Johnicholas

What does an memetic infection look like? Well, you would encounter something (probably on the internet) that seems very compelling. You think intensely about it for a while, and it spurs you to do something - probably to post something related on the internet. After a while, the meme may...

Eric Floehr has a business that "holds a mirror up" to weather forecasters, and aggregates and evaluates forecasters for weather forecast consumers. Rationalists interested in improving our societies truth orientation might be mildly interested. http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/04/12/weather-forecast-accuracy/

If you want to carry a brimming cup of coffee without spilling it, you may want to "change" your goal to instead primarily concentrate on humming. This is an example of a general pattern. It sometimes helps to focus on a nearby artificial goal rather than your actual goal. Let...

Jonah Lehrer wrote about the (surprising?) power of publication bias. http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all Cosma Shalizi (I think) said something, or pointed to something, about the null model of science - what science would look like if there were no actual effects, just statistical anomalies that look good at first. I can't find...

Background on Agorics: The idea of software agents cooperating in an open market or "agora". Described by Mark Miller and Eric Drexler here: http://e-drexler.com/d/09/00/AgoricsPapers/agoricpapers.html Depicted by Greg Egan in his novel "Diaspora", exerpt here: http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/DIASPORA/01/Orphanogenesis.html Background on Argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument Let's start by supposing that an argument is a variety of...

The number of meetup announcements on the main blog has been increasing. Though it's reasonable to try to get meetups high visibility to increase the chance that people who are nearby see the announcement, the posts themselves are content-free. How difficult would it be to, instead of promoting meetup announcements,...

There is a game studied in Philosophy of Science and Probably Approximately Correct (machine) learning. It's a cousin to the Looney Labs game "Zendo", but less fun to play with your friends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendo_(game) (By the way, playing this kind of game is excellent practice at avoiding confirmation bias.) The game...