Saturday, May 22, 2021
8a) See Post 051721_1a
8a1) Papers in leading psychology, economic and science journals that fail to replicate and therefore are less likely to be true are often the most cited papers in academic research, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management.
Published in Science Advances, the paper explores the ongoing "replication crisis" in which researchers have discovered that many findings in the fields of social sciences and medicine don't hold up when other researchers try to repeat the experiments.
The paper reveals that findings from studies that cannot be verified when the experiments are repeated have a bigger influence over time. The unreliable research tends to be cited as if the results were true long after the publication failed to replicate.
"We also know that experts can predict well which papers will be replicated," write the authors Marta Serra-Garcia, assistant professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School and Uri Gneezy, professor of behavioral economics also at the Rady School. "Given this prediction, we ask 'why are non-replicable papers accepted for publication in the first place?'"
Published in Science Advances, the paper explores the ongoing "replication crisis" in which researchers have discovered that many findings in the fields of social sciences and medicine don't hold up when other researchers try to repeat the experiments.
The paper reveals that findings from studies that cannot be verified when the experiments are repeated have a bigger influence over time. The unreliable research tends to be cited as if the results were true long after the publication failed to replicate.
"We also know that experts can predict well which papers will be replicated," write the authors Marta Serra-Garcia, assistant professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School and Uri Gneezy, professor of behavioral economics also at the Rady School. "Given this prediction, we ask 'why are non-replicable papers accepted for publication in the first place?'"
[...]
The influence of an inaccurate paper published in a prestigious journal can have repercussions for decades. For example, the study Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet in 1998 turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine because of an implied link between vaccinations and autism. The incorrect findings were retracted by The Lancet 12 years later, but the claims that autism is linked to vaccines continue.
The authors added that journals may feel pressure to publish interesting findings, and so do academics. For example, in promotion decisions, most academic institutions use citations as an important metric in the decision of whether to promote a faculty member.
8a2) Of interest is the memetic survival rate based on fitness. According to this study, the fitness of the meme is determined not by truth–as represented by replicability, but by different, and arguably non-scientific factors such as novelty, narrativization, media coverage, and the public's willingness to engage with the data offered.
We might ask, what is the memetic fitness of this study?
Friday, May 21, 2021
4a) A Prince Among Thieves
4a1)
4a2a) Former bass player and bandmate of Prince and ex-husband of Jody Watley. Showcased his proteges, trio girl group The Girls, around 1983-1984.
4a2b)
4a3) The mind-blowing improvised funk sessions feature a 19 year old Prince on keys/guitar, Andre Cymone on bass, and Bobby Z on drums, held in the Loring Park office rehearsal room of Prince’s first manager, Owen Husney. Prince also takes on drums and bass throughout the session, switching it up for a thoroughly impressive session.
7a) Oh, the Costanza
7a1)
"Do you ever just get down on your knees and thank god that you know me and have access to my dementia?"
7a2) Tragic, ironic, and human all too human. Here's to the George in all of us.
Thursday, May 20, 2021
2a) All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
2a1) “This, however, all poets believe: that whoever pricks up his ears as he lies in the grass or on lonely slopes will find out something about those things that are between heaven and earth. And when they feel tender sentiments stirring, the poets always fancy that nature herself is in love with them; and that she is creeping to their ears to tell them secrets and amorous batteries; and of this they brag and boast before all mortals.
“Alas, there are so many things between heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed."
Thus Spoke Zarathustra Second Part, On Poets – Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann - Translator
2a2)
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace – Richard Brautigan
2a3)
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace - The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts (2011), Adam Curtis, Director
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace - The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts (2011), Adam Curtis, Director
2a4)
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!
The Tempest Act V, Shakespeare
2a5) "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke
2a5) "... about four hundred years previously, the state of mechanical knowledge was far beyond our own, and was advancing with prodigious rapidity, until one of the most learned professors of hypothetics wrote an extraordinary book (from which I propose to give extracts later on), proving that the machines were ultimately destined to supplant the race of man, and to become instinct with a vitality as different from, and superior to, that of animals, as animal to vegetable life. So convincing was his reasoning, or unreasoning, to this effect, that he carried the country with him and they made a clean sweep of all machinery that had not been in use for more than two hundred and seventy-one years (which period was arrived at after a series of compromises), and strictly forbade all further improvements and inventions"
Samuel Butler – Erewhon
2a7)
Ultravox "I Want to Be A Machine"
Ultravox "I Want to Be A Machine"
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
1a) On the potential of multiverse NFTs
1a1) What is the potential of multiverse NFTs? With quantum
computers on the horizon, could we communicate with alternate versions
of ourselves? While certainly limited to the interest of variations on a
single theme–all Melvillains spread across al universe for instance,
would there be a market for trading NFT profiles across universes? It would be
the ultimate narcissistic game of Pokemon. Gotta catch 'em all!
