A bunch of people I follow on social media were buzzing about this blog post yesterday, taking Jonah Lerher to task for “getting spun” in researching and writing this column in the Wall Street Journal about this paper on the “wisdom of crowds” effect. The effect in question is a staple of pop psychology these… Continue reading Neither a Neuroscientist Nor a Statistician
Month: May 2011
How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser
I heard David Kaiser talk about the history of quantum foundations work back in 2008 at the Perimeter Institute, and while I didn’t agree with everything he said, I found it fascinating. So when I heard that he had a book coming out about this stuff, How the Hippies Saved Physics, I jumped at the… Continue reading How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser
PNAS: Adam DeConinck, High-Performance Computing Systems Engineer
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Adam DeConinck, who works at a company providing supercomputing resources. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.) 1) What is your… Continue reading PNAS: Adam DeConinck, High-Performance Computing Systems Engineer
Links for 2011-05-31
Richard Dansky » Seven Questions That Need To Be Asked About Writing About Writing “1-Why do so many writers spend so much time writing about writing? Because deep down, many of us are still in thrall to the delightfully archaic notion of “Write What You Know” – which, in some form or other has been… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-31
The Born Equivocation
Last week’s post about the Many-Worlds variant in “Divided by Infinity” prompted the usual vigorous discussion about the merits of the Many-Worlds Interpretation. This included the common objection that we don’t know how to obtain the probability of measurement outcomes in the Many-Worlds Interpretation. This is one of those Deep Questions that lots of people… Continue reading The Born Equivocation
PNAS: Matthew Schlecht, Freelance Translator
(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Matthew Schlecht, a chemist by training who runs his own technical translation service, Word Alchemy Translation. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default… Continue reading PNAS: Matthew Schlecht, Freelance Translator
More on Divided by Infinity
I had intended last Wednesday’s post on the Many-Worlds variant in Robert Charles Wilson’s Divided by Infinity to be followed by a post on the other things I said when I did a guest lecture on it for an English class. What with one thing and another, though, I got a little distracted, and I’m… Continue reading More on Divided by Infinity
Links for 2011-05-30
Guest Post from Author Nick Mamatas: “The Writer’s Life: Actually, It’s Awesome!” « Suvudu – Science Fiction and Fantasy Books, Movies, Comics, and Games “In my new book Starve Better, I talk about writing short subjects–both fiction and non-fiction–with an eye toward writing effectively and efficiently and making some money. Not good money so much… Continue reading Links for 2011-05-30
39 Hours Left to Nominate for 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize
I mentioned it on Twitter already, but it’s probably worth a mention on the blog (not that they really need my traffic): Once again, 3 Quarks Daily is collecting nominations for its science prize: As usual, this is the way it will work: the nominating period is now open, and will end at 11:59 pm… Continue reading 39 Hours Left to Nominate for 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize
Links for 2011-05-29
“Literally Unbelievable” Stories from The Onion as interpreted by Facebook (tags: silly onion internet blogs facebook stupid)