Saturday, June 28, 2008

Hive Mind

This article brings to light some interesting research. Basically, when you ask two people to guess about something, the average of their two guesses is closest to accurate. When you ask a group of people, the accuracy increases.

And that sort of phenomenon could be expected. However, the strange thing is that when someone guesses *twice* - differently than their first, the average is also closer. At a second guess period of about three weeks, the average of the two guesses was about 16% more accurate. Not as accurate as a group, but more accurate than an individual.

I found strange a question they asked;
But that this happens at all raises questions about “individuality” within an individual. If guesses can shift almost at random, where are they coming from?


I don't know if it really raises questions about individuality. Certainly it seems like random, by my guess is that it might have something to do more with survival of the population. If a group of people (population of species) are able to correctly determine X, and correct decisions about whether something is dangerous or harmless tend to promote the survival of the species... those individuals who tend to guess too extreme will be removed from the population, and their genetics and learned behavior both will be removed.

*shrugs* but that's just my theory.

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Friday, June 27, 2008

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Now there's a car! That caddy is about a mile long, at least 20 people could fit in th trunk alone!

Hive Mind

*edit* - Evidently this was just chillin' as a draft for a while, and I double posted. Whoops!



This article brings to light some interesting research. Basically, when you ask two people to guess about something, the average of their two guesses is closest to accurate. When you ask a group of people, the accuracy increases.

And that sort of phenomenon could be expected. However, the strange thing is that when someone guesses *twice* - differently than their first, the average is also closer. At a second guess period of about three weeks, the average of the two guesses was about 16% more accurate. Not as accurate as a group, but more accurate than an individual.

I found strange a question they asked;
But that this happens at all raises questions about “individuality” within an individual. If guesses can shift almost at random, where are they coming from?


I don't know if it really raises questions about individuality. Certainly it seems like random, but my guess is that it might have something to do with the fact that we're constantly in a state of change. If changing removed our individuality, then we would /never/ be an individual.

For instance, consider the young child. Their personality is vastly different from a geriatric, and that personality is quite different from the teenager, who is different from the middle-ager. My theory is that everyone has a "core" personality, which is then affected by all input from the time of birth. Some things may not have such a great effect as others, but doubtless it still does. The effect of rape on a child will be much more severe than the effect of going to bed without any dinner. Or even sighting a butterfly that day.

There are probably formulas that could assign values to each type of input and possibly even predict behavior (similar to criminal profiling). You would most likely not be able to incorporate ALL input (there's a phenomenal amount of data), but you could get a pretty general picture.

Barring any aberrations, of course.

Wine, Wonderful Wine...

So, there's a program called Wine (WINdows Emulator, IIRC). I'm working on getting it to work with my scriptures again, and OpenCanvas, with all the spiffin pressure sensitivity and... not inverting the Y-axis.

Currently, with oC, it goes severely wonky. It has pressure sensitivity fine, but it inverts the Y-axis of my tablet. So when I move down, it moves up. When I move left it moves left. When I move up it moves down. Needless to say, art would get a little confusing!

So I'm working on some fixes to that at the moment.

In addition, there's a seriously wonky problem in the LDS Scriptures CD-ROM, where the search function... works backwards? Basically it used to work fine. Then when you clicked in the search box it crashed. Then that was fixed, and now it does something creepy. Say you wanted to search for "israel". So in the box you type "israel". What is now in the box, however is " learsi". Spaces and backwards! Weirded out!! So that's next on the list of fix attempts. w00t.

s'all for now, enjoy your wine ^_^

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Saturday, June 21, 2008

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Oh crap! She saw me!

Friday, June 20, 2008

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8 dollars for this. It's made from plastic pipe.

Chicken In the Car...

...And the car Can't GO

Turns out that Little Rock, weeny airport that it is, is better than Chicago O'Hare. Beyond imagination. Why is that, you ask? Simple: Chicago has no free wifi, and that makes Chicago lame. Actually, any place with no free or at least "complimentary" wifi really sucks.

Visiting a friend who doesn't offer his wifi? Sucks.

Going to a restaurant that requires a purchase for wifi? Doesn't suck.

Going to an airport, when you've paid $400 for a ticket, and not getting free wifi? That's just lame.

Anyhow, so I'm sitting here in Chicago O'Hare, with no internet access because it's not worth $7/hour for wifi. Well, it's more like $42, now, because I'll probably finish up at 9, and it's almost 8:40 AM.

Blarg, and I really feel like a poo. So I might finish up before then.

You know... conspiracy theories sure are fun.

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Monday, June 16, 2008

Level +1!

So... I have reached a new high in geekiness. I'm posting this blog from the bathroom. More specifically, perched atop the toilet.

In truth, it's partly because I believe in keeping my word, an in part because my body believes I'm crazy... or something.

I told my girlfriend that I would be online. That's great and all, except for one thing... my body told me I needed to poop. Badly.

So here I sit/broken hearted...

Oh wait, wrong rhyme ;)

But I do sit here, waiting for her to get online.

Poop.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Savings and Loan

So... The best place for me to save money is in my wallet. On a card or in an account, I will probably spend it. I just looked in my wallet, thinking I had about $40 in there... nope, try closer to $100. Oops.

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Monday, June 09, 2008

Food for thought

Bonefish, a delicious, pretentious restaurant. $11 for two crab cakes about 1/2 cup each. My diablo fet

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Tuesday, June 03, 2008

This that and the other...

So... right now I think I'm bored out of my skull. I'm tired, and there's no one to talk to and nothing really to do. At least in 3 hours I get to go home and read or something. I suppose I'll probably draw some or something...

I suppose I can tell you how awesome last weekend was, because my geekheart came on a surprise visit! Friday afternoon I'm just sitting there, minding my own business, learning about the structure of man, and how to draw it, when I look up and there my mom has one of our geeklings in her arms, and my geekheart walks through the door.

I sat there like a deer caught in the headlights. My brain disengaged and I sat there for a moment with a bit of "Durrrrrrrrrr?" going through my head. And then I woke up and gave them all a great big hug.

We pretty much had a blast, except for the whole leaving part. That always sucks :(

But other than ending, it was a great weekend!

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