16 APR 2018 by ideonexus
Pianos Make Music Accessible Like Computers Make Math Acc...
Though it has become a naturalized part of music-making since the first one was built in 1710, the pianoforte (its name means "soft-loud") was a technical marvel for its time, a machine that changed music in ways that are hard to imagine. Computer pioneer Alan Kay once observed that any technological advance is "technology only for people who are born before it was invented,' and in the case of the piano, this applies to no one alive today. Seymour Papert, the MIT researcher, concluded, "That...
1 10 FEB 2018 by ideonexus
Computer Models as Play
There is, indeed, an "art" to worldplay in the social sciences that fuses narrative with analytical technique. There is also a kinship with the arts in the relationship between imagined world and reality, a point brought home by political scientist and ellow Robert Axelrod. In the early 1960s the teenage Axelrod won the Westinghouse kience Talent Search for a very simple computer simulation of hypothetical lifeforms behaving in an artificial environment. Ever since, he has worked on the appli... 1 
notes
notes25 OCT 2017 by ideonexus
A Sick Burn
Yet your prison without coherent design continues to imprison you. How can this be, if it has no strong places? The rational prisoner exploits the weak places, creates order from chaos: instead, collectives like the FSF vindicate their jailers by building cells almost compatible with the existing ones, albeit with more features. The journalist with three undergraduate degrees from MIT, the researcher at Microsoft, and the senior scientist at Apple might volunteer a few words about the regulat...Folksonomies: insults
Folksonomies: insults
1 notes
notes18 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
Falacy of Seeking Too Much Purpose in Evolutionary Adapta...
Darwin’s concept of evolution is centered on natural selection, or survival of the fittest [1]. Although Darwin did realize that organisms possess structures and even entire organs that might not have an extant function, as is the case of rudiments [2], on the whole, selectionist thinking has heavily dominated the biological literature ever since. In its extreme but not uncommon form, the selectionist, or adaptationist, paradigm perceives every trait as an adaptation. Under this view of biolo... 1 notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
Capitalist Peace
Such findings have led some political scientists to entertain a heretical idea called the Capitalist Peace.243 The word liberal in Liberal Peace refers both to the political openness of democracy and to the economic openness of capitalism, and according to the Capitalist Peace heresy, it’s the economic openness that does most of the pacifying. In arguments that are sure to leave leftists speechless, advocates claim that many of Kant’s arguments about democracy apply just as well to capitalism...Folksonomies: capitalism peace
Folksonomies: capitalism peace
1 notes
notes24 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Pure Understanding of Nature is the Primary Aim of Science
Pupin believed with passionate intensity that the primary aim of science is the pure understanding of nature, and that useful applications must be considered of secondary importance. The prestige and influence which he derived from his inventions he used in an unceasing campaign to improve the standing of fundamental science in America. In this way the paradoxical situation arose, that it was Pupin the practical inventor who did more than any other man of his time to convince the American pub... 1 notes
notesFrom the preface.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Nominal Fallacy
The nominal fallacy is the error of believing that the label carries explanatory information.
An instance of the nominal fallacy is most easily seen when the meaning or importance of a term or concept shrinks with knowledge. One example of this would be the word “instinct.” “Instinct” refers to a set of behaviors whose actual cause we don’t know, or simply don’t understand or have access to, and therefore we call them instinctual, inborn, innate. Often this is the end of the exploration of t...
1 Stuart Firestein explains why naming is not explaining.
18 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The "Sagan Effect"
With Cosmos, Sagan sought to put an end to the fear and to inspire the kind of wonder Hubble's lectures had inspired in the 1930s and 1940s and the Moon landing had inspired in 1969. The series was enormously successful. For the first time since Hubble, a huge audience was engaged in exploring the grand questions of life, nature, the structure of the uni¬ verse, mythology, and what it might all mean, how it might all fit together, the mystery of it all. It examined how our search for meaning ...Folksonomies: science popularization science exponent
Folksonomies: science popularization science exponent
1 notes
notesThe fact that Carl Sagan was denied tenure at Harvard because of the jealousy of his peers over his public persona.
03 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
All Technology is Social Engineering
Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson has demonstrated that changing the height of one’s avatar in immersive virtual reality transforms self-esteem and social self-perception. Technologies are extensions of ourselves, and, like the avatars in Jeremy’s lab, our identities can be shifted by the quirks of gadgets. It is impossible to work with information technology without also engaging in social engineering.
[...]
When developers of digital technologies design a program that requir... 1 notes
notesWhen a developer designs an interface for a user to interact with a computer, they imply you are a program. When they put up a wiki, they suggest humans ultimately have a single point of view.
01 OCT 2011 by ideonexus
Psychology Thought Love Was Bad for Children
Ira Glass: Harry Harlow, was trying to prove-- and I know this is going to sound crazy. He was trying to prove that love is an important thing that happens between parents and children.
And the reason why he felt the need to prove this point was at the time-- and again, I know this is going to sound kind of out there. The psychological establishment, pediatricians, even the federal government were all saying exactly the opposite of that to parents.
Deborah Blum: It's actually one of those t... 1 notes
notesDeborah Blum, biographer of the researcher Harry Harlow who worked to prove the importance of love in raising children, on the history of psychology ignoring love as something to be given to children.
