Tag: books

Google Books Search Review

The most startling problem is the incorrect use of the Boolean OR operation, the simplest of all. It is taught in kindergarten that the search for A OR B cannot produce less results than the higher found for A or B. Still, the query aboulia produces 26 items, abulia yields 40, but aboulia OR abulia produces only 35. Neither can a search for A OR B produce more hits than the sum of the hits found for A and B together at most. But this is what happens as illustrated by this simple search: for books with the word arrogance in the title. It finds 2 books. The search for books with the word arrogant in the title finds 6 documents. (Minutes earlier the software produced 8 hits, and such disappearances add an additional dimension to the confusion). The search for books with arrogant OR arrogance in the title yields 13 books.

oy. it looks like google book search has trouble with simple boolean operators.

Quantum Mechanics and Experience

accessible text

The more science tells us about the world, the stranger it looks. Ever since physics first penetrated the atom, early in this century, what it found there has stood as a radical and unanswered challenge to many of our most cherished conceptions of nature. It has literally been called into question since then whether or not there are always objective matters of fact about the whereabouts of subatomic particles, or about the locations of tables and chairs, or even about the very contents of our thoughts. A new kind of uncertainty has become a principle of science.

Brave New War

The shift from state-state conflicts to wars against small bands of insurgents will lead to a world with as many tiny armies as there are causes to fight for. They are looking for gaps in vital systems where a cheap action will generate a huge return.

Multiverse

you don’t need exotic theories to conjure multiverses. standard cosmology postulates that all possible quantum states (10^10^150), or world histories, actually play out. therefore, elvis is still alive (somewhere).
2007-01-28:

nice visualization of the multiverse.
2009-01-22: galaxy clusters racing at up to 1000 km / s – far faster than our best understanding of cosmology allows. Stranger still, every cluster seems to be rushing toward a small patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.
2012-01-23:

Recent theoretical works have shown that matter swapping between 2 parallel braneworlds could occur under the influence of magnetic vector potentials. In our visible world, galactic magnetism possibly produces a huge magnetic potential. As a consequence, this paper discusses the possibility to observe neutron disappearance into another braneworld in certain circumstances. The setup under consideration involves stored ultracold neutrons – in a vessel – which should exhibit a non-zero probability p to disappear into an invisible brane at each wall collision. An upper limit of p is assessed based on available experimental results. This value is then used to constrain the parameters of the theoretical model. Possible improvements of the experiments are discussed, including enhanced stimulated swapping by artificial means. The leap from our universe to another is theoretically possible. And the technology to test the idea is available today

that experiment sounds like nobel prize material.
2013-04-03: as good as any (perhaps even on the better side) episode of minutephysics

2015-05-28:

many physicists have come to doubt the very logic of nature’s laws. Increasingly, they worry that our universe might just be a random, rather bizarre permutation among uncountable other possible universes — an effective dead end in the quest for a coherent theory of nature

2015-08-11:

“A lot of people claim that you can never empirically test a claim like the multiverse because by definition you can only see what’s in our universe. But I think that’s much too quick.” Certain fundamental laws, which we can empirically prove in our own universe, might mathematically predict the existence of other universes. These laws would therefore be indirect, but compelling evidence of the existence of other universes.

Holy Fire

life extension haves and havenots

The 21st century is coming to a close, and the medical industrial complex dominates the world economy. It is a world of synthetic memory drugs, benevolent government surveillance, underground anarchists, and talking canine companions. Power is in the hands of conservative senior citizens who have watched their health and capital investments with equal care, gaining access to the latest advancements in life-extension technology. Meanwhile, the young live on the fringes of society, eking out a meager survival on free, government-issued rations and a black market in stolen technological gadgetry from an earlier, less sophisticated age.

