The science of personal survival
There are various competing strategies how to achieve meaningful life extension or rejuvenation, including , but not limited to, genetic manipulation, periodical elimination of damage, caloric restriction, molecular nanotechnology and mind uploading. A useful review of these strategies has been published in the book The Scientific Conquest of Death: Essays on Infinite Lifespans (2004) by [...]
Second anniversary of Depressed Metabolism
Today is the second anniversary of Depressed Metabolism. As of writing, this website has close to 200 feed subscribers. On an average day the website has 150 unique visitors, which is an encouraging increase in traffic since our last update. This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that new blog entries with [...]
Five important books on empiricist philosophy
Most contemporary philosophers and social scientists have little interest and understanding of logic or the physical sciences and therefore have little to offer to those who want to understand the philosophical aspects of knowledge. The following five books have been written by thinkers who have a great respect for science and the importance of empirical [...]
A positive-sum game against nature
Whenever there is a major economic event (a rapid decline of stock prices, a spike in the price of oil, high unemployment, etc.) the media can be counted on to feature a person who was predicting these events all along. This should not be surprising because there are so many professional economists and commentators who [...]
Avoiding Karl Popper
The philosopher Karl Popper has published on a wide variety of subjects but his most lasting contribution is his answer to the problem of induction by drawing attention to the asymmetry between verification and falsification. A theory can never be proven, but it can be falsified. Popper’s falsification criterion can also be used to distinguish [...]
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the fourth quadrant
Edge published a new essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the ‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable’, called The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics:
If small probability events carry large impacts, and (at the same time) these small [...]
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Ben Bernanke
An interesting article on Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Sunday Times:
Last May, Taleb published The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. It said, among many other things, that most economists, and almost all bankers, are subhuman and very, very dangerous. They live in a fantasy world in which the future can be controlled [...]