Following up on Scientific Federalism:

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed [Malawi] to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices...

One of the milestones I've been watching for is the first entirely DVD-based TV-style series. It's going to happen sooner or later, and will mark a major shift in how TV is produced, once it becomes possible to make it without advertising or subsidy, the only two models that currently work. I've been looking forward to this because I think quirky niche content will benefit the most, and who doesn't think more quirky niche content is a good thing? Nobody who matters, that's who. (... said the nerd.)

There's a million important things going on in the world and in our lives, but we're really only aware of seven of them. This means that we all have a very narrow and limited understanding of the world and our own lives. The seven things on our mind all seem very important, while everything else is just kind of forgotten....

This seven register limitation also makes people very subject to manipulation. If you can control what is getting loaded into their attention, you can largely control what they think and how they feel. For example, if people keep talking about Iran and how scary they are and debating what to do about them, then pretty soon Iran will seem like the biggest, scariest problem in the world, and no solution will seem too extreme. The truth is that there are probably 100 more important problems, but it won't seem that way because all seven registers are loaded with the same topic. The subject of the debate is more important than the content. - Paul Buchheit (emphasis his)

There are three great political issue categories: Economic, Social, and Foreign Policy. Today I wish to speak on the Economic issues.

Up to quite recently, I've been describing myself as a little-l libertarian on economic issues. I've considered it a good and proper function of government to internalize externalities and to perform some monopoly busting, but to otherwise let the invisible hand do its efficient thing.

But that opinion is effect, not cause. Underlying that opinion is simple pragmatism. What I want is everybody to be rich, or at least what we would have called rich a hundred years ago; to be essentially free of the problems of acquiring adequate food, water, shelter, and basic quality-of-life, and to have it not merely instantaneously available, but to be available reliably across time.

...experiment has shown that the more detailed subjects' visualization, the more optimistic (and less accurate) they become.... A similar finding is that experienced outsiders, who know less of the details, but who have relevant memory to draw upon, are often much less optimistic and much more accurate than the actual planners and implementers.

So there is a fairly reliable way to fix the planning fallacy, if you're doing something broadly similar to a reference class of previous projects. Just ask how long similar projects have taken in the past, without considering any of the special properties of this project. Better yet, ask an experienced outsider how long similar projects have taken.

This is why the studious ignorance of economics by self-proclaimed "environmentalists" is not cute and harmless, but a major threat. Almost everything in that story says one thing: "Market distortion". That's what a market distortion is; not a harmless game played with abstract points called "money", but shortages of vital commodities and overproduction of others.

The artificial demand for biofuels bumps off food production. If normal economic processes were in place, instead of subsidies both monetary and emotional, and if biofuels could only sell in direct proportion to their actual effectiveness, the food displacement problem would be much smaller, and much easier to manage. (It's questionable whether any biofuel can compete at all on a level playing field; if that's true then there would be no significant effect from biofuel at all.)

Quantum consciousness has attracted a lot of total quacks, running 10 steps ahead of science and using "quantum word salad" to justify whatever beliefs they already had. For so many people, "quantum" reads as "magic", and flick the critical thinking is turned off, and off we go on an adventure of telepathy, auras, out-of-body adventures, and the whole litany of New Age-isms that might as well come from the late 19th century. Only this time with the word quantum in it, for that extra helping of plausibility. That's never a valid use of science.

But that's unfair of me to use that as justification to dismiss the entire idea. There is no idea so right that idiots can't misuse it. "Quantum" itself is the canonical case. Quantum mechanics is now over a hundred years old, but you'd never know it from the public perception. It remains counterintuitive, but it's not fair to call it a mystery any more. A mystery to you and I, perhaps, but it has long ceased to be an anything-box in physics.

If consciousness research has proved anything, it is that all our simple models are inadequate, and the final answer, whatever it may be, is going to be complicated.

A New Marriage of Brain and Computer recently went by on the Google TechTalk feed, and while there's still a little bit of the quantum = magic in there, there is also interesting material to chew over regarding the simple question of "How does the brain really work?" You can consider the consciousness discussion an irrelevancy and still learn some interesting things. The rest of this post assumes you've watched that video. (Google's video interface is superior to the embed version, so I give you the link.)

And the Spartans Spartan it up.

They appear to be asymptotically approaching the ability to reliably lose every game by a single score in overtime, after holding a significant lead for maximum pathos. Still working out some of the kinks, no overtime today, for instance, but I'm sure they'll get better.

When I was a child, I wanted to be like Spock. For those few who do not know whom I mean, Spock was the science officer on the star ship Enterprise in the famous 1960's sci-fi television show Star Trek. His claim to fame was being half-human and half-Vulcan. Vulcans were an alien race who are so naturally violent that they felt themselves forced to renounce their emotions and turn to a life of pure logic, lest they extinguish themselves in endless war. A common misconception is that Vulcans have no emotions; they do, but they rigidly suppress them.

Spock's major character arc involved a conflict between his "human side" and his "Vulcan side", between "emotions" and "logic". During the television series, he had chosen to attempt being pure Vulcan/logical, but he met with less success than he would have liked. Something never made clear was whether this was purely a personal issue or if perhaps being only half-Vulcan made it somehow biologically more difficult to live with the Vulcan philosophies and disciplines. (Most likely even the writers themselves were conflicted over their interpretation of this.)

Spock's initial choice reflects a common view of emotions, that they are intrinsically opposed to logic, unpredictable and uncontrollable, that you are forced to choose either the cold, cruel world of logic, or the squishy, utterly irrational world of emotion and feeling, but that ne'er the twain shall meet. This is view can be seen in our most ancient literature, where the fiery passions of somebody's loins are routinely contrasted with their cold, austere logical mind.

What absolute garbage!

Perhaps I need new friends, or must ignore their judgments, either way, as we age there’s the assumption we should know better than to do things we’re bad at. If you’re 15 and dance like a hapless idiot, that’s one thing, but when you’re 35, it’s a different story. In my thirties now I find people my age take life so much more seriously than a decade ago and I don’t fit in so well. I’m still crazy. And struggle as I might, my peers have more influence on me that I care to admit. - Why You Should Be Bad At Something