At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.”
In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.
Quantifying the economic impact of innovation has turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Bill Gates, astrophysicist Lowell Wood, and Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft and founder of Intellectual Ventures, talk about how innovation is overlooked in economic statistics.
••• Click through to Bill Gates conversation …
Henry Markram is attempting to reverse engineer an entire human brain, one neuron at a time.
This piece is an introduction to director Noah Hutton’s 10-year film-in-the-making that will chronicle the development of The Blue Brain Project, a landmark endeavor in modern neuroscience.
Bluebrain | Year One from Couple 3 Films on Vimeo.
My iPhone is like a magic wand. Abracadabra! …
I can contact friends, run my business, manage the school, do research, plan trips, check transportation, do banking, manage health issues, make new friends, show tutorials, conduct meetings … and more.
All this by choosing from an increasing range of new and interesting apps currently being designed and created by thousands of developers who are beavering away all around the world.
Many of these new dimension were added to my original iPhone by buying apps from the store–some for free and others for a few dollars.
For example, I recently turned my iPhone into a highly compact and portable video camera … just by buying an app for $2.50!
Talk about cvs2bvs … these apps are really amazing. And here are the facts about the apps …
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.
Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.
Dissonance normally occurs when a person perceives a logical inconsistency among his or her cognitions. This happens when one idea implies the opposite of another.
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The Funny Feeling Inside Your Head …
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously.
Wikipedia: Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state that describes the uncomfortable feeling between what one holds to be true and what one knows to be true. Cognitive dissonance theory is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.
Similar to ambivalence, the term cognitive dissonance describes conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions) that occur:
- at the same time, or
- when engaged in behaviors that conflict with one’s beliefs.
In academic literature, the term refers to attempts to reduce the discomfort of conflicting thoughts, by performing actions that are opposite to one’s beliefs.
Example:
Smokers tend to experience cognitive dissonance because it is widely accepted that cigarettes cause lung cancer, yet virtually everyone wants to live a long and healthy life. In terms of the theory, the desire to live a long life is dissonant with the activity of doing something that will most likely shorten one’s life.
The tension produced by these contradictory ideas can be reduced by quitting smoking, denying the evidence of lung