Results for “Watson”
84 found

Paths out of The Great Stagnation

Thankfully, Thingiverse user Tom Lombardi invented a solution for this age old problem. Enter the Lucky Charms Sifter.

According to Lombardi, the humble-looking 3D printed cup removes over 90 percent of all the cereal, leaving only the marshmallowy goodness. All the user has to do is pour Lucky Charms into the cup and give it a good shake. The precision-printed holes are just large enough for the whole-grain hamster food to fall through, while still retaining the slightly larger marshmallows.

Here is more, hat tip goes to ModeledBehavior.  And via Rob Nelson, here is 3-D printing for pet hermit crab shells.

That all said, 3-D printing is unlikely to end up being a transformative technology; transportation costs for what it can produce are already fairly low.  The printers may in some longer run be cheaper than UPS, truck, and commercial rail, but that’s a moderate savings only, albeit a nice one.

The most likely paths out of TGS — by far — are artificial intelligence and natural gas supply (with some chance of E-Cat).  Smart machines will be most successful in their least romantic, furthest from hard AI, most mundane forms, starting with Siri and Watson.  Natural gas and other energy source developments will likely make North America the cheap energy power for much of the next fifty years; this may improve the quality of our foreign policy as a collateral benefit.

Singularity Summit

I will be speaking at the NYC Singularity Summit, Oct.15-16., and also debating TGS with Michael Vassar.  Other speakers include Ken Jennings on Watson (his new book on maps is suitably intense), Ray Kurzweil, Peter Thiel (his not on-line and excellent National Review cover story is the best introduction to his seminal views on stagnation, also note the Allison Schraeger piece, on financial innovation, in the same issue), and Sonia Arrison (I like her new book too, on aging).

Full information is here, including registration.  The code MARGINAL2011 will get you $100 off.

My favorite things South Carolina

This is a week belated but now I am in New York so here goes:

1. Music: James Brown was born in the state; my favorite James Brown song is Bewildered.  Reverend Gary Davis is associated with North Carolina but he too was born in the state; try Sally Where’d You Get Your Liquor From?  My favorite Dizzy Gillespie album is Dizzy’s Big 4.

2. Comedian: I’ve enjoyed a few clips of Stephen Colbert, though I do not pretend to have a good sense of his average quality.

3. Artist: Jasper Johns, though Georgia claims him too.

4. Political theorist: John Calhoun was brilliant, despite his repugnance on a number of obvious dimensions.

5. Federal Reserve chairman: Guess.

I can’t say I like Robert Jordan or Andrew Jackson or John Watson or John Edwards or Jesse Jackson.  My father loved Barton MacLane but he never much registered with me.

This list is so thin I must be failing and forgetting people.  I feel that many movies have been set in Charleston, or other parts of the state, but I can’t think of one of them, much less a good one.  Nonetheless the peaks on the above list are high.

What I learn from chess and computers

I take these points to be a jumping off place for thinking about computers and future economic growth, and wages, more generally.  The AI revolution basically came first to chess!  Of course chess is sustained by a mix of donations, corporate and political sponsorship, wage labor (e.g., lessons), and volunteer labor, so it is hardly a metaphor for the economy as a whole; still we can see how computer labor and human labor might fit together:

1. Databases equalize preparation opportunities for the top players.  Those who rise to the very top have very strong creative skills.  In relative terms, being a chess “grind” is worth less than in times past.

2. If the computer is set at 2200 strength, “me plus the computer” (I override it every now and then) almost always beats “the computer alone.”  Often we beat “the computer alone” very badly.  If the computer is set at full strength, my counsel is worth much less, although it is not valueless.

3. With a computer set at full strength, the useful “team” requires a much stronger human team member than I.  The required education level — for the team’s “wage premium” — is ratcheted up.

4. Chess is an area where educational reform has been extremely rapid and extremely successful.  Chess education today revolves around learning how to learn from the computer, and this change has come within the last ten to fifteen years.  No intermediaries were able to prevent it or slow it down.  Humans now teach themselves how to team with computers, and the leading human players have to be very good at this.  The computers which most successfully team with humans are those which replicate most rapidly.

