August 2009
2 posts
July 2009
6 posts
Deontology v. Consequentialism →
Last week dailymeh wrote an excellent post examining the two opposing schema of rule-based morality and consequence-based morality that seem to compete when we make a decision. They’ve been distinct schools of thought for centuries, but there’s recent evidence that shows both find distinct force in the brain’s reasoning process.
But if we rush to declare this a...
Automated, high-speed stock trading on the rise →
One of the more interesting trends in stock market trading these last few years has been so-called “high-frequency trading,” which uses the combination of sophisticated high-speed computers and a firehose of information about the market to execute trading strategies that would be completely impossible by hand.
Using a preferred connection, complicated algorithms can detect subtle...
Building a Supercomputer Brain →
A neat article from Jonah Lehrer detailing the joint venture with IBM that’s attempting to simulate a brain within a computer. This isn’t any ordinary simulation, though, for a few different reasons:
Bottom-up, with the team simulating the fundamental building-blocks of the brain to see if they can get accurate enough that higher-level behavior emerges from the cognitive soup.
...
"Why markets can't cure healthcare" by Paul... →
In short:
Prices are either unpredictably cheap or expensive, which means insurance is the only realistic way for most people to pay for it.
Insurance is incentivized to deny people care, which they do by refusing claims and not enrolling those with pre-existing conditions.
But when insurance tries to cut costs responsibly - by discouraging ineffective treatments and so forth - they don’t...