The Schrödinger’s Cat Experiment, Explained

Η τυραννία της ακρασίας

του Χαρίδημου Κ. Τσούκα

Καθημερινή
18 Σεπτεμβρίου 2011

–Μπαμπά, θα χρεοκοπήσουμε;

– Κανείς δεν μπορεί να ξέρει, αλλά θεωρώ ότι είναι μια πολύ πιθανή εξέλιξη.

– Τι σε κάνει να το πιστεύεις αυτό;

– Οι πιο έγκυροι οικονομολόγοι προβλέπουν κάποιας μορφής χρεοκοπία. Χωρίς δραστική αναδιάρθρωση του χρέους, η χώρα δεν σώζεται. Δεν είναι αυτό όμως που με κάνει τόσο απαισιόδοξο όσο η δική μας ακρασία.

– Τι εννοείς;

– «Ακρασία» είναι ένας όρος του Αριστοτέλη για να περιγράψει το φαινόμενο όπου ξέρω τι είναι ορθό να πράξω αλλά δεν το πράττω. «Ο ακρατής πράττει εν γνώσει του άσχημες πράξεις υπό το κράτος του πάθους του» (Ηθικά Νικομάχεια, 1145β 12-13). Ο ακρατής είναι ανίκανος να ζήσει όπως θεωρεί ότι θα έπρεπε.

– Περίεργο δεν είναι αυτό;

– Ναι, το ίδιο έλεγε και ο Σωκράτης. Η υποβέλτιστη πράξη οφείλεται στην άγνοια, όχι στην ακρασία. Για τον Αριστοτέλη, όμως, η ακρασία είναι όχι μόνο υπαρκτή αλλά και επικίνδυνη. Η ακρασία προκύπτει στο μέτρο που το άτομο κυριαρχείται από τα πάθη του, έτσι ώστε να αποκτά ψευδή εικόνα των πεποιθήσεών του. Νομίζει ότι θέλει κάτι (π. χ. να κόψει το τσιγάρο), αλλά δεν το εννοεί.

– Και τι σχέση έχει αυτό με την κρίση που περνάμε;

– Μεγάλη. Η κυβέρνηση δεσμεύεται έναντι των δανειστών της να υλοποιήσει ρηξικέλευθες πολιτικές για τη μείωση του χρέους, αλλά διστάζει να τις υλοποιήσει. Καταφάσκει μεν, συμπεριφέρεται αντιφατικά δε. Τα παραδείγματα, πολλά. Τα προστατευμένα επαγγέλματα δήθεν άνοιξαν. Οι ιδιωτικοποιήσεις συμφωνήθηκαν, αλλά ακόμη περιμένουν. Η εργασιακή εφεδρεία αναβάλλεται διαρκώς. Δεσμευτήκαμε για συγκεκριμένα αποτελέσματα αλλά δεν πασχίζουμε να τα παραγάγουμε. Ο καθηγητής Σταύρος Θωμαδάκης, διακεκριμένος οικονομολόγος, μας έλεγε πρόσφατα στο Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου ότι φοβάται default by default! Κινδυνεύουμε να χρεοκοπήσουμε λόγω αδράνειας - γιατί αδυνατούμε να δράσουμε διαφορετικά.

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Rationality, games and conflict

Robert Aumann interviewed by Romesh Vaitilingam

Vox
September 9, 2011

Nobel laureate Robert Aumann of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem talks to Romesh Vaitilingam about his work on ‘rule rationality’, the development of game theory and its potential for understanding conflict – from the Pax Romana to the modern day Middle East. The interview was recorded in August 2011 at the Fourth Lindau Meeting on Economic Sciences, which brought together 17 of the 38 living economics laureates with nearly 400 top young economists from around the world.

Listen to the interview here

Fourteen magic words that can increase voter turnout by over 10 percentage points??

by Andrew Gelman

The Monkey Cage
September 4, 2011

Christopher Bryan, Gregory Walton, Todd Rogers, and Carol Dweck did two experiments in which they increased people’s voter turnout in real electionsby over 10 percentage points by simply asking them the following survey question on election day:

• How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election?

