Interesting that this happened a few days after Minsky’s death: A computer has defeated a professional at go.
Category Archives: Mathematics
Planet Nine
Is it a death threat?
I'll get more concerned if/when it turns out to actually exist. https://t.co/TEgifsZCF4
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) January 26, 2016
Marvin Minsky
Planet Nine
Not to be confused with Plan Nine. Apparently the guy who killed Pluto thinks he may have found a new planet. I’m thinking his daughter must have made him do it.
Fossil Fuels
Matt Ridley on how they’ll save the world.
The conclusion:
The one thing that will not work is the one thing that the environmental movement insists upon: subsidizing wealthy crony capitalists to build low-density, low-output, capital-intensive, land-hungry renewable energy schemes, while telling the poor to give up the dream of getting richer through fossil fuels.
(Yes, behind paywall, but google the headline and you should be able to read it.)
[Update a while later]
I’m very sorry to hear about Piers Sellers’ illness, and hope for the best, but this NYT op-ed seems to me to be delusional:
All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.
Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.
I hope that will change next January. As Ridley points out (as does Alex Epstein), it is the poor who would be hit the hardest byaabandoning fossil fuels (particularly with plunging prices), much more so than by “climate change.”
Two Questions On Climate Change
Put me in the “Maybe/Yes” camp.
Eric Drexler
Haven’t heard from my old friend (in both senses of the word these days), but Ray Kurzweil has an interview.
Haven’t listened to the whole thing, but so far, he doesn’t seem to have mentioned that he got interested in the subject of nanotech via his interest in space.
Star Wars
…and the age of the fake nerd.
I suppose that’s still better than taking pride in your ignorance of math, as some do. As I noted on Twitter yesterday, it’s OK to like Star Wars, as long as you don’t delude yourself that it’s science fiction.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Star Wars TFA has a perfection problem. Note (FWIW) that Megan is married to SF film critic Peter Suderman.
[Bumped]
An Unnatural Consensus
Judith Curry says we can’t understand climate without understanding the underlying natural cycle. And we don’t.
It’s insane to be making policy decisions on the basis of our current state of knowledge.
[Update a while later]
“Science journalists are not science advocates, and scientists are not science.”
Yes, scientists are not science. Corollary: There is no such thing as a "science denier." https://t.co/WCPG64bmNu
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) December 30, 2015
Economics 101
As long as we have prices, the government will have a budget. And reducing the interest rate on loans with a high delinquency rate compared to other loans means that we will have less money to do something else. Giving people free tuition will also mean that the government will have less money to do something else — a lot less money. Sanders tries to deal with this problem by conjuring hundreds of billions worth of imaginary tax revenue out of thin air, but alas, the actual president will have to find real money, taken from some other use. Is subsidizing the folks who are going to end up as the best-off members of society really what we would choose to use that money for?
He was told there would be no economics.
[Update a while later]
Bernie Sanders: The economics of a toddler, and the ethics of a thug.
In other words, a typical leftist.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Sort of related: A liberal professor has given up on academia.
[Wednesday-morning update]
Last link was broken, fixed now.