From the category archives:

On the reading stand

Incentive engineering v. Econ 101
   (creativity, criminality, etc.)

April 7, 2010

About a book and a paper…
The economics I encountered (in what were considered to be humanities courses) at MIT presented theories of productive behavior illustrated with graphs of relationships between supply and demand, prices, utilities, consumer surpluses, deadweight losses, and so on. These are elementary parts of the apparatus of neoclassical economics, a soaring [...]

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How many minds produce knowledge
(and how they don’t)

December 11, 2009

A review of Infotopia
I’ve been discussing problems with public information and ways to improve it with Michael Nielsen, and on this topic, he recommended Infotopia: how many minds produce knowledge by Cass Sunstein. Having just finished reading it, I recommend it too.
With a solid grounding in experiments and studies of group behavior (and enlightened common [...]

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An Ecopragmatist Manifesto

October 24, 2009

This week, with the help of Viking Press, Stewart Brand has offered the world an important book on the collision between humanity and the Earth’s limits — on the facts, the problems, the passions, the politics, and the realistic possibilities for better outcomes.
After Whole Earth Discipline appeared in my mail, I opened it and skimmed [...]

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Total Recall:
How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything

September 20, 2009

Gordon Bell, a long-time leader and innovator in the world of computation, has immersed himself in a life-changing experiment. Bits and pieces of news about it have been circulating for years, and his new book, just published, gives a full picture. In brief, Gordon records and indexes what he sees, hears, and more — [...]

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The Paradox of Choice

June 3, 2009

In standard theories of rationality, it is practically axiomatic that having more choices is always better. It should come as no surprise that this isn’t true of real human beings: Too much choice can make us miserable.
In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz unfolds a broad picture of the perversities of [...]

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Nanotechnology in Science Fiction
(and vice versa)

April 9, 2009

Advanced nanotechnology concepts and science fiction have been intertwined almost from the beginning. In the early years, critics often declared that the idea of molecular manufacturing “Sounds like science fiction” (like Moon rockets, perhaps?). They were right about the similarity, of course, because science fiction writers had pounced on the ideas almost immediately.
There was a [...]

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Predictably Irrational

February 5, 2009

If you’ve read Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, you’ve probably recommended it to a friend. I you haven’t read it, then I think you’ll like it provided that:

You like to learn strange facts about how the human world really works, and
You sometimes enjoy well-written books on science by scientists who know [...]

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Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem

February 1, 2009

There’s recently been another ripple of media attention to the other CO2 problem: Not climate change, but ocean acidification. In brief: The oceans absorb a portion of CO2 emissions; this mitigates greenhouse warming, but forms carbonic acid, lowering ocean pH. Acidification of the oceans impedes the formation of coral and shells, and within decades, if [...]

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Nudging Toward a Better Future

January 9, 2009

A new book, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein describe surprising opportunities to improve the world today, and in doing so, they show how to make a future of accelerating change more livable for poorly informed human beings. The information and concepts have changed my way of thinking about some important issues.

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A Brain Drain to Nowhere

December 19, 2008

Science magazine reports a surprising and important scientific development that has been years in the making: US research faculty now spend an estimated 42% of what they consider “research time” on on pre- and post-award administrative activities — on writing progress reports, satisfying intricate rules for revenue management, working on review boards, and so on. [...]

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Black Swans

December 5, 2008

It seems that whenever I recommend The Black Swan to a friend, the response is “Yes, people have been saying I should read it”, or words to that effect (Rosa and I first heard it recommended by a speaker at a WEF meeting in Dalian, China). In The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly [...]

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