicts trying to function in the physical world, you recognize their discomfort with the body (boring!); but also their discomfort with the mind as private, internal, and sacred (even more boring!). The mass Gnosticism of the internet seems more like yearning for release from body and soul. Nevertheless, we remain nailed in place."

"The real problem with the DIKW pyramid is that it's a pyramid. The image that knowledge (much less wisdom) results from applying finer-grained filters at each level, paints the wrong picture. That view is natural to the Information Age which has been all about filtering noise, reducing the flow to what is clean, clear and manageable. Knowledge is more creative, messier, harder won, and far more discontinuous. "

"The place where I think Sloman is misguided is in his formulation of scientific models in an either/or way, as if, in truth, social variables are linked in simple causal paths, with a scientific goal of figuring out if A causes B or the reverse. I don't know much about intelligence, beer consumption, and socioeconomic status, but I certainly don't see any simple relationships between income, religious attendance, party identification, and voting--and I don't see how a search for such a pattern will advance our understanding, at least given current techniques. I'd rather start with description and then go toward causality following the approach of economists and statisticians by thinking about potential interventions one at a time. I'd love to see Sloman's and Pearl's ideas of the interplay between observational and experimental data developed in a framework that is less strongly tied to the notion of choice among simple causal structures."