TED Community » Chris Waggoner

More About Me

I'm passionate about

abstract mathematics, idle chitchat

An idea worth spreading

If priming works in psychological experiments, maybe we could un-prime people as well. In other words, have people write about what they were just doing, so that they don't feel so lab-y.

Talk to me about

quantitative finance

People don't know that I'm good at

standing on my hands

My TED Story

I like watching TED videos.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: David Christian: The history of our world in 18 minutes

  Mar 21 2013: 15:01 A single global brain? Give me a break. Not everyone is on the same Internet, let alone thinking on the same wavelength.

• A comment on Talk: Demo: Stunning data visualization in the AlloSphere

  Oct 26 2012: The brain echoes would make more sense to me as drums. Instead of getting higher-pitched with more blood density, they should get faster.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are

  Mar 28 2012: How would our brain represent "place" whild flying around in 3-D? If 2-D is tessellated with a triangular grid, maybe 3-D would be tesselated with tetrahedra?

• A reply on Conversation: Would atheists benefit from a community? Are they maximizing such benefits?

  Feb 2 2012: Zdenek, it sounds like we are more on the same page now. It's funny, I was talking to a friend who just finished a PhD in geology today and she used the phrases "science is B.S." and "marketing" several times each. Although as you say, we do seem to get somewhere over decades so something about the macro process is effective.
  
  Before the maps of Africa got better, they got worse. So cartography's progress was non-monotonic.

• A reply on Conversation: Would atheists benefit from a community? Are they maximizing such benefits?

  Feb 1 2012: G M, perhaps it is merely a semantic difference. However it does smell a whiff of "scientism", meaning roughly faith in science. It's something R Feynman and other fine scientists argued against.
  
  I think the TED audience (myself included) is likely to take claims of scientific progress at face value, or worse to talk about a theoretical model of scientific progress in broad terms rather than looking at the specific facts.
  
  However there are reasons to doubt scientific claims that can be observed even by people who just read the newspaper and don't actively take part in sceptically examining results. I'm referring to the economics of scientific research.
  
  
  
  Zdenek, sometimes models get worse before they get better. One example is European maps of inland Africa: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/dishpan.html.
  
  It's indisputable that 2.5 centuries after discovering the microscope, the conventional wisdom on disease and biology is much more accurate. But there are many instances on a shorter time-scale of false results being widely believed true, or of true results being widely believed false. For example there were several instances of decades-long fraud perpetrated by prominet scientists which recently received international attention.
  
  The online journal PlosComp Biology would not exist were it true that science makes (forward) progress daily.
  
  
  
  
  
  Just to be clear: I am not disputing that "we" know more today than "they" did 2,000 or 200 years ago. Only arguing that scientific progress is not monotonic.

• A reply on Conversation: Would atheists benefit from a community? Are they maximizing such benefits?

  Jan 30 2012: Zdenek, progress between 250 years ago and 1 year ago is very different than "Ever increasing accuracy". The former has happened, the latter has not.
  
  > UDHR
  
  Just because those who drafted it said the values are universal, does not make them universal.

• A reply on Conversation: Would atheists benefit from a community? Are they maximizing such benefits?

  Jan 27 2012: > science
  
  That is quite different to continuous progress.
  
  > udhr
  
  They're not actually universally agreed.

• A reply on Conversation: Would atheists benefit from a community? Are they maximizing such benefits?

  Jan 27 2012: Zdenek, I don't see science as inerrant or continuously progressing. That sounds like an unquestioned Popperian view.
  
  Then, morality & ethics have been in dispute for thousands of years. I don't even know what progress would mean in ethics & morality since one can't measure success.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Reinventing the resume

  Jan 25 2012: Programmers and artists can point to product instead of a resume.
  
  Given the different perspectives of potential interviewers, I think it's difficult to write one short document that will inform everyone.
  
  I've found that the best measures are (1) test applicants on a task that is as close to their job as you can make it, and (2) talking sincerely. In your case, perhaps you could ask some questions on a website before asking for resumes.

• A reply on Conversation: Would atheists benefit from a community? Are they maximizing such benefits?

  Jan 24 2012: I used to think so, but the more scientists I talk to, the less I believe that.