The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

I've finished "The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't" by Nate Silver. It was a good read - a systematic introduction to making statistics based predictions, easy to follow and quite interesting.

Why Aaron Swartz is my hero

Morozov recently so described internet activism:

This lack of curiosity about how the world works is the most pernicious feature of Internet-centrism. Armed with the Internet, its proponents do not much care about the larger objective of their reform. They prefer to notice only those elements amenable to Internet interventions and discard all others.

Compare that with Swartz book reviews. I wish in the Pirate Parties there were people like Swartz.

My new blog - BrudnopisPirata

For notes in Polish - http://brudnopispirata.blogspot.com/ (url updated).

Geeks contra SOPA

Today half of the Hacker News first page is about SOPA and in particular about call to boycot GoDaddy which appears to support that act.  This seems like a very effective strategy, because lot's of geeks do control websites hosted at GoDaddy and they have the power to push them out of business.  What is even more important is that it is such a good story: it is simple, unexpected, concrete and emotional - if reported by a credible source that would cover all the points that make a message stick.

Update: Apparently the geeks won this time: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_internet_wins_godaddy_flip-flops_on_sopa.php

Update: GoDaddy in damage control mode: https://plus.google.com/111996409013825587891/posts/7AMw7gDQ7Bi 

Occupy Wall street and the Orange Alternative

This is an image I found at Matt Stoller: #OccupyWallStreet Is a Church of Dissent, Not a Protest - a report about the OccupyWallStreet.

I was very young at this time, so maybe I did not understand all the politics going on - but for me ever after The Orange Alternative it was obvious that Communism is over.

Last week I finished reading Religion Explained

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have to agree that it is a really good explanation. The only deficiency I find in it is the insistence on being the only explanation - the reasoning does not exclude other factors collaborating in the evolutionary process and so does not exclude other explanations adding to this one.



View all my reviews

Flamewars

There are many analyses trying to explain flamewars by the difference between face to face communication and textual communication via computer networks. What they don't take into account is that mailing lists are public communication - they should not contrast mailing list and face to face private conversations - but rather mailing lists and public speeches.

Off-line public communication is not very common, and when we do it we have a lot of strict cultural rules governing how we do it. Everyone intuitively knows that they are necessary. But on-line there is the utopian view that we can have communication unrestricted by any norms and rules. The best off-line example to show where it leads us is lynch mob. It is dangerously easy that any simple disagreement will lead to a vicious circle of growing frustration between the disputants, with anyone just looking for a way to discharge it in the classic scape goat manoeuvre.

Update:

More and more individuals polarize against fewer and fewer enemies until, in the end, only one is left. Because everyone believes in the guilt of the last victim, they all turn against him — and since that victim is now isolated and helpless, they can do so with no danger of retaliation.

Is Christianity Indistinguishable From Other “Pagan Myths?”

Online conflict in the light of mimetic theory

At the p2p blog I published an essay analysing why it is so hard to get rid of the plague of flame wars and other conflicts in on-line communities.

The kafkaesque style of Google communication.

At home I use a linux machine. I have the MTU sytem installed even though I use it only sporadically and nearly never send anything. But today I wanted to send something to my gmail account and I got that in the mail.log file:

Oct 3 13:01:01 zby postfix/smtp[16309]: 2B7905BEE3: host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[209.85.135.114] said: 421-4.7.0 [62.121.70.19] Our system has detected an unusual amount of 421-4.7.0 unsolicited mail originating from your IP address. To protect our 421-4.7.0 users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been temporarily 421-4.7.0 blocked. Please visit http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html 421 4.7.0 to review our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines. i5si10046102mue.8 (in reply to end of DATA command)

Even though I did not notice anything suspicious it can be entirely possible that my computer was hacked and that someone is relying spam through it - but this message does not help me with solving that problem. And the linked page about rules for bulk senders only reminds me of the detailed procedures from 'The Trial' that never answered what really was the crime of Joseph K.

The won trial against Pirate Bay is the nail in the coffin of copyright

This only shows how disconnected from the culture are the film and music industry leaders. I just scratch my head on what they are thinking - haven't they themselves used that romanticism of the anti-establishment fighters in so many works - be it films (about pirates) or music? Jail time - this is the fastest way to create a legend.

