Comments on: Futures Past – Change You Can Believe In?

By: roac

roac — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:20:53 +0000

I went to high school with Ward Kimball’s kids. So what? So nothing, just thought I’d mention it. I never met their father, but I Googled him a while back. He seems to have had more fun in the course of his life than just about anybody you can think of.

http://www.digitalmediafx.com/Features/wardkimball.html

By: rcriii

rcriii — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:45:41 +0000

If I can play:

Taleb emphasizes that scientific discoveries come when people are looking for something else entirely.

But you cannot possibly be looking for something else, since having decided what to look for is tantamount to finding it. Therefore nothing ever gets found (or everything is already found).

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:29:45 +0000

Simon Grant and I have a rather dry and technical paper on when it is legitimate to make the kind of ‘small world’ assumption in which you assume you have thought of every relevant possibility. The necessary conditions include probabilistic independence from the rest of the ‘big world’ and also a kind of addivity in consequences, so that your ranking of ‘small world’ outcomes is unaffected by what you get in the rest of the ‘big world’.

The catch is that the only way to determine whether these conditions apply in any given case is from knowledge of the ‘big world’.

And, BTW, Squid and Owl is great.

By: notsneaky

notsneaky — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:12:20 +0000

Nah, those pics are great. I’d say something about the law of iterated expectations and hate on Taleb along with everyone else but I still can’t stop thinking about early butt rock, whatever Belle says. If a band expected butt rock before there was such a thing was that band early butt rock or butt rock itself?

Lady with the canon rocks.

By: Owen Futures

Owen Futures — Thu, 14 May 2009 05:39:47 +0000

And it is definitely, definitely French, not a commentary on the human condition. Owen Futures

By: jholbo

jholbo — Thu, 14 May 2009 01:57:13 +0000

Thanks for all the comments. (These pic posts are often a bit quiet, which makes me worry that people prefer something wordier, here at CT. ) Thanks for the kind words as well and assorted links.

Neil, someday you will be able to buy a hardcopy and read the text in all it’s large glory. In the meantime, Flickr allows you to click to see larger sizes. Although it may be tedious to have to wait for every single page to load. Not a perfect reading experience, I concede.

By: Dave Maier

Dave Maier — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:25:35 +0000

I like the Mercury dudes. It must be hard to chill on Mercury, but they seem to be managing it.

By: Colin Danby

Colin Danby — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:37:25 +0000

Well that certainly lit up a lot more of the old cortex than the typical CT post. Those floating fish barricades will haunt the dreams. The ASIFA link was also extraordinary … the mid-century-modern suburban house plus flying saucer … and the department store of the future (http://www.animationarchive.org/pics/venus08-big.jpg)—look, it’s the Johnson Wax building (http://www.solarflarestudios.com/demosites/architecture/images/wright4.jpg)!

By: lemmy caution

lemmy caution — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:34:28 +0000

Wear the fox hat:

http://www.brutallyhonest.org/brutally_honest/files/FoxHat.wmv

By: Alison P

Alison P — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:21:27 +0000

That children's illustration seems a response to the cry: 'Japan? Wear the fox hat?'

By: Righteous Bubba

Righteous Bubba — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:00:12 +0000

Neil, go to System Preferences and Universal Access and you’ll find a way to zoom to your heart’s content, although in Firefox you should probably be able to hit the control (or command) and scroll wheel to zoom within Firefox.

By: Matt Kuzma

Matt Kuzma — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:57:46 +0000

“Does Taleb overstate his case? What do you think?”

Yes. Most scientific breakthroughs happen on purpose, albeit of Edison’s 1000-ways-not-to-make-a-lightbulb variety. You can’t predict which method you try will be the one to work, but that’s not the same as it being completely accidental. Only a small portion of discoveries come in the search for something else entirely.

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:50:09 +0000

I am not reading S&O because I can’t get the text big enough t0 read comfortably (firefox 3.10 on mac os x).

By: Bill Benzon

Bill Benzon — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:24:43 +0000

Oh, just scrap the EP aspect of Taleb. It’s not worth the time it takes to puzzle it out.

As for Squid and Owl, I think it’s fine, and I don’t even read all of it. I mostly like the pictures.

So, if you could make a (handsome) living off S&O and similar projects, would you kick philosophy to hobby status?

By: JM

JM — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:07:26 +0000

The owl and the Cephalopod went to sea
in a beautiful pea-green boat . . .

and they took a little bacon
and they took a little beans
and are eaten by Cthulu
while the painted lady screams …