In the comparison condition, potential voters were asked:

• How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election?

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to have been a control condition in the experiments, so all they could really do was compare these two treatments to each other.

The gimmick of the experiment is that it harnesses humans’ natural belief in essentialism (see, for example, reference 14 in the link above), the idea that being “a voter” is more essential than being a person who happened to vote.

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Joe Heller (The Green Bay Press-Gazette)

The Sugary Secret of Self-Control

by Steven Pinker

New York Times
September 2, 2011

Ever since Adam and Eve ate the apple, Ulysses had himself tied to the mast, the grasshopper sang while the ant stored food and St. Augustine prayed “Lord make me chaste — but not yet,” individuals have struggled with self-control. In today’s world this virtue is all the more vital, because now that we have largely tamed the scourges of nature, most of our troubles are self-inflicted. We eat, drink, smoke and gamble too much, max out our credit cards, fall into dangerous liaisons and become addicted to heroin, cocaine and e-mail.

Nonetheless, the very idea of self-­control has acquired a musty Victorian odor. The Google Books Ngram Viewer shows that the phrase rose in popularity through the 19th century but began to free fall around 1920 and cratered in the 1960s, the era of doing your own thing, letting it all hang out and taking a walk on the wild side. Your problem was no longer that you were profligate or dissolute, but that you were uptight, repressed, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive or fixated at the anal stage of psychosexual development.

Then a remarkable finding came to light. In experiments beginning in the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel tormented preschoolers with the agonizing choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows 15 minutes from now. When he followed up decades later, he found that the 4-year-olds who waited for two marshmallows turned into adults who were better adjusted, were less likely to abuse drugs, had higher self-esteem, had better relationships, were better at handling stress, obtained higher degrees and earned more money.

What is this mysterious thing called self-control? When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist. We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog. In recent years the psychologist Roy F. Baumeister has shown that the force metaphor has a kernel of neurobiological reality. In Willpower, he has teamed up with the irreverent New York Times science columnist John Tierney to explain this ingenious research and show how it can enhance our lives.

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Demographic-economic paradox

From Wikipedia

The demographic-economic paradox is the inverse correlation found between wealth and fertility within and between nations. The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any industrialized country. In a 1974 UN population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating "Development is the best contraceptive."

The term "paradox" comes from the notion that greater means would necessitate the production of more offspring as suggested by the influential Thomas Malthus. Roughly speaking, nations or subpopulations with higher GDP per capita are observed to have fewer children, even though a richer population can support more children. Malthus held that in order to prevent widespread suffering, from famine for example, what he called "moral restraint" (which included abstinence) was required. The demographic-economic paradox suggests that reproductive restraint arises naturally as a consequence of economic progress.

It is hypothesized that the observed trend has come about as a response to increased life expectancy, reduced childhood mortality, improved female literacy and independence, and urbanization that all result from increased GDP per capita, consistent with the demographic transition model.

Current information suggests that the demographic-economic paradox only holds up to a point though. Recent data suggests that once a country reaches a certain level of human development and economic prosperity the fertility rate stabilizes and then recovers slightly to replacement rates.

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The Measure of Human Happiness

by Clive Crook

The Atlantic
July 1, 2011

A theme at many sessions at this year's AIF has been happiness--what it is, how you advance it, how you measure it. Fascinating. Justin Wolfers and Robert Frank had an interesting exchange on this earlier in the week, and I'm continuing to turn their arguments over in my mind.

Wolfers tore into the "Easterlin Paradox", which is the claim that happiness does not rise with income beyond a certain point. That finding (see Richard Easterlin: Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?) gave rise to the popular view that, for rich countries at least, economic growth is a treadmill. People are struggling to improve their status, and feel happier if they succeed, but the race for status goods is zero-sum. Growth in absolute income cannot raise everybody's relative position. It allows higher consumption but expands desires at about the same rate. The gain in happiness, if any, is small. For a rich country, the obsession with growth in GDP is an error.

