Bill's Notebook

Great article explaining why our risk perceptions sometimes follows game theory and why it differs from rational calculations.  By studying sports like tennis, baseball, and football, the research found that players are likely to switch strategies after the previous strategy failed.  For example, according to statistical analysis football coaches should call more passing plays than they actually do.  An explanation for this is that there is more perceived uncertainty with a ball “in the air” even though the evidence demonstrates that rushing is actually more risky.

How this relates to government is that many policies that attempt to handle risk events are highly influenced by the perceived emotional reactions of the public and the employees who have to implement the policies.  Think about how emotions have greatly affected the health care debate with the angry town hall meetings and the specter of “death panels.”

When I watch the GOP’s use of junk science such as the recent attempt to demonstrate that the snowstorm in DC disproves global warming, my belief that the GOP’s first action after the 1994 Congressional victories in killing the Office of Technology Assessment was to insure that the rest of their agenda would have more success in passing.  It is well-documented that much of the GOP’s agenda rests upon the significant number of voters who are scientifically-illiterate.

Watching the video tutorial about Google Buzz and its features I think that Google has quietly conceded that Google Wave wasn’t as revolutionary as they had hoped.  Notice how Google Buzz is essentially Google Wave with GMail as the platform.

UPDATE – O’Reilly Radar has also noticed the similarity between Google Wave and Google Buzz.

Charles Leadbeater (titles himself a leading innovation and creativity thinker) writes a provocative essay on five potential problems with the move toward cloud computing:

1)  Homogeneity stemming from established companies like Google and Apple.

2)  Corporate Control.

3)  Prevention of cloud formation by strict copyright controls.

4)  Government control of the cloud.

5)  The Digital Divide.

These are potentially serious issues that do warrant further exploration.  The Internet is famous for routing around controls but can it survive in a cloud environment?

A month ago I posted a link to the essay on how unstructured movements quickly become more tyrannical than the organizations they are protesting.  This might be well worth remembering as one reads this rather interesting essay that proclaims the Tea Party Movement the first open-source political movement.  I dispute the foundational belief that the Tea Party is leaderless as it has been well-documented that a large part of the movement is bankrolled by conservative advocacy groups.

Let’s go with the premise that this is an open source movement.  Open source may work well for software projects where there is a clear goal and the benefits are fully realized.  That doesn’t translate into politics as it may take time and compromise to realize some benefits.  Anger may be good for short bursts of activity but what is the focus of the Tea Party movement?  What will sustain the movement after the anger fades?

If we continue the open source analogy, the ultimate fate of the Tea Party movement could be that it will be abandoned in favor of the newer open source political movement.  Or the Tea Party movement could have some success that will attract political professionals who will come in with their high-paid advice to make the movement even more successful by offering a premium version of the movement (while keeping a free but functionally-limited version).

Casting this in neuroscientific terms:  movements based on the amygdala may start faster and build faster but they don’t have the staying power of a movement built on the prefrontal cortex.

Great op-ed from James Cameron that argues for the new vision for NASA.  Turning NASA into a form of DARPA may be the best way to spur America’s lead in space technology.  Look at how technology grew under DARPA’s direction – The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs.

Added some Berkshire Hathaway stock to my Sharebuilder account as the stock split now allows me to finally afford a few shares.  I’ve always admired Warren Buffet and his management/analysis skills.  And he is the cornerstone of my favorite piece of advice about advice.

When receiving advice (unsolicited or solicited), always consider two things.  First, does the person actually follow their own advice?  Second, how well did they do following their advice?  Given the choice between receiving advice from your average stockbroker or from Warren Buffet, who would you listen to?

Seems simplistic and rather obvious but I have been amazed at the number of people who turn down Warren Buffet when they don’t like the advice.  They would rather look for feel-good advice then the simple and effective advice such as eating healthy and exercising more.

But it’s this quest for the overnight, silver bullet piece of advice that drives much of the advice industry.

Yesterday, I wrote about NASA’s new budget and how this new direction has the potential to greatly revitalize the US economy.  A fascinating project that has major potential for IT is NASA’s cloud computing platform – Nebula.  In this video, NASA’s CIO describes Nebula.

Talk to anyone who knows me and they will tell you I am a fanatical space exploration advocate.  One of my earliest memories was watching an Apollo mission and, at one time, I could list every space mission by both the US and USSR.  So, when a friend emailed me about the “sad news” of President Obama’s NASA budget, I surprised him with my enthusiasm for this great decision.

After Apollo, NASA lost its way.  By this time, humans should have been on Mars several times and there should be a thriving lunar colony.  Heavy manufacturing should be in orbiting factories and we should be receiving our power from large solar arrays beaming power back to Earth.  What we ended up with was a Space Shuttle program that essentially limited us to low Earth orbit (LEO) and the money pit called the International Space Station.  The last “Grand Vision” is essentially a repeat of the Apollo program down to the same spacecraft designs.

By canceling the Constellation and Ares programs that were way behind schedule and had massive cost overruns, NASA was freed of the old-style model of procuring hardware and more importantly, providing launches to LEO.  Reaching LEO is a proven technology and it is time to turn this part over to the commercial sector so that it can be done more effectively and efficiently.  NASA has opened up the opportunities for building a private space sector and this will be the start of an economic boon that could eclipse even the impact of the Internet.

NASA will now be free to focus back on exploration.  The new budget is bigger than past NASA budgets and focuses on continuing the unmanned missions that have been amazing successes in the last forty years.  And the new budget contains projects that will build the infrastructure for manned exploration in the future (orbital fuel depots, automated docking systems, closed-cycle life support systems, etc.).

It is also encouraging to see that the future of space exploration is spreading beyond one government agency.  For example, an open-source approach to building a lunar base.  Spreading the dream around will help to make it more real.

I chose the Nook over the Kindle.  And I am finding the Barnes and Noble prices competitive with Amazon.  Plus, when I buy an ebook from B&N, I actually can keep the ebook.  I’ve been an Amazon customer since 1997 but I have had enough of their censorious behaviors.