2009 - the year of the Pirate Party

:) - I've never did this before - but now I think I have something to bet. My prediction for the next year is that the elections to the European Parliament will be the tipping point for the Pirate Party. They have two main advantages: the revolutionary brand that would appeal to all the young and rebelious and the politically dissapointed and a ring of very enthusiastic and media-active supporters. With that they can easily become the next 'political fashion' if only they reach the critical mass to become a real option in the minds of the public. And it seems that this is just happening in Sweden - if the Swedish Pirate Party gets into the European Parliament - this will be a big story in all EU countries - and will validate PP as a 'real party'.

Guest blogged at the P2P Foundation blog

An extended version of my previous blog note here was published by the P2P Foundation.

Flat structure

Another factor worthy of more research is the role played by ritual in mediating mimetic rivalry within organizational contexts. We might tentatively suggest that in general ritual seems to direct symbolic and actual violence in directions that further the goals of the organization and which prevents the outbreak of acquisitive mimetic rivalry. For example Ackroyd & Crowdy (1990) offer examples to show that the targets for "practical jokes" in the slaughterhouse that formed the basis of their study were usually hose who were slower and less efficient at tasks than the perpetrators. Discussing the general role of insults in organization Gabriel (1998), argues that this is a political process
that establishes a kind of "pecking order", thus restricting rivalry to the next slot available in the hierarchy. These arguments support the view that mimetic behaviour is ever present in
organizational contexts but that this rarely escalates to acquisitive mimetic rivalry.

from: Organization as containment of acquisitive mimetic rivalry: the contribution of Rene Girard

Compare with 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness'
by Jo Freeman.

Black swan

"Made to Stick" mentions 6 features that make a message viral - it needs to be: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional and tell a story. Web 2.0 and Black Swan show that there is one more point to it - ambiguity.

Market for Lemons

Just a quick thought - or maybe my interpretation of what Umair Haque writes. Market for Lemons - this is the underlying mechanism of current crisis.

Attention Economy and Mimetic Desire

The comment spam filter consequently refuses me from commenting at Michael H. Goldhaber's blog so I am posting my musing here: I wonder if the "Attention Economy" axioms could be based in the "Mimetic Desire" theory by Rene Girard. I would be grateful if someone copied that to the blog.

Online science

The results of the explosion of easily available articles, according to Evans, is that "researchers can more easily find prevailing opinion, they are more likely to follow it, leading to more citations referencing fewer articles."

Online articles lead to rapid scientific consensus

Hmm - interesting - but what would be even more interesting is how online availability of scientific articles influences not science by itself but how it is applied. I would expect there much more dramatic changes.

Barter

Thinking of hosting a 'creating passionate users' 3-day workshop/retreat with a catch--the fee: help build a perimeter fence. Get fit, too!

- Kathy Sierra

Another sign of post-money economy. Physical exercise in a good company - rather an additional benefit then a cost.

There is no email overload

- there is just less and less other work to do. Machines do more and more of our work - but there is one thing that they still cannot do - it is contact with other people. Computers can check the spelling of an email, compute some coefficients from a complicated formula but still suck at understanding humans and would not read or write that email for us.

Email is our work - communication with other humans is the task that still cannot be automated. That's why I am rather sceptical about the productivity boost of "no email days" introduced in some corporations. I suspect they just don't measure the right things.

All this does not mean that we should do all this human communication work in email - only that currently this is the tool most people use. Perhaps we could do this work in a bit more efficient way if we had a more complete toolbox.

Capitalism, Communism and the mimetic theory by Rene Girard

What Rene Girard shows in his works is that rivalry between human beings and conflicts being the result of it are an inherent part of our nature, independent of any external circumstances, and cannot be eliminated. Adam Smith and other free market thinkers show that some simple rules can make this competition socially beneficial. Communism grew out of the sentiment of injustice of any competition, where there must be losers and winners, and tried to eliminate it but failed to acknowledge the true nature of that rivalry.