Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:

…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies

Ron Bailey has a rational discussion of them, and a well-deserved slap at scientists who fancy themselves policy makers:

…a word of unsolicited advice to scientists who want to play in the public policy arena. Facts by themselves do not immediately entail the adoption of particular policies. Many of the scientific “facts” cited by activists arise from contested epidemiological data and controversial computer models. For example, if humanity is significantly warming the planet, it is entirely possible that the best policy is to encourage rapid technological progress and economic growth so that any problems caused by such warming can be dealt with more effectively and fairly in the future. And how does one make the trade-off between possibly harming a few species of birds through the use of DDT, and using the insecticide to prevent the deaths of millions of people each year from malaria? These are political decisions. Suggestive scientific data certainly help guide our decisions, but they do not mandate any particular policies

Mouse brains, that is. This may be a major medical breakthrough. Phil Bowermaster has the story. He also has some thoughts about post-election civility and blogging.

There may be more of them out there than we know:

With about 1 percent of incoming comets ending up on relatively short-period Earth-crossing orbits, it is expected that several thousand dormant comets could be currently posing a potential threat to our planet.

Recent surveys of the Earth’s immediate vicinity should have turned up some 400 such objects, whereas only a handful have so far been found.

The researchers dismiss the current belief that all the “missing” comets have disintegrated into meteor streams. If this had happened, they argue, then we should be seeing a far greater number of meteor showers and a much brighter zodiacal cloud than is observed.

They propose instead that the majority of these comets have become exceedingly black, with such low surface reflectivities that they could not be observed against the blackness of space by optical means.

Orson Scott Card isn’t impressed by the Kerry campaign’s science policy or politics.

I wrote recently about the evolution of cooperation, and its implications for Iraq and the Middle East. I noted that the winning strategy in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma game was “Tit for Tat.”

Now I discover that on the twentieth anniversary of the original computer tournament, a new, even better strategy has been discovered.

Jay Manifold has a long, but interesting series of posts on a recent seminar on evolution versus “intelligent design” in Kansas.

Moira Breen is trying to get the word out about a bill that could be disastrous for American archaeology and anthropology.

I think that this is a good thing, for the same reason that Ramesh (presumably?) thinks it bad–because if true, it provides constitutional protection for cloning.

Twenty years ago, a political science professor at the University of Michigan came out with a seminal book titled the Evolution of Cooperation.

In it, he described how cooperative strategies could have evolutionary-beneficial consequences, and thus be selected for. In particular, via a series of computer game tournaments in which algorithms were submitted to play an extended iterated prisoner’s dilemma, he identified a strategy that was the most successful called “Tit for Tat” (TFT). (Read the link for information as to how the game works.)

In this strategy, you retain a memory of past interactions with other entities, and you treat them exactly as they treated you the last time you dealt with them. If they cooperated the last time, you cooperate. If they defected on you the last time, you defect on them the next. If it’s your first interaction, you cooperate.

The strategy has four characteristics that made it successful. It’s simple and can be clearly and easily recognized after a brief period of time, it’s forgiving, it’s provocable and retributive (so that you can’t get away with screwing it), and it’s nice (that is, it never screws anyone for no reason–its default is to cooperate). In essence, it is cooperative, and is rewarded for being that way.

One of the interesting things about it is that the more similar algorithms it has to deal with, the better it does. Put in an environment of non-cooperators, it has a much harder time, but it can still be more successful than them, and if it has a few others to cooperate with, it can survive even in a sea of non-cooperators.

Non-cooperators, on the other hand, don’t do well in a cooperative society. A non-nice strategy (one that always, or occasionally, or randomly defects unprovoked) won’t do well in a world of TFTs, because after the first time they get screwed by it, they will not cooperate with it again, at least until it changes its ways. So while it gets a big payoff the first time, it gets a much smaller one in subsequent exhanges, whereas the TFTs interacting with each other always get the medium benefit.

Thus, it’s possible for a small group of cooperators to “colonize” a larger group of non-cooperators, and eventually take it over, whereas a group of non-cooperators invading a larger group of cooperators will not thrive, and will eventually die out. This is the basis for Axelrod’s (and others’) claim that there is evolutionary pressure for cooperation to evolve.

This may hold the key to fixing Iraq, and ultimately the Middle East. While there’s a lot of bad news coming from that country right now, the fact remains that much of it is calm and at peace–that part doesn’t make the news. It may be that nationwide elections won’t be possible in January, but certainly it should be for some regions (particularly the Kurdish region).

The Jihadists and ex-Ba’athists are determined to prevent a democracy from forming there, but if such can be established in large areas, it will provide an unnurturing environment for them there. Then we can gradually expand them, and tighten the noose around the Fallujahs over time. What we have to pay attention to is not the level of violence, but over how widespread a region it is. As more and more of the country becomes not only pacified, but wealthier, with a stake in continued peace and freedom, we can continue to shrink the territory in which the terrorists, the ultimate non-cooperators, can survive, and eventually kill them or starve them out.