Poser geeks love to say, whenever something has to do with the probability of something happening, that it’s “Bayesian”. They know Bayes’ Theorem has something to do with probability, so they bust it out at every opportunity in an attempt to score points with the Geekorati. It’s sad, really.

I first came to know of the concept through email (Spammassassin, specifically), and now I’m interacting with it again due to my buddy Alex Hutton and the FAIR Risk Assessment system. Anyway, here’s what Bayes’ Theorem looks like when applied to email (from Wikipedia):.

Bayes’ theorem, in the context of spam, says that the probability that an email is spam, given that it has certain words in it, is equal to the probability of finding those certain words in spam email, times the probability that any email is spam, divided by the probability of finding those words in any email:

That’s an email version of this:

Very cool stuff. Here’s the main article on Wikipedia.

Links

[ Bayes Theorem | wikipedia.org ]

This is a white blood cell chasing bacteria.

Another excellent bit from Overcoming Bias:

Of course this plays right into the creationist claim that Intelligent Design isn’t getting a fair shake from science - that science has prejudged the issue in favor of atheism, regardless of the evidence. If science excluded Intelligent Design a priori, this would be a justified complaint!

But let’s back up a moment. The one comes to you and says: “Intelligent Design is excluded from being science a priori, because it is ’supernatural’, and science only deals in ‘natural’ explanations.”

What exactly do they mean, “supernatural”? Is any explanation invented by someone with the last name “Cohen” a supernatural one? If we’re going to summarily kick a set of hypotheses out of science, what is it that we’re supposed to exclude?

By far the best definition I’ve ever heard of the supernatural is Richard Carrier’s: A “supernatural” explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities.

This is the difference, for example, between saying that water rolls downhill because it wants to be lower, and setting forth differential equations that claim to describe only motions, not desires. It’s the difference between saying that a tree puts forth leaves because of a tree spirit, versus examining plant biochemistry.

Roughly 20 people have emailed me about this TED video. I actually blogged about this research around six months ago when the study first came out, but the stuff available then in no way compares to a TED presentation.

Really interesting stuff.

Scientists are now isolating precisely where memories are located within the brain, and they can see them being accessed before the human knows they are. Cool stuff. Scary stuff.

The most telling quote:

Ultimately, it was possible for the researchers to know which clip a patient was recalling before the patient announced it.

Science-fiction.

Links

[ Memory Isolation | sciencedaily.com ]

I haven’t seen this video yet, but I’m curious as to who created these structures? Ancient Japanese? Chinese?

All that, and he’s using a MacBook Pro. Of course, I think anyone attempting to use a PC at TED would probably be taken out by a hippie sniper on the conference payroll.

A new study has found that violent behavior is correlated to the presence of three genes. Here’s a basic overview by CNN’s Dr. Gupta. If anyone has a link to the study, please share.

This is going to present a whole new set of questions. Do certain groups have these genes more than others? Gender? Race?

I expect this research to get very interesting, very quickly.

Links

[ New Study Finds Link Between Violent Behavior and Genetics | cnn.com ]

The Baader-Meinhof pheonomenon is kind of like Deja Vu in the sense that it’s something weird that many people have unexpectedly and can’t readily explain.

From the Damn Interesting Article:

Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.

I would simplify the explanation to the following: the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon takes place when something that actually pops up around you fairly often, but which you ignore, is brought to your attention.

At that point you actually notice it happening because it has a signature in your brain due to recent exposure and/or interaction. So it’s not that it necessarily starts happening more (although that could be the case if it’s a meme that’s propagating), but more likely just a sensitivity increase in the perceiver of the stimulus.

Another good example of this is learning about a particular vehicle on a car lot and then noticing a million of them around town. Although, that could admittedly be caused by the meme phenomenon as well.

Links

[ Memes | wikipedia.org ]