1a2) A short primer on NFTs for the uninitiated at The Verge.
1a3) Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics at Wikipedia
1a4)
1a5) Many Rick and Morty episodes riff on the theme of the multiverse and the potential af variance in choice and action. Two of my favorites are: Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat from S04, and The Ricklantis Mixup/Tales from the Citadel from S03. "Same old Story. Mortys killing Mortys."
8a) Beyond the Uncanny Valley
8a1)
8a2) And I thought Data's violin playing lacked soul.
8a3) Of androids, gods, and monsters: A Transylvanian Lullaby by John Morris, Gil Shaham (violin).
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
8a) Human All Too Human
In a letter published Thursday in the journal Science, they argue that there is not yet enough evidence to rule out the possibility that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a lab in China, and they call for a "proper investigation" into the matter.
"We believe this question deserves a fair and thorough science-based investigation, and that any subsequent judgment should be made on the data available," said Dr. David Relman, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University who helped pen the letter.
[...]
But Relman said that, as a scientist, he needed more than this thirdhand account to rule out the chance of an accidental laboratory leak. (He and his colleagues did not suggest any potential leak was intentional.)
"Show us the test you used: What was the method? What were the results and the names of the people tested? Did you test a control population?" Relman said. "On all accounts, it was not an adequate, detailed kind of presentation of data that would allow an outside scientist to arrive at an independent conclusion."
[...]
Michael Worobey, who studies viruses at the University of Arizona to understand the origin, emergence and control of pandemics, also signed the letter. Since the start of the pandemic, he had entertained two possibilities for how it might have begun—either as an escape from a lab or natural transmission from animal to human.
Fifteen months later, he's still open to both possibilities.
"There just hasn't been enough definitive evidence either way," he said, "so both of those remain on the table for me."
In his own lab, Worobey works with a grad student who collects viruses from bats in the wild, and he's thought a lot about how this research could create an ecological avenue to introduce a new pathogen to humans.
"As someone who does this, I'm very aware of the opening that creates for new viruses to get close to humans, and so I think that's another reason I take this seriously," he said. "I'm concerned about it in my own work."
[...]
David Robertson, the head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow, was not among the letter's signatories. He said he didn't understand the point.
"Nobody is saying that a lab accident isn't possible—there's just no evidence for this beyond the Wuhan Institute of Virology being in Wuhan," he said.
Robertson said viruses naturally migrate from animals to humans all the time, and SARS-CoV-2 could have been one of them.
Although he agreed with the authors of the letter that it was essential to find the origins of SARS-CoV-2 to prepare for the next pandemic, "wasting time investigating labs is a distraction from this," he said.
8a2) See 051721_1a
8a3) Unknown unknowns are risks that come from situations that are so unexpected that they would not be considered. Contemporary usage is largely consistent with the earliest known usages. For example, the term was used in evidence given to the British Columbia Royal Commission of Inquiry into Uranium Mining in 1979:
Site conditions always pose unknowns, or uncertainties, which may become known during construction or operation to the detriment of the facility and possibly lead to damage of the environment or endanger public health and safety. The risk posed by unknowns is somewhat dependent on the nature of the unknown relative to past experience. This has led me classify unknowns into one of the following two types: 1. known unknowns (expected or foreseeable conditions), which can be reasonably anticipated but not quantified based on past experience as exemplified by case histories (in Appendix A) and 2. Unknown unknowns (unexpected or unforeseeable conditions), which pose a potentially greater risk simply because they cannot be anticipated based on past experience or investigation. Known unknowns result from recognized but poorly understood phenomena. On the other hand, unknown unknowns are phenomena which cannot be expected because there has been no prior experience or theoretical basis for expecting the phenomena.
Monday, May 17, 2021
1a) Neoplatonism and the role of logos as perpetually eternal and infallible
1a1) Why do we assume that text is somehow fathomable and/or absolute in meaning? How do we propose to read the mind of the writer in their own spacetime? Do I know my own mind past the point of writing or typing a thought? On (re)reading and editing, do I not begin to narrativize from memory? The falsifiability of the empirical hypothesis can heuristically curb the outright falsehoods, but what about that frontier between noumena and phenomena?
