Think by Numbers
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
In response to recent allegations that Anheuser-Busch has been watering down its beer to boost profits, my lab used gas chromatography with flame ion detection to determine if this was indeed the case. Our analyses suggest with greater than 99% certainty that Budweiser is, and shall remain, the king of beers. Beer lovers around the world can […]
http://youtu.be/XXm2yaoWyN8 On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, “the adversary’s closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said. He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat. “In fact, it could be said it’s a matter of life and death,” he said. Rumsfeld promised change […]
A multitude of constantly updated world statistics that puts the current state of human existence—on this lonely blue orb—in tidy perspective!
The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential was the result of an ambitious effort to collect and present information on the problems with which humanity perceives itself to be confronted. It aims to clarify the challenges such problems represent to concepts, values and development strategies. The Encyclopedia encourages the discovery of a new conceptual dynamic for […]
From algosphere.org: ALGONOMY : A FRAMEWORK FOR DEALING WITH SUFFERING All major spheres of human activity deal in one way or another with suffering: politics, religion, healthcare, social affairs, economics, law, art, literature, philosophy, ethics, the news media, environmental studies, education, science, history, war, crime, work, sport, interpersonal relationships, personal life, etc. Suffering is implicated in […]
Calculate the utilitarian ethical value of an action with the Felicific Calculus, developed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
One of the most cost effective solutions that will be evaluated by the Crowdsourcing Utopia system is David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative. ability to control the motivational and reward systems in the brain. The Hedonistic Imperative outlines how genetic engineering and nanotechnology will abolish suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is hugely ambitious but […]
Here are some problems that Sebastian Nickel brought up with regard to using collective intelligence for decision making: A QUICK INTRO TO RATIONAL IGNORANCE AND RATIONAL IRRATIONALITY 1. This stuff pertains to public choice theory, which is defined by Wikipedia as: ” the use of modern economic tools to study problems that traditionally are in […]
The Wisdom of Crowds is about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton‘s surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the […]