Letters Remain

Month: June 2008

  • Non-Voting Political Philosophers and Stealing Ethicists

    When I read that political philosophers vote less often than other philosophers (and political scientists) I was reminded of the book Can a Robot be Human?. This book touches on the logic behind voting, and comes to the conclusion that – for an individual – it is pointless because no election has ever been decided…

  • Prediction Markets and The Wisdom of Crowds

    FT Predict is more than just a game. Predictive markets collect the wisdom of the crowd in a single dynamic price unit that can be far more sensitive to changes in the market than standard survey-based research. And a growing number of today’s leading companies embrace predictive market models in order to harness the wisdom…

  • List of Cognitive Biases

    I love lists, and so every day this week I’ll give you one to chew on. To start us off is this wonderful list of cognitive biases. To try and become a better thinker I’m studying cognitive biases in order to (attempt to) overcome them. This in itself is attempting to overcome the bias blind…

  • The Correlation Between IQ and Atheism

    Times Higher Education reports that there is a strong correlation between a high IQ and a lack of religious belief, according to Richard Lynn, the controversial psychologist. In the past Lynn has performed research into what he believes is the existence of race and sex differences in intelligence, and has called for the “phasing out”…

  • How (and Why) to Nap

    How to Nap is an informative graphic from The Boston Globe detailing how we should nap effectively during the day. Power naps enhance memory consolidation is an accessible article on why we should nap, drawing on research from Harvard Medical School’s Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. via Neurophilosophy

  • 6 False Beliefs About the Brain

    ScienceBlogs’ Neurophilosophy details 6 iconoclastic discoveries about the brain and gives a brief description of the research showing the truth behind these false dogmas: The adult human brain is not plastic The adult human brain cannot regenerate Neurons are the functional elements of the nervous system Neurotransmitters are released from the nerve terminal Neurons are…

  • Book Lists

    I’ve been updating my reading list lately and my Amazon wish lists are growing exponentially (even with significant culling). These book lists are great: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, AI researcher (writer of The FAQ on the Meaning of Life) Ryan Holiday, writer Kevin Kelly, Wired’s Editor at Large and board member of The Long Now Foundation…

  • Black and White Photography on Overcast Days

    Wired’s How-To Wiki has a short and sweet article on Producing Terrific Black & White Photos. There’s a good tip for those who feel the need to go photographing on an overcast day: Most photographers will tell you that gloomy, overcast days are perfect for shooting in black and white. So the next time the…

  • The Long Now Foundation

    Established in 01996 […] The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. A very admirable goal and one I’m inclined to embrace wholeheartedly. You may have heard of one of their projects, Long Bets. The current featured bet was placed by Warren Buffett with a $1,000,000…

  • 10 Essential (Software) Development Practices

    Ten Essential Development Practices is an article from Perl.com (O’Reilly) based on Perl Best Practices, a book on Perl coding and development guidelines. Given how obvious the items on this list are, it’s surprising how this isn’t followed. Design the Module’s Interface First Write the Test Cases Before the Code Create Standard POD Templates for…