5. There are many more chess prodigies than ever before, and they mature at a more rapid pace.

6. We used to think that computers would play chess like we did, only “without the mistakes.”  We now know that playing without the mistakes involves a very different style from what we had imagined.  A lot of human positional intuitions are garbage, and the computer can make sense out of ugly-looking moves.  A lot of the human progress since then has involved unlearning previous positional rules and realizing how contingent they are.  Younger players, who grew up playing chess with computers, are especially good at this.  For older players, it is a good way to learn how unreliable your intuitions can be.

7. Highly exact and concrete analysis, and calculation of variations, is now the centerpiece of grandmaster chess at top levels.  We have learned how to become more like the computers.  The computers have taught us well.

8. Chess-playing computers still are not meta-rational.  They do not understand what they do not understand very well, for instance blocked positions and long sequences of repetition.  That is one reason why human-computer teams are so important and so productive.

Here is Kasparov on Watson.  Here is Kasparov on AI and chess.  Here is a good treatment of human-computer teams.

The culture that was Washington, D.C.

D.C. Council member and former mayor Marion Barry has racked up so many parking tickets that his car has been booted.

TBD.com reports that a boot was placed on Barry's Jaguar while it was parked on the street outside his Southeast Washington home.

Records show that Barry has nine unpaid parking tickets, with cumulative fines of $705.

The story is here, but note that Washington is a much-improved city these days.  We now have a Congressman who can beat Watson at Jeopardy!

Who will still be famous in 10,000 years?

Sam Hammond, a loyal MR reader, asks me:

Who do you think will still be famous in 10,000 years? People from history or now. Shakespeare? Socrates? Hawking? 

This requires a theory of 10,000 years from now, but let's say we're a lot richer, not computer uploads (if so, I know the answer to the question), and not in a collapsed dystopia.  We still look like human beings and inhabit physical space.  If you wish, postulate that not all of those 10,000 years involved strongly positive economic growth.

In that case, I'll go with the major religious leaders (Jesus, Buddha, etc.), Einstein, Turing, Watson and Crick, Hitler, the major classical music composers, Adam Smith, and Neil Armstrong.  (Addendum: Oops!  I forgot Darwin and Euclid.)

My thinking is this.  The major religions last for a long time and leave a real mark on history.  Path-dependence is critical in that area. 

Otherwise, an individual, to stay famous, will have to securely symbolize an entire area, and an area "with legs" at that.  The theory of relativity still will be true and it may well become more important.  The computer and DNA will not be irrelevant.  Hitler will remain a stand-in symbol for pure evil; if he is topped we may not have a future at all.  Beethoven and Mozart still will be splendid, but Shakespeare and other wordsmiths will require translation and thus will fade somewhat.  The propensity to truck and barter will remain and Smith will keep his role as the symbol of economics.  Keynesian economics may someday be less true, as superior biofeedback, combined with markets in self-improvement, ushers in an era of flexible wages, while market-based expected nominal gdp targeting prevents a downward deflationary spiral.

The fame of those individuals will not perish, in part, because the more distant future will produce fewer lasting mega-famous people.  Achievement will be more decentralized and more connected to teams.  The dominance of Edison and Tesla, in their breakthroughs, will not be repeated.  There won't be a mega-Einstein eighty years from now, to make everyone forget the current Einstein, even if (especially if) science goes very well.

Books of the year, 2010

Here is a meta-list of "best books of the year" lists; the selections I looked at did not thrill me, so here's my own list, in no particular order.  First tier:

Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography, by John A. Hall.

Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

Charles Emmerson, The Future History of the Arctic.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCulloch.

David Grossman, To the End of the Land.

State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974, by Dominic Sandbrook.

The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, edited by Patrick Crotty.

Winston's War: Churchill 1940-1945, by Max Hastings.

Kai Bird, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978.

Peter Hessler, Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.

Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850.

As toss-ins, from the second tier, there are Understanding the Book of Mormon, Philippson's Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life, The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, Peter Watson's The German Genius, Mark Schatzger's Steak, Lydia Davis's Madame Bovary translation, Vietnam: Rising Dragon, Daniel Okrent's Last Call, Gary Gorton's The Panic of 2007, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, W. John Kress, The Weeping Goldsmith: Discoveries in the Land of Myanmar, a few more good books here, and last but not least Cowen and Tabarrok Modern Principles

Brought to you by The Age of the Infovore.