Wolfers walked through his impressive array of data--derived from a remarkable project of international comparisons undertaken by Gallup--and argued that the Easterlin claim is simply and unambiguously false. Higher incomes make people happier. It takes ever larger increases in absolute income to yield a given improvement in happiness (happiness rises with the log of income), but there is no point of saturation. Within countries, richer people are happier than poor people. Globally, rich countries are happier than poor countries. He examined some of the statistical evidence which is said to point the other way, and showed it was wrong. Economic growth does what it is supposed to.

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The Fear of Reason: In defense of rational argument

by Leon Wieseltier

New Republic
June 23, 2011

“I just want to point out,” declared the student at the far end of the seminar table, “that when Maimonides offers a proof of God’s existence, he is not saying that he has really proved it. What he’s saying is: This works for me, and if it works for you, great.” I was teaching a graduate seminar on The Guide of the Perplexed at a fine American university, and I was pleased to see my students warming to my insistence that the old masterpiece is still alive, and one of the most formidable obstacles ever erected against a thoughtless existence. We returned repeatedly to the question of what medievals can teach moderns about the indispensability of a worldview, and about the proper methods for justifying one. But the young man’s comment about the subjectivism of Maimonides’s proof—anyway the least interesting part of the book--startled me. It was so American and so wrong. After explaining why it was not just historically correct, but also philosophically respectable, to conclude from the text that its author really could have believed that a proof was possible, I proposed that we quit the twelfth century and put a little pressure on the talismanic words “and if it works for you, great.” I began a discussion of the shortcomings of pragmatism, which allowed me to launch into a withering—and of course intellectually devastating—analysis of the ideas of Richard Rorty and their poisonous impact upon thinking in America. My students offered surprisingly little resistance; but then they had signed up for a winter of rationalism and religion--this countercultural band was not ashamed of its interest in the idea of truth. Yet the Rortyan shrug was still there in the young man’s comment, and so I asked him for his opinion about reason. He said that it frightened him and discouraged him. The problem with reason, he explained, was that it claimed to settle matters once and for all, and that this was arrogant, and that it left him with nothing more to say. Rationalism made him feel excluded and late. I replied that he had it backward. It is not reason, but unreason, that shuts things down. You cannot argue against an emotion, but you can argue against an argument. That is why we were still contending with Maimonides, and why he was still contending with Aristotle. A reasoned discussion is always open and a reasoned intervention is always timely. Unreason is more arrogant, more impatient, more cruel, than reason. Since reason is general, it is inclusive. Reason, I said, is strict but fragile, forever hounded, forever distracted, the minority cause, provisional, fair, curious, fallible, public—not tyrannical but heroic, in its lonely insurrection against the happy and popular hegemony of passions and interests. I told my students about Maimonides’s life, the persecution, the tragedy, the depression, the paranoia, so that they would see the creatureliness of the rationalist, and honor his confidence in the mind as a human triumph. Reason is even poignant.

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Extraverts More Likely to Believe in Free Will

Miller-McCune
June 8, 2011

Philosophers’ views on freedom and moral responsibility are influenced by inherited personality traits. If they can’t be objective, can anyone?

Philosophers are trained to think things through logically and reach conclusions based solely on reason. But as science provides increasing evidence for the interconnectivity of mind, body and emotions, is that sort of intellectual objectivity truly possible?

A newly published study suggests the answer is no — at least when it comes to addressing one fundamental issue. It finds deep thinkers with a specific type of personality — warm and extraverted — are more likely to believe that free will remains a viable concept, even in the light of research suggesting our behavior is largely determined by unconscious impulses.

