The following is written for circulation in the “data science” research communities, on some advances in scientific methods of system recognition I’d like to share. It starts with mention of the very nice 9 year old work published by Google on “Detecting Influenza Epidemics using search engine query data” taken from a letter to that paper’s … Continue reading A pitch for introducing bigdata “system recognition”
On @SFIScience David Pines, Co-Founder of the Santa Fe Research Institute wrote Emergence: A unifying theme for 21st century science, describing a critical need for physics to develop a way to study “emergence” directly, as a natural phenomenon, not just a theoretical models. This article reposts my reply to him on Medium: But how can physics study behaviors, not the theory? For understanding … Continue reading But how can physics study behaviors, not the theory?
“Why there is continuity” Introduction to the general theorem of continuity 6/8/14 draft – Perhaps it just seemed too obvious to ask before, or maybe other scientists hadn’t found a reasonable way to do it. Continuity underlies every principle of physics and all our observations of nature, that “things are connected” but also some how all … Continue reading The key scientific question
A wide and welcome discussion of our economy’s tendency to produce increasing “inequity” has followed the US publication of Thomas Piketty’s book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, and offered me many chances to comment for general readers with interest in the deeper scientific questions. I think my best so far were my most recent two, for the special issue of the AAAS … Continue reading a Whole Systems view – Piketty’s “r > g”
Gamma ray bursts are the most high energy events commonly observed in the universe, associated with the formation of “black holes”, and creating very high energy x-rays. NASA provides good introductory information with a nice animation. Satellite instruments easily record the time and intensity of these events but can only rarely connect them a location. So they’re one of the … Continue reading Gamma Ray Bursts – dynamics reconstructed
How Natural Systems Work… is by forming processes that produce a profit, used to grow it, in a burst of creative self-organization, to become sustainable ONLY IF the profits that built it get used to maintain what was built; the essential road map. That general model of nature’s “facts of life” is your “quick start”. … Continue reading Finding Organization in Natural Systems – “Quick Start”
Our oil addiction, like all addictions, became a physical trap, and shaped our ways of life to fit its temporary needs. Needing to consume ever more of the remaining affordable oil supplies also has pollution effects that will permanently disrupt the earth’s climate. We do it to achieve an evidently false image of “economic stability”. … Continue reading The fit with Alexander – and clearer escape from our traps
3/15/10 This is an edited foreword for my 3/13 post and a P.S. It’s really about deflecting the false impression made by an unfamiliar view of historic data, so not of general interest, I think. A recent note came from Charles Hall, with two interesting things. He passed along thePeak Oil Review pointing out again … Continue reading On why global systems are becoming unstable
Reposted from my Finance Lab blog The way social customs develop, and community standards, what to expect is formed by agreement and not by research all the time. Then people teach what others before them agreed on. I think that could be the main reason why for a few hundred years everyone assumed the right … Continue reading We assumed the purpose was growth, so it wasn’t studied
In response to a post by Marshall Goldsmith of Harvard Business review on Dan Arley, the author of “Predictably Irrational”, for which Marshall posted a thank-you note. There’s a great way to actually trace a lot of these phenomena as they happen December 26, 2008 at 1:32 PM (w/ minor edit) Marshall, There’s a great way … Continue reading Predictably exploratory maybe?? But is that “irrational”?