Prediction Markets

Internet gambling is good for consumers. Too bad America wants to ban it

The spread of the internet has made the online gambler king. The emergence of large online gambling companies has slashed gaming operators’ margins and driven up payout ratios for gamblers. And the punters have embraced it in their millions, especially in America, where illegal gambling has long flourished. Last year 12m Americans placed about $6b in online bets, 50% the world’s total. You might have hoped politicians would greet such a demonstration of popularity with moderation—welcoming online gambling’s benefits and curbing its inevitable excesses. Instead they have put all their chips on red. Last weekend Congress passed a bill that will stop banks making payments to online gambling sites, adding to an already formidable legislative arsenal that outlaws most online gaming.

congress just killed a golden goose.
2006-12-03: uh crap i would have LOVED to attend this one. prediction markets is one of my permathreads.
2007-01-30: performance matters for betting markets too. to get even faster you’d have to factor out the humans clicking the buttons, but i guess that would require betting to grow up from being entertainment.
2007-04-24:

The key drivers in both filtering and consensus making in such systems is often positive feedback. For Digg, good stories get “dug” which makes them more likely to be seen and dug further. Poor stories do not get dug, rank lower, are less likely to be dug and slowly disappear. In ant trails, pheromone deposition stimulates further deposition if the food source really is good. Perhaps software developers should be given a cache of tokens. They can give the manager of a project 2 tokens each day if they think the project worth continuing. The manager can hire a programmer for the day [for 1 token] if he has enough tokens. Thus, crappy projects soon get filtered out by consensus. [The 2 vs 1 token prevents too much fluidity in the project and damps some random fluctuations].

2007-12-06:

In a new book, “Imperfect Knowledge Economics”, Mr Frydman sets out an alternative approach to prediction, in which the forecaster recognizes that his model will inevitably be less than perfect. Their work has received glowing praise from Nobel-prize-winning economists such as Kenneth Arrow and Edmund Phelps, who wrote the introduction to the book—though it is unlikely to have gone down so well with Robert Lucas, who won the Nobel for his work on rational expectations.

2008-01-07:

Despite the markets’ strong forecasting abilities, there is a slight optimistic bias driven mainly by new employees. On average, outcomes that were good for Google were overpriced by 20%. This bias was strongest on days after appreciations in Google stock and, ironically, for outcomes under our own control! We also find biases against extreme outcomes and short selling. Given a range of 5 outcomes, the middle ones were typically overpriced and unprofitable by comparison with the outliers.

hmm, i must have slept through that one.
2021-04-21:

are prediction markets doomed to repeat errors as grave as giving Trump a 15% chance of overturning the election in early December, and a 12% chance of overturning it even after the Supreme Court including 3 judges whom he appointed telling him to screw off? My answer is, surprisingly, an emphatic yes, and I see a few reasons for optimism.

2022-02-09:

In 2010, Philip Tetlock (one of the signatories on the pro-prediction market letter) did some pretty basic forecasting work, not even prediction market level, and proved that he could significantly outperform top analysts at the CIA with access to classified information. The government refused to hire him or use any of his methods, and continued shutting down new prediction markets as they arose. Polymarket is probably the biggest prediction market currently available. US law considers unlicensed prediction markets to be somewhere between illegal gambling and illegal futures trading, ie definitely illegal. The US is becoming the North Korea of forecasting. Every other civilized country allows prediction markets. In a perfect world, they could ignore our constant own goals and move on without us. But because America has a disproportionate share of money, users, coders, and entrepreneurs, a US-less prediction market ecosystem won’t be living up to its potential. That means decreased ability to gather and process information and worse decision-making worldwide.

Flooded Ice Age Kingdoms

17-7 ka ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, terrible things happened to the world our ancestors lived in. Great ice caps over northern Europe and north America melted down, huge floods ripped across the earth, sea-level rose by more than 100m, and 25m km2 of formerly habitable lands were swallowed up by the waves. Marine archaeology has been possible as a scholarly discipline for 50 years – since the introduction of scuba. In that time, only 500 submerged sites have been found worldwide containing the remains of any form of man-made structure or of lithic artifacts. Of these sites only 100 are more than 3 ka old.

you’ll definitely need UAV to scour millions of square kilometers