While this may sound like a theoretical argument, the researchers, led by Eric Schulz of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, argue it has potentially profound implications. If expert opinion is partly a matter of personality, it negates the notion that trained specialists can and do provide cool, clear-minded assessments of the facts — a concept that is at the foundation of our legal system.

“Even highly skilled professionals such as lawyers, judges, ethicists and philosophers may not be immune to the influence of their different personalities,” they write in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. One could easily add other experts to that list, including economists, sociologists — and journalists.

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Rational After All: Toward an Improved Theory of Rationality in Economics

by Yulie Foka-Kavalieraki and Aristides N. Hatzis

Revue de Philosophie Economique
Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2011

In this paper we critically review the literature on rational choice theory (RCT) and the critical approaches to it. We will present a concise description of the theory as defended by Gary Becker, Richard Posner and James Coleman (as well as others) at the University of Chicago from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, we will discuss its epistemological assumptions and predictions and we will also examine the most important arguments against it. We will give our main emphasis on the critique coming from behavioral economics and we will try to see if humans’ supposed cognitive constraints lead to a failure of rationality or if they constitute rational responses to the scarcity of information, time and energy. In our discussion we will use findings from experimental economics and the sciences of the brain, especially evolutionary psychology and neuroeconomics. Our intention is to present an improved theory of rational choice that, informed from the above discussion, will be descriptively more accurate but without losing its predicting power. Moreover, we will conclude by trying to answer the most important related policy question: when rationality seems to fail, does this necessarily imply that agents should be paternalistically protected against themselves? We will briefly defend the thesis that, in the long-run, it is much better for them and the society at large for the individual decision makers to be let alone to develop rational responses to their cognitive constraints.

Keywords: Rational Choice Theory, Behavioral Economics, Evolutionary Psychology, Rationality, Cognition, Paternalism

Download the Paper free from this site

On ‘Jeopardy!’ Women Take Fewer Risks vs. Men

Miller-McCune
June 2, 2011

A study of contestant behavior on the popular game show “Jeopardy!” suggests women tend to hedge their bets when facing male opponents.

The answer is: It’s a game show that provides surprising clues about sex, social rules and risk-taking.

And the question is: What is Jeopardy!?

Two Swedish researchers, writing in the journal Economics Letters, report an intriguing pattern of behavior by contestants on the popular quiz program. Women, it seems, take fewer risks when their Jeopardy! opponents are men.

Gabriella Sjogren Lindquist and Jenny Save-Soderbergh of the Swedish Institute for Social Research looked at 206 episodes of Jeopardy!, focusing on those moments when one of the three contestants must decide how much to wage on a Daily Double.

For those unfamiliar with the Jeopardy!, Daily Doubles pop up at random during the course of play. Rather than wagering a set amount on whether they will know the answer to a question (the show’s usual format), contestants are given the opportunity to bet as much or as little as they like, up to the amount of money they have accumulated to that point.

The researchers tallied the results of 615 Daily Doubles, featuring 251 male and 65 female contestants. (The same contestant can play several Daily Doubles during the course of the show, and still more if he or she wins and returns the next day.)

The researchers found “no systemic gender differences in performance,” either on the Daily Double questions or the final scores. But they also determined that “male players are more likely to give the correct answer when competing against males only.” Perhaps man-to-man competition, which played a vital role in our evolutionary past, sharpens the male mind.

Most intriguingly, the researchers found females “apply a more conservative wagering strategy” when their two opponents are both male. Compared to instances when they’re up against two women, or a man and a woman, “Women wager 25 percent less of their accumulated score on average” when they’re competing against two men.

“Men do not display this behavior,” they add.

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"Athene's theory of everything"....

Αν και αμφίβολης αποδοχής του συγκεκριμένου "ερευνητή" από την επιστημονική κοινότητα, το βιντεάκι αυτό έχει προκαλέσει αρκετό ντόρο στο διαδίκτυο. Πρόκειται για τον Chiren Boumaaza γνωστό και ως Athena (έμαθα ότι έχει υπάρξει δεινός και "ανίκητος" παίχτης του world of warcraft προτού εξαφανιστεί από την ιντερνετική αυτή κοινότητα για να αφοσιωθεί πλήρως στη συγκεκριμένη έρευνα). Υπάρχει και σχετικό blog: athenism.net το οποίο συστήνεται ως "scientific research & self-development activism".

