06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Mental Illness is Not Correlated with Genius
What madness may have to do with creativity and genius has continued to intrigue down to this day, with scholars arguing for and against the association, its benefits and its deficits. In 1995, in a large scale and statistically convincing study of 1,004 eminent individuals of the 20th century, psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig argued that no necessary or sufficient correlation, hence no causal connection, between mental illness and creative achievement was to be found. Individuals in artistic profe... 1 
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notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
Argonauts: Magna Cortica
THE MAGNA CORTICA
ORIGINAL TENETS
(DATE UNKNOWN BUT BEFORE BF 80)
I. Self knowledge. Sapient beings have the right to know whether they’ve been mentally modified.
II. Self-modification. Sapient beings have the right to pursue self-modification.
III. Refusing modification. They also have the right to refuse it.
IV. Modification (or not) of progeny. Sapient beings have the right to modify—or not—their own progeny.
V. Knowledge of who has been modified or selfupgraded. Polities and ...
1 28 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
President-Elect Trump has a Low Signal-to-Noise Ratio
What a president says is typically allotted a ton of news value, by default, and rightly so. But it has been assigned news value because it traditionally has had a very high signal-to-noise ratio. Presidential remarks are normally so considered, vetted, poll-tested, etc. They usually are a somewhat reliable guide to the policies a president will pursue, how they’ll pursue them, etc. But Trump isn’t like that. He throws a ton of stuff out there, on Twitter and off. The signal-to-noise rati... 1 notes
notes13 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
A Small Defense of the Star Wars Prequels
***Sigh*** There are lots of problems with TPM, but its failure to be mythic isn’t one of them because that’s, in fact, the point of the entire prequel trilogy — demythologizing what we thought we knew about the Old Republic, the Jedi, and the rise of the Empire. The Old Republic wasn’t a “more civilized age,” it was a corrupt and flawed entity riven with divisions. The Jedi weren’t “guardians of peace and justice,” they were guardians of the status quo to the extent that ... 1 notes
notes26 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Sign-Function Linking
It is clear that if the phonic substance lost its privilege, it was not to the advantage of the graphic substance, which lends itself to the same substitutions. To the extent that it liberates and is irrefutable, glossematics still operates with a popular concept of writing. However original and irreducible it might be, the “form of expression” linked by correlation to the graphic “substance of expression” remains very determined. It is very dependent and very derivative with regard t...Folksonomies: writing post modernism
Folksonomies: writing post modernism
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notes09 AUG 2014 by ideonexus
Chris Allen Secular Invocation
Let us give thanks for all that we have, cherish and possess–especially for the capacity to care and love, to improve ourselves, our families and community.
Whatever one’s viewpoint, either derived from faith or from reason informed by science, having the capacity to appreciate and thank others is ingrained in the DNA of The Human Condition.
We give thanks to the volunteers, the heart and soul of our community, who donate their time and talents to help the less fortunate.
And, in this ...Folksonomies: secularism
Folksonomies: secularism
1 notes
notesChris Allen, president of Florida Humanist Association and humanist celebrant and chaplain, delivered a secular invocation at the Orlando City Council meeting on June 23,2014.
21 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
Climate Forecasts vs Projections
"Projections are essential for giving us information on long-term trends, but the timescale is beyond what many policy makers (and the public) consider to be relevant to their decision-making processes. Climate forecasts seek to address this issue by providing information on a shorter term (decadal) that can be used directly to inform policy," he said.
"As climate forecasts improve, they will become more and more important in providing reliable information on what is likely to happen to the c...Forecasts are short-term predictions intended to inform policymakers because projections, which predict the long-term trend, are beyond political scope.
26 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
Science is Growing Bigger and Bigger
The history of physics is littered with unrealized grand experiments: old blueprints buried in file drawers, half-built machinery packed in crates, excavated earth filled with pooling rainwater—the detritus of Big Science. As the frontier of human knowledge pushes forward, so, too, does the cost and the complexity of further exploration. Telescopes grow larger. Space is probed at greater depths. Atomic particles are smashed more forcefully. Many scientific questions now demand resources tha... 1 notes
notesAnd in order to keep expanding it is requiring more and more collaboration between countries and more resources to build more and more epic experiments.
02 JAN 2014 by ideonexus
Policy Must be Tested
Policy is the starting-point of all the practical actions of a revolutionary party and manifests itself in the process and the end-result of that party's actions. A revolutionary party is carrying out a policy whenever it takes any action. If it is not carrying out a correct policy, it is carrying out a wrong policy; if it is not carrying out a given policy consciously, it is doing so blindly. What we call experience is the process and the end-result of carrying out a policy. Only through the...Folksonomies: governance public policy
Folksonomies: governance public policy
1 notes
notesOnly when a policy is carried out by the people, who understand it, is it tested and found to be correct or wrongheaded.
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Web of Causation
...complex systems, such as financial markets or the Earth’s biosphere, do not seem to obey causality. For every event that occurs, there are a multitude of possible causes, and the extent to which each contributes to the event is not clear, not even after the fact! One might say that there is a web of causation. For example, on a typical day, the stock market might go up or down by some fraction of a percentage point. The Wall Street Journal might blithely report that the stock market move...Nigel Goldenfeld explains why the simplistic explanations for market movements so popular in the news media are also so ridiculous.