1a2) Neo-platonism (or Neoplatonism) is a modern term used to designate the period of Platonic philosophy beginning with the work of Plotinus and ending with the closing of the Platonic Academy by the Emperor Justinian in 529 C.E. This brand of Platonism, which is often described as ‘mystical’ or religious in nature, developed outside the mainstream of Academic Platonism.
1a3) Gnosticism (after gnôsis, the Greek word for “knowledge” or “insight”) is the name given to a loosely organized religious and philosophical movement that flourished in the first and second centuries CE. The exact origin(s) of this school of thought cannot be traced, although it is possible to locate influences or sources as far back as the second and first centuries BCE, such as the early treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Jewish Apocalyptic writings, and especially Platonic philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.
1a5) “Throughout our history,” Leto said, “the most potent use of words has been to round out some transcendental event, giving that event a place in the accepted chronicles, explaining the event in such a way that ever afterward we can use those words and say: “This is what it meant.”
Frank Herbert – God Emperor of Dune
Sunday, May 16, 2021
4a) Song of Nietzsche
I started a joke
Which started the whole world crying
But I didn't see
That the joke was on me, oh no
I started to cry
Which started the whole world laughing
Oh, if I'd only seen
That the joke was on me
I looked at the skies
Running my hands over my eyes
And I fell out of bed
Hurting my head from things that I'd said
'Til I finally died
Which started the whole world living
Oh, if I'd only seen
That the joke was on me
I looked at the skies
Running my hands over my eyes
And I fell out of bed
Hurting my head from things that I'd said
'Til I finally died
Which started the whole world living
Oh, if I'd only seen, oh yeah
That the joke was on me, oh no
That the joke was on me
Oh, no, no, no
Which started the whole world crying
But I didn't see
That the joke was on me, oh no
I started to cry
Which started the whole world laughing
Oh, if I'd only seen
That the joke was on me
I looked at the skies
Running my hands over my eyes
And I fell out of bed
Hurting my head from things that I'd said
'Til I finally died
Which started the whole world living
Oh, if I'd only seen
That the joke was on me
I looked at the skies
Running my hands over my eyes
And I fell out of bed
Hurting my head from things that I'd said
'Til I finally died
Which started the whole world living
Oh, if I'd only seen, oh yeah
That the joke was on me, oh no
That the joke was on me
Oh, no, no, no
7a) Biology, the State, and Vocation
7a1) Father Curtis: And this offends you as a Jewish person.
Jerry: No. It offends me as a comedian!7a2) The tension between accepting and transcending one’s givens is best captured through the difference between one’s family of origin and one’s family of choice. The tribes represent the idea that genealogy is destiny, or at least, that one has a responsibility (if not simply an involuntary compulsion) to pass on a lineage, to tell one’s family story, to carry on its values, temperaments, genetics and epigenetics. But, the reality of “conversion,” especially as expanded and illuminated by rabbinic Judaism, means that inclusion in the people is not determined exclusively (or even ideally) by biology or history, but by choice.
Unfamiliar Territory @Etz Hasadeh
7a3) “The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another, the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”
Addenda to Orders in Council – The Emperor Paul Muad’Dib,
Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
7a4) ...While avoiding the noble savage ideas of Rousseau, we can still hypothesize a sort of communal hierarchy in which the tribe rose or fell by the intent of the group, not the individual. But with the rise of a bureaucratic hierarchy that needed to collect taxes, build public works, and generally keep the members of the state repressed long enough to develop social cohesion, there was also a rise in specialization. It both created and suppressed the idea of the individual experience.
I would posit that at this time the idea of the individual outside the group was a psychological anathema. Certainly individuals had their own experience. And it would have been enhanced in smaller group settings such as families, gender separation, skill sets, etc. but it was within the service of the group. The repression mechanism was survival. It was the noumena.
The state (phenomena) brought the complexity of anonymity. The state was gathered under a ruler charismatic or powerful enough to attract or capture people from tribal living to a more “civilized” way of life. What they didn’t realize is that they traded the relative freedom of small groups for the hierarchical repression of the bureaucratic state. It was not the they were subject to the ruler–which they were, it was that they were subject to being cogs within a bureaucratic machine. No longer able to recognize their family, their neighbors, their shamans or chiefs, they were nameless, faceless, automatons driving the ship of state. (See Lang’s Metropolis. And Herbert's God Emperor of Dune.)