Αναφέρεται σε Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum mechanics & consciousness, neurons, Joseph E. LeDoux, De Broglie equasion κ.α.... και υποστηρίζει ότι "δεν μπορεί να υπάρξει "ελεύθερη επιλογή" ενόσω είμαστε συναισθηματικά συνδεδεμένοι σε ένα σύστημα ιδεών (belief system). Το ερώτημα δεν είναι αν τα πιστεύω μας είναι σωστά ή λάθος αλλά αν το να είμαστε συναισθηματικά δεμένοι με αυτά μπορεί ή όχι να μας ωφελήσει....."

Ο λόγος που το αναρτώ είναι κάποια επιχειρήματά του που αν και δεν έχουν επαληθευτεί, ίσως να γίνουν τροφή για σκέψη για κάποιους από εμάς. Κυρίως όμως με προβλημάτισε το εξής σχετικά με την ίδια την ύπαρξη αυτού του video: Ένας επιστήμονας ερευνητής με αντικείμενο που από τη φύση του προκαλεί πολύ ενδιαφέρον και αντιπαραθέσεις, δημοσιεύει στο ευρύ κοινό (δηλ. όχι ακαδημαϊκή/επιστημονική κοινότητα) τις υποθέσεις ή τα μη επαληθεύσιμα (ακόμα ίσως) επιχειρήματα και συμπεράσματά του (έστω και αν η δημοσίευση γίνει μέσω τρίτου, όπως εν προκειμένω); και αν το κάνει, αυτό γίνεται για να προκληθεί ντόρος ή μήπως πλέον σήμερα η επιστήμη και η διαδικασία της έρευνας (υπόθεση, πείραμα, επιχείρημα, επαλήθευση κλπ) γίνονται "ανοιχτές" και στο μη ακαδημαϊκό κοινό (κυρίως με τη βοήθεια του internet); Τί κινδύνους ή ωφέλειες μπορεί αυτό να σημαίνει;;

Για όσους δεν διαθέτουν πολύ χρόνο να το δουν, προτείνω τα 7:30'...12'...21'...25'...42:40'...44'...47'....

DSK and Conspiracy Theory

by Roger Cohen

New York Times
May 30, 2011

After Osama bin Laden was killed, a prominent French radio station called me for an interview. It turned into a mildly hallucinogenic experience. Everybody from the president of the United States to Al Qaeda itself was saying Bin Laden was dead, but my interviewer kept pressing me for “the proof.”

I talked about DNA samples, the word of the American president, the accumulated intelligence, but it was clear that a Gallic conspiracy reflex — especially active with regard to France’s sometime American savior — had kicked in. The view that this might all be some U.S. plot or hoax had taken mysterious hold.

I was put in mind of an unpleasant Paris dinner when a France Télécom manager with international experience began to expound on the theory — more than plausible to his mind — that Jews had not turned up to work at the twin towers on 9/11 because Israel and the Mossad were behind the planes-turned-missiles that turned lower Manhattan into an inferno.

And now we have the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, viewed, it seems, by close to 60 percent of French society as a conspiracy against the putative Socialist presidential candidate — a sting operation that somehow placed a West African immigrant maid in a $3,000 a night Sofitel suite whose number, 2806, corresponds to the date of the opening of the Socialist party primaries in France (06-28).

Oh, s’il vous please!

A rough rule goes like this: The freer a society the less inclined it is to conspiracy theories, while the greater its culture of dependency the more it will tend to see hidden hands at work everywhere.

