We got a invitation to go for free to the World Technology “Summit”,
held the past couple days.  I went on Monday.

It appears to be a sham.  The organizer is a Kurzweilite who can’t
distinguish between engineers making real innovations and
futurism-peddlers.  Most invitees seemed to have realized this and
stayed home, which is why the room was so sparse except for us
Columbia grad students.

Some choice quotes from the organizer’s introduction:

• “[Quantum computing is so powerful, it’s] like today’s computers
  are ants, and quantum computers are gods.”

• “We’re going to be Earth-independent.”
• “What scientists call our ‘meat bodies’…”
• “We may not realize it yet, but this is it.  This is all simulated.
   We live in the Matrix.”

He also implied that the demise of religion is inevitable and spent a
lot of time on transhumanism.

The only interesting part of the “summit” that I saw was a panel by
three media researchers on the future of media.  Three take-aways:

• Companies have realized that people now watch two screens at once
  (e.g., there were 170k tweets per minute during the debate), and are
  trying to bait them with one screen and monetize on another.

• The internet giants should not be considered “firms”.  A firm
  assumes it’s cheaper to do things inside than out; a network assumes
  it’s cheaper to do things outside, and tries to build forums for
  others to do them.

• The next mobile revolution will have your cell provide information
  to your surroundings (e.g., the store), rather than the other way
  around.

*pokes head out of semester*

So much to tell! I just finished a week of presentations (or preps for presentations), and the world feels much lighter. So, here’s one fun piece.

There’s a curious mix of opinion on the future of the oceans. Quite a few ecologist are convinced that they’re doomed– imminent collapse of core species will turn them into pools of algae and jellyfish. But estimates vary, and the they’re really tough to do: we don’t have much ocean data, and all our information starts long after we impacted fish populations. The best efforts usually settle for a “under-exploited”, “fully-exploited”, “over-exploited” distinction (like Oceana’s Too Few Fish report– 77% of stocks “cannot withstand increased fishing activity.”). I recently learned about the Ocean Health Index, which takes a much more comprehensive view, but in all the situation doesn’t look so bad.

These evaluations are subject to a scientific “shifting baselines” problem, since we don’t expect as much of an already degraded ocean. But we have data back to 1950, before most region’s peaks of global fishing. Where are we relative to that historical level?

A simple average suggests that we’re on a dangerous downhill trend. We’re currently at 25-50% of the observed level– which means that we’re only bringing in 25-50% of the fish we could be. We don’t know if that peak was ever really sustainable– it could have been a one-time collection dozens of years of building up. But taking a 7-year average around each fish stock should account for both most of the observed variability in fish populations and drop the artificially high peaks to more sustainable levels.

With demand increasing, ocean acidification and warming, and more human impact everywhere, the situation looks like it can only get worse. How do we convince ourselves to lay off the ocean, if for no other reason than for our own benefit of more fish for later?

Flame is interviewing bright young girls applying to Wesleyan, and being swept up by the naive purity of these women, who try so hard to be authentic and come off sounding truly weird. When I was applying to grad school, I wrote my own sappy tune, praising myself more highly than I deserve, but I can’t say I still know any better.

I was going through old projects to decide which to document, and I found my draft of a generic personal statement to be modified for whatever program I might find to apply to. Here it is, in all its self-centeredness, more for my future access than to subject any of you.

Motivation Letter to an Unknown Academic Program

The new semester was ripe from the beginning. Flame just entered a stressful Masters program (Columbia’s Climate and Society– so she can be “Master of the Climate”), and is trying to hold down her book writing job on Fridays. Between us, we flirted with about 10 classes.

I settled on Andrew Gelman’s “Bayesian Data Analysis” and a “History of International Development” taught in the history department. The Bayes homeworks can take days, and their assigned every week. The history class has about two books assigned per meeting. But between them, and polishing up my Himalayan Flooding paper, I ought to be done with my MA requirements this term and can really focus on research.

Next week I spend in Ohio at the Ecosummit 2012, with talks from E. O. Wilson and Jared Diamond. Previous Ecosummits have been in Beijing, Halifax, and Copenhagen, but at least my program has money to send me. I have a poster to present my Open World modeling framework, so I’m hoping for good feedback.

I was recently wondering if twitter has a role in my life, and I think the answer is “no”. Even if the brevity had no disadvantages, I rarely want to engage in much conversation online. And if the goal of twitter is to consume tidbits, then I have even less interest. For someone like me, is the only use of twitter for when we want to engage in some old-fashioned online social engineering?

Speaking of which, I have some new projects coming up. I’ll say more when these classes calm down!

Scientists bow down to the ‘concretism’ of a mode of understanding
that finds the works of a clock more interesting than the time the
clock measures. They have all become mechanics, as it were. In their
theories, they invest all their love in those things that they can
deal with free of doubt. They think they can find security in things
that seem absolute to them and that protect them from all
contradiction. They are infatuated with neat means, methods, and
techniques and pathologically underestimate, or forget, what they
think themselves no longer capable of and what all of us at one time
or another have hoped to achieve in the way of insight.

Max Horkheimer, qtd. in Dietrich Dörner, The Logic of Failure.

Principle the Overly Refined

Rather on your toes, up high,
Than crawling on all fours!
Rather through a keyhole spy
Than through open doors!

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

My Friday book is Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, and I’m currently reading about the start of the republic. It was also the start of laissez-faire capitalism (craftsmen and bakers had it particularly hard), and the recognition of the inequality that comes with it.

The book gave a few numbers (below) for inequality in the first 12 years of the republic. This represent portions of wealth in NYC, not income (the poor proxy normally given). I looked up a report of recent net worth, and the inequality is now far worse.

How did half the people come to own so little?

We have to acknowledge the hideous costs of many human achievements that we value, including this reflective sense itself, and recognise that there is no redemptive Hegelian history or universal Leibnizian cost-benefit analysis to show that it will come out well enough in the end.

Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity

The question often comes up, “How did you and Flame meet?”

Maybe people only ask you how you’re doing
’cause that’s easier than letting on how little they could care

But I think it’s a pretty interesting story. I’ve given a lot of answers, and I wanted to come up a canonical response.

The simplest answer is that we met through a mutual friend, but I think the long story is worth the words, riddled with risks, unlikely turns, and not a little magic.

Our story

I’m back, after a trip that couldn’t hardly have been better. See the evidence. Kiev particularly deserves more visits, if you like coffee on every corner and sushi in every restaurant.

During the trip, I read India: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, a diverse collection of Indian short stories, and Rich Dad, Poor Dad, a disturbingly misleading manual on getting rich quick.

After an NYT article (from Science Times) I read just before starting the trip, I’m trying to keep a “research journal”, and putting aside my topically organized notepads for a nicely-bound chronology. I can’t tell yet if it’s worth the change.

Flame is writing witty, daily posts on the Travelers Network for our travels this summer:

http://travelersnetwork.org/sifi

The quality of the posts is only beat by the excellent places themselves.