Life is like an Ayn Rand novel, except better written.
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Life is like an Ayn Rand novel, except better written.
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Monthly Archives: June 2015
When people call you intelligent…
When people call you intelligent it is almost always because they agree with you. Otherwise they call you arrogant.
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Tim Hunt was making a self deprecating joke.
Well, it turned out from leaked transcripts that Tim Hunt was making a self deprecating joke. No apologies yet. And of course no application of the principle of charity.
Two things. First, one really needs to be independent to open one’s mouth and avoid falling prey to a bunch of mob misinterpreting what you are saying. Misinterpretation is iniquitous and independence is the only shield –financial independence is not necessary, working a minimum wage job provides protection. As we saw on this page from the people I zapped there is a high density of militants with some localized brain damage who are oblivious to any reasoning, attacking people on things about which they actually agree.
Second, the Tim Hunt episode effectively would not have happened in the U.S. where we take the first amendment and free speech very, very seriously. There have been only few cases of academics losing jobs and these took place for technicalities (as in the Salaita case).
To explain how one can be misinterpreted by the press, I once presented our precautionary principle in the UK, with 5-7 newspapers and many bloggers calling me “climate denier”, which was the exact opposite of my position. I struck back but the only solution is to not depend on the press. Again, the UK press is vastly more unprofessional as these things do not happen easily here. I thank God every day I live in the U.S.
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Guardian link (my letter):
http://www.theguardian.com/…/climate-change-taleb-tax-conse…
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Tim Hunt link
http://www.independent.co.uk/…/richard-dawkins-demands-apol…
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What unread books can teach us
‘The Unread books are where the action is. The writer Nassim Taleb approvingly calls such a collection an “antilibrary”; one’s shelves, he argues, should contain “as much of what you do not know” as finances allow. And don’t expect the proportion of unread books to fall, either. The more you read, the more the perimeter of your knowledge increases, and the more you’ll realise you don’t know. (Incidentally, Eco’s deadpan response to his visitors’ question is, “No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.”)
Source: What unread books can teach us
HatTip to Dave Lull
Health benefits from fasting that was NOT associated with reduction of calories.
Good news, but people in Medicine are a bit slow in getting the very notion of 2nd order effect /Jensen’s inequality and disentangling mentally the first from the 2nd order effect. Which is why few are getting Antifragile or the more general sensitivity to scale of a distribution.
In the paper, Longo and associates saw health benefits from fasting that was NOT associated with reduction of calories, but solely from the variability (5 day fast compensated by subsequent boost in calories). So it is NOT the caloric deprivation but the convexity of the human body to change (over a specified range) that is the subject under concern. Luckily you can detect that without too many experiments given its mathematical necessity (the link between convexity and benefits of volatility).This report missed the point. And look at the silly weight loss connotation.
http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/2015/06/24/reverse-signs-aging-safely-5-day-fast-month/
Reverse signs of aging safely with 5-day fast each month
A stunning new study shows that intermittent fasting can slow the aging process, improve cognitive ability, and reduce the incidence of cancer, inflammatory disease, and bone loss.
sciencerecorder.com