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The Ellsberg Paradox

Ο νευροοικονομολόγος Colin Camerer εξηγεί το το Παράδοξο του Ellsberg και τους λόγους για τους οποίους τα άτομα επιλέγουν το βέβαιο αν και ασυνεπές.

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Dan Dennett: Cute, sexy, sweet, funny

TED
February 2009

Why are babies cute? Why is cake sweet? Philosopher Dan Dennett has answers you wouldn't expect, as he shares evolution's counterintuitive reasoning on cute, sweet and sexy things (plus a new theory from Matthew Hurley on why jokes are funny).

Philosopher and scientist Dan Dennett argues that human consciousness and free will are the result of physical processes and are not what we traditionally think they are. His 2003 book Freedom Evolves explores the way our brains have evolved to give us -- and only us -- the kind of freedom that matters, while 2006's Breaking the Spell examines religious belief through the lens of biology.

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The Optimism Bias

by Tali Sharot

Time
May 28, 2011

We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. We watch our backs, weigh the odds, pack an umbrella. But both neuroscience and social science suggest that we are more optimistic than realistic. On average, we expect things to turn out better than they wind up being. People hugely underestimate their chances of getting divorced, losing their job or being diagnosed with cancer; expect their children to be extraordinarily gifted; envision themselves achieving more than their peers; and overestimate their likely life span (sometimes by 20 years or more).

The belief that the future will be much better than the past and present is known as the optimism bias. It abides in every race, region and socioeconomic bracket. Schoolchildren playing when-I-grow-up are rampant optimists, but so are grownups: a 2005 study found that adults over 60 are just as likely to see the glass half full as young adults.

You might expect optimism to erode under the tide of news about violent conflicts, high unemployment, tornadoes and floods and all the threats and failures that shape human life. Collectively we can grow pessimistic — about the direction of our country or the ability of our leaders to improve education and reduce crime. But private optimism, about our personal future, remains incredibly resilient. A survey conducted in 2007 found that while 70% thought families in general were less successful than in their parents' day, 76% of respondents were optimistic about the future of their own family.

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Sex, Lies, Arrogance: What Makes Powerful Men Act Like Pigs*

Time
May 19, 2011

When her husband Dominique Strauss-Kahn was preparing to run for President of France five years ago, Anne Sinclair told a Paris newspaper that she was "rather proud" of his reputation as a ladies' man, a chaud lapin (hot rabbit) nicknamed the Great Seducer.

"It's important," she said, "for a man in politics to be able to seduce."

Maybe it was pride that inspired French politicians and International Monetary Fund officials to look the other way as the rumors about "DSK" piled up, from the young journalist who says Strauss-Kahn tried to rip off her clothes when she went to interview him, to the female lawmaker who describes being groped and pawed and vowed never to be in a room alone with him again, to the economist who argued in a letter to IMF investigators that "I fear that this man has a problem that, perhaps, made him unfit to lead an institution where women work under his command." Maybe it was the moral laziness and social coziness that impel elites to protect their own. Maybe it was a belief that he alone could save the global economy. Maybe nothing short of jail is disqualifying for certain men in certain circles.

But in any event, the arrest of Strauss-Kahn in New York City for allegedly trying to rape a hotel maid has ignited a fierce debate over sex, law, power and privilege. And it is only just beginning. The night of Strauss-Kahn's arraignment, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted that the reason his wife Maria Shriver walked out earlier this year was the discovery that he had fathered a child more than a decade ago with a former member of the household staff. The two cases are far apart: only one man was hauled off to jail. But both suggest an abuse of power and a betrayal of trust. And both involve men whose long-standing reputations for behaving badly toward women did not derail their rise to power. Which raises the question: How can it be, in this ostensibly enlightened age, when men and women live and work as peers and are schooled regularly in what conduct is acceptable and what is actionable, that anyone with so little judgment, so little honor, could rise to such heights?

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International Manhunt for Julian Assange - Daniel Ellsberg

The Colbert Report
December 9, 2010

The Colbert Report

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Olle Johansson (Sweden)