It is possible that Moses and the Jewish law was a synthesis–in a Hegelian sense–to this problem. From one perspective, the law was a repressive mechanism meant to confound all but the most knowledgeable. This enforces the power of the priests over the people such that the people are essentially forced to follow the rules. Otherwise, disobedience produces consequences. But as a theocracy, the whole Jewish community was subject to the one God. The community rose and/or fell by the adherence of the community to the law that the God had given them.
Prophets were instruments of the God, meant to keep the community from the consequences of disobedience–exiles and enslavements. Flawed as everyone else, these individuals often sought to subvert the burden the God had placed on them. But in the end, the God always wins and they fulfill his intent to keep the community together by being subject to his law.
“Whom has ears to hear, let them hear...” We could also posit to the ones who cannot or will not hear the words of God in the mouths of prophets, these words become “convoluted wording of legalisms.” The mistranslation and obfuscation of intent is not the fault or responsibility of the God or the prophet, but on the part of the people who have made the choice–out of ignorance or rebellion–to follow their own desires.
In the end, the mechanism may be just as suppressive as the authoritarian king or emperor, but the intent is completely different. The people are both treated as a community, but as individuals capable of working together to decide their fate. The synthesis of thesis (tribe) and antithesis (state) has been accomplished through the God.
4a) EVOL Select: Young Hearts Run Free
Ushering in a new summer of love, it’s a double vaxxed, COVID-free set of spring into summer grooves. Run free! Young and old hearts alike!
Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra
The Jacksons - Can You Feel It? 00:08:56
Donald Byrd - Love Has Come Around 00:14:56
The Salsoul Orchestra - 212 (7" Edit By Mr K) 00:22:48
Queen Samantha - Singing Hallelujah 00:28:07
Jackson Sisters - I Believe In Miracles (Extended Mix) 00:35:17
Bobby Thurston - Check Out The Groove 00:40:04
Candi Staton - Young Hearts Run Free 00:47:27
Double Exposure - Everyman (Original Walter Gibbons 12' mix) 00:51:31
Brass Construction - Changin' 00:58:50
94 East feat. Prince - If You Feel Like Dancin' (7" Edit By Mr K) 01:07:03
Sister Sledge - Thinking Of You 01:12:16
Chic - I Want Your Love 01:16:37
Average White Band - Pick Up The Pieces 01:23:18
Bobby Thurston - Check Out The Groove (12" Version) 01:27:15
Phyllis Hyman - You Know How To Love Me 01:34:37
The Emotions - Best of My Love 01:41:58
McFadden & Whitehead - Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now 01:45:36
More at Melvillain @Mixcloud
2a) Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
2a1) The verb decide has deadly interesting origins. Though it came through Middle English deciden, Old French decider, and Latin decidere, you can tell that there's the prefix de-, kind of meaning "off". This was in the language as far as etymologists can trace it, and is either from Etruscan or Proto-Indo-European. It's the other part of decide that's surprising: -cide. Yup, as you may have guessed, this is the same -cide present in words like homicide, suicide, regicide, fratricide, genocide, and all those other euphemistic terms for nasty kinds of death. All the roots trace to the Latin verb caedere, meaning "to cut". The death-related words are connected because of the correlation between "cut" and "kill", a side meaning which later evolved from the word, and decide is connected because when you make a choice, you cut out all the other possible choices. So it sort of makes sense, right? Caedere comes from Proto-Italic kaido, from Proto-Indo-European kehid, which meant something more like "strike".
Choices @The Etymology Nerd
2a3) Related: The Golden Path ("Secher Nbiw" in the ancient Egyptian language) was an expansive prescient interpretation that was only visible to the Kwisatz Haderach and the Bene Gesserit (revealed in Heretics of Dune). It foretold the fluid events of the future, both great and small. More profoundly, however, it revealed an optimum path through the countless threads of cause and effect that were encountered by the human race.
The Golden Path
Choices @The Etymology Nerd
2a2) In contemplating the free will versus determinism debate, it seems that if we take "decide" as a snapshot of action in spacetime, we slice the Gordian Knot of the debate. Whether one is causally determined to decide one path over another, or suspends one's decision in a rational vacuum, the decision still closes the future to the one path chosen. The variance is reduced, and a new variance set arises.
2a3) Related: The Golden Path ("Secher Nbiw" in the ancient Egyptian language) was an expansive prescient interpretation that was only visible to the Kwisatz Haderach and the Bene Gesserit (revealed in Heretics of Dune). It foretold the fluid events of the future, both great and small. More profoundly, however, it revealed an optimum path through the countless threads of cause and effect that were encountered by the human race.
The Golden Path
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