Lifeboat Foundation

SEPTEMBER 15 — When it comes to making forecasts — whether it’s predicting the outcome of an election or determining whether a marriage will last — what good is intuition? Can our gut instincts guide us to correct outcomes, or are they too unreliable to be useful in a world ruled by data?

People can use intuition to make remarkably accurate predictions, social scientists have shown. In an experiment published earlier this year, for example, psychologists found that call-centre employees speaking with registered voters a week before an election could foresee with surprising accuracy which ones would flake out on their plans to vote. “It’s surprising to me because it’s such a short exchange for callers to be able to make useful inferences about whether respondents are actually going to do what they say,” the lead researcher, Todd Rogers, told me when the study was published. He cited other studies where ordinary people showed extraordinary abilities to intuit others’ personality traits, sexual orientation and racial attitudes.

At the same time, unconscious judgments can be contaminated with biases. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman laid out many of the perils of gut instinct in his 2011 best-seller “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” Among them are anchoring (being overly influenced by the first information you receive), hindsight bias (wrongly believing past events were predictable or predetermined), and the availability heuristic (giving too much weight to what you already know and not enough to what you know you need to look up).

Continue reading “How ‘superforecasters’ think about the future — Faye Flam” »

Interesting for sure.

Two UCs and Stanford partner in a new research center focused on biotechnology and life sciences innovation.

Again organic nature teaches technology.

A new study, inspired by water’s movement from roots to leaves in tall trees, shows that a certain kind of passive liquid flow, where liquids naturally move in response to surface atomic interactions instead of being driven by external forces like pumps, is remarkably strong. By virtually modeling the way atoms interact at a solid surface, College of Engineering and Computer Science researchers suggest that passive liquid flow could serve as a highly efficient coolant-delivery mechanism without the need for pumps. The results, published in Langmuir, also have implications for the development of new nanoscale technology.

The diamond microdisk made by Paul Barclay and his team of physicists could lead to huge advances in computing, telecommunications, and other fields.

Barclay and his research group — part of the University of Calgary’s Institute for Quantum Science and Technology and the National Institute of Nanotechnology — have made the first-ever nano-sized optical resonator (or optical cavity) from a single crystal of diamond that is also a mechanical resonator.

The team also measured — in the coupling of light and mechanical motion in the device — the high-frequency, long-lasting mechanical vibrations caused by the energy of light trapped and bouncing inside the diamond microdisk optical cavity.

A team of physicists has successfully carried out the teleportation of a proton in research that could lead to a quantum internet.

Microsoft is thinking about cancer in terms of computer software.

Microsoft wants to “solve” cancer, and is doing it by thinking about the body like a computer.

The technology giant may be more closely associated with malware than malignant diseases, but researchers working for the company’s “biological computation” unit in Cambridge are showing the former isn’t entirely separate from the latter.

Continue reading “Microsoft is reprogramming cancer” »

1st Robot has been arrested this year; guess Kurzweil’s request for Robots to have Constitutional Rights may have a need.

You might be forgiven if you were under the impression that the Russian government is a bit behind the times when it comes to modern technology and its never ending desire to stifle every last bit of dissent possible. Between the bouts its had with internet censorship and some strange claims about how binge-watching streaming services are a form of United States mind-control, it would be quite easy to be left with the notion that this is all for comedy. Alas, blunders and conspiracy theories aside, much of this technological blundering is mere cover for the very real iron grip the Russians place upon free speech, with all manner of examples in technology used as excuses to silence its critics.

And now it’s no longer just human beings that need fear the Russian government, it seems. Just this past week, a robot was arrested at a political rally. And, yes, I really do mean a robot, and, yes, I really do mean arrested.

Continue reading “Not Content With Silencing Human Critics, Russia Has Now Arrested A Robot” »

The nominee to lead the U.S. Strategic Command warned Congress this week that China and Russia are rapidly building space warfare capabilities and the United States is lagging behind in efforts to counter the threat.

Both Beijing and Moscow are developing anti-satellite missiles and laser guns and maneuvering killer space robots that could cripple strategic U.S. communications, navigation and intelligence satellites, the backbone of American high-technology warfare.

Air Force Gen. John E. Hyten, picked to be the next Stratcom commander, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Chinese and Russian space weapons pose “an emerging challenge” and that the Pentagon is accelerating its efforts to counter the threat.

Continue reading “China, Russia space war weapons on fast track” »

Edward Snowden has warned people not to use Google’s new chat app, because it lets the company read everything that they say.

Google has finally released its new chat app after showing it off over the summer. It comes with a robot that watches everything people say and then stores it for later analysis, using that data to improve the app itself.

But that also means that chats are stored on Google’s servers indefinitely, and are able to be read by it. The company had initially indicated that the messages would only be stored temporarily, limiting the possible impact of any data breach and retaining some privacy for users.

Continue reading “Google’s new chat app should be deleted and never used, says Edward Snowden” »