Amazing new results on iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD) by Bill Press (Numerical Recipes) and Freeman Dyson. There is something new under the sun. Once again, physicists invade adjacent field and add value. Extortion and cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma (June 18, 2012) The two-player Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game is a model for both sentient and evolutionary behaviors, especially including the emergence of cooperation. It is generally assumed that there exists no simple ultimatum strategy whereby one player can enforce a unilateral...
Saturday, 28 July 2012
Thursday, 26 July 2012
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Stanford researchers announce genome sequencing of individual human sperm. Note the sequencing is, at this point, destructive of the sperm, so can't be used in gamete selection (as opposed to the easier zygote selection) for in vitro fertilization. The entire genomes of 91 human sperm from one man have been sequenced by Stanford University researchers. The results provide a fascinating glimpse into naturally occurring genetic variation in one individual, and are the first to report the whole-genome sequence of a human gamete — the only cells...
Monday, 23 July 2012
I'll be moving from the University of Oregon to Michigan State University later this summer. It will be difficult to leave behind many friends and excellent colleagues at Oregon. However, I'm excited to join the MSU community and to do what I can to further the research mission at one of the nation's leading land grant universities.Stephen Hsu named new MSU research vice president East Lansing, Mich. — Stephen Hsu has been named Michigan State University’s vice president for research and graduate studies. The appointment, approved by...
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Guess where I am now? :-)Up in Michigan, by Ernest Hemingway. First published in Three Stories and Ten Poems (Summer 1923). ... Jim was asleep. He wouldn't move. She worked out from under him and sat up and straightened her skirt and coat and tried to do something with her hair. Jim was sleeping with his mouth a little open. Liz leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He was still asleep. She lifted his head a little and shook it. He rolled his head over and swallowed. Liz started to cry. She walked over to the edge of the dock...
Thursday, 19 July 2012
It's hard to imagine Murray reacting like this but he was a young man at the time (22 or 23) and, well, von Neumann is von Neumann. Turing's Cathedral: ... Brueckner and Gell-Mann were able to show that even with logical components that had "a 51% probability of being right and a 49% probability of being wrong," they could design circuits so that "the signal was gradually improved." They were trying to show exponential improvement, and were getting close. "... The project hired various consultants, including von Neumann (vN) for one day" Gell-Mann...
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
I read the transcript of this debate, which included Henry Kissinger, Niall Ferguson and others, at the bookstore yesterday. Video available here. Munk debate: Is China's rise unstoppable? Powered by the human capital of 1.3 billion citizens, the latest technological advances, and a comparatively efficient system of state-directed capitalism, China seems poised to become the global super power in the coming century. But the Middle Kingdom also faces a series of challenges. From energy scarcity to environmental degradation to political unrest...
Friday, 13 July 2012
This new Nature paper describes a genotyping technique that can be performed using only a small number of human cells. One implication is that we are close to non-destructive sequencing of human gametes and zygotes. For example, parents participating in IVF can potentially genotype fertilized eggs before deciding which to implant. Accurate whole-genome sequencing and haplotyping from 10 to 20 human cells (Nature) ... we describe a low-cost DNA sequencing and haplotyping process, long fragment read (LFR) technology, which is similar to...
Thursday, 12 July 2012
The Freeh report on Penn State, Sandusky, Paterno and other criminals has been released, confirming my expectations. NYTimes: The most senior officials at Penn State University failed for more than a decade to take any steps to protect the children victimized by Jerry Sandusky, the longtime lieutenant to head football coach Joe Paterno, according to an independent investigation of the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the university last fall. “Our most saddening and sobering finding is the total disregard for the safety and welfare of Sandusky’s...
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Two math professors critique the Khan Academy in the video below. See also the excerpted Chronicle article.An earlier post on online learning and the future of higher education. Chronicle of Higher Education: ... Khan Academy is a collection of video lectures that give demonstrations of mechanical processes. When it comes to this purpose, KA videos are, on the average, pretty good. Sal Khan is the main reason; he is approachable and has a knack for making mechanical processes seem understandable. Of course, his videos are not perfect. He...
Sunday, 8 July 2012
You may have read that there is more genetic variation within major ethnic groups than between ethnic groups. That this precludes the possibility of group differences is Lewontin's Fallacy (explained in pictures).Deep sequencing of the human genome, which reveals rare variants (here, defined as those found in fewer than 0.5 percent of the population), shows that there is actually more variation between groups than within groups. (So what you may...
I was playing a board game with the little guy and he was convinced he had developed a better method to roll the die. I asked him to check that his method actually works, so he obtained the distribution below. His number sense and intuition for probability are unusual for a six year old. He can do things I certainly could not when I was his age, but on the other hand he's had somewhat better instruction :^)At this point he doesn't know how...
Bounded rationality even for the most "sophisticated" capital allocators of all: pension funds, wealthy individuals, private wealth managers. Financial services are incorrectly priced, both by sophisticated investors, and by society. See also The truth about venture capital.If you are interested in a sick story, search on Alphonse Fletcher or on Alphonse Fletcher chair gates west pao :-(Economist: “The Hedge Fund Mirage” attacks the Wall Street worshippers’ blind adulation. Simon Lack, who spent 23 years at JPMorgan, an...
Saturday, 7 July 2012
This Times story describes a cancer therapy made successful by whole genome sequencing of the patient and his cancer cells. Ultimately, RNA sequencing indicated a particular gene (FLT3) might be involved, and luckily for the patient a drug inhibitor was available.Genotyping was probably not the most expensive part of this treatment. The drug itself costs $300 per day, whereas whole genome sequencing is down to a few thousand dollars for fairly good coverage. The resource that is scarcest is probably the expertise for analyzing the results and planning...
Careful observation suggests it's mostly sociopaths at the top ;-)The negative correlation between agreeableness and earnings is also established here.NY Magazine: ... T. Byram Karasu, a psychiatrist at Albert Einstein/Montefiore Medical Center who treats wealthy clients, believes all very successful people share certain fundamental character traits. They have above-average intelligence, street smarts, and a high tolerance for anxiety. “They...
Friday, 6 July 2012
When I started my first company we rented a huge house in N. Berkeley (which we called the Geek House, or Geek Haus) and furnished it in one shot (beds, desks, tables, lamps, dressers) with a mega trip to Ikea. The coders lived in the house, generally one or two to a room, and the downstairs had a server room and rows of workstations. The whole thing was wired with ethernet (pre-Wifi!) and the garage was filled with computers. We even had mats in...
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Chomsky on the limits of human intelligence. Although I don't agree completely with Chomsky, trying to explain the Higgs boson to non-physicists (even, to non-particle physicists) makes me sympathetic to his perspective.I do think the rate of progress in science is partially limited by the availability of human capital. If we had more and better human capital we could advance much faster. See Plenty of room at the top.QUESTION: Do you think genetic barriers to further progress are becoming obvious in some areas of art and science? CHOMSKY:...
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