What I’ve been reading

1. Hitch-22: A Memoir, by Christopher Hitchens.  I delayed reviewing this book, because I found it hard to write about someone who was just diagnosed with esopheagal cancer.  I can say this: a) I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, b) it embodies and channels a way of living, thinking (and drinking), and writing which I totally reject, and c) that is why I liked it.  It's a kind of "bulletproof" book; the more you find in it to reject, the more interesting it becomes.

2. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, by Christopher Clark.  I don't love this period, but I found this to be one of the better history books I've read, ever.  Compelling, informative, and readable on every page.

3. The Squam Lake Report: Fixing the Financial System, by Ken French, Martin Baily, John Campbell, John Cochrane, Doug Diamond, Darrell Duffie, Anil Kashyap, Frederic Mishkin, Raghu Rajan, David Scharfstein, Robert Shiller, Hyun Song Shin, Matthew Slaughter, Jeremy Stein, and Rene Stulz, and maybe some others too by the way I left out the middle initials.  The recommendations and analysis of this book are perfectly reasonable, but it's an object lesson in the diminishing returns to simply stacking intelligence.  Interfluidity, working on his own, could have written something more analytic and more insightful in six months' time.

4. The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century, by Peter Watson.  This book covers too many topics, should have stopped at the Nazi period, and doesn't make every figure in this broad survey spring to life.  Still, I devoured and enjoyed every page.  It passes a key test: does it make me want to run to the library and grab a whole bunch of other books?  Recommended.

5. Gypsy Jazz: In Search of Django Reinhardt and the Soul of Gypsy Swing, by Michael Dregni.  This perfectly titled book delivers in each of its stated areas and brings its subjects to life, while setting Reinhardt in the proper broader context.

I am still reading the new David Grossman book, about ten pages a day.

My favorite guitarists

"Ar" wants to know who they are.  When I was young I studied guitar for seven years (multiple styles), so it's an area I've long had an interest in.  I was never very good but I learned a lot about it.  Here goes:

Classical: Segovia, Eduardo Fernandez.  I enjoy the transcriptions of Yamashita and Larry Coryell's covers of Stravinsky, though he isn't usually considered a classical guitarist.

Jazz: Django Reinhardt, Joe Pass's Virtuoso album, Wes Montgomery live (no strings), and George van Eps.  Charlie Christian deserves a mention.  Today, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and the guy who plays for Trio Saudade.  There are plenty of others, including Jim Hall and John McLaughlin.

John Fahey-Leo Kottke: They deserve their own category and indeed they dominate it.  For Kottke try 6 and 12-String Guitar Music, and then his 1981 Guitar Music.  For Fahey try the 1959-1977 Greatest Hits collection.  This is some of my favorite music.

Electric blues: Muddy Waters, Robert Cray (live), Johnny Winter (live only).  Amadou of Amadou and Miriam.  The player from Orchestra Baobab.  Does Lonnie Mack count here?

Acoustic blues: Reverand Gary Davis, Son House and many others.  Jorma Kaukonen also.  Bob Dylan is much underrated in this area.  Can Richard Thompson go here?  d'Gary, from Madagascar, is one of the greatest and most original guitarists that few people have heard of.  Bola Sete too, from Brazil.

Bluegrass: Clarence White and also Doc Watson.

Rock: Jimmy Page, Brian May, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, of course Jimi Hendrix as #1.  van Halen and his ilk never much impressed me.

Les Paul deserves mention but he straddles a few of these categories, as does Chet Atkins.  Hawaiian guitar deserves its own post.  Dick Dale.  The Carnatic slide guitar players, including Bhattacharya.  Roger McGuinn.  The Zairean tradition, including Franco.  Neil Young has his moments, as does Thurston Moore.

Eric Clapton was impressive for a while but overall I wish to be contrarian and leave him off.  Who am I forgetting?  Duane Allman?

In general guitar is an instrument which works relatively well on YouTube.  Most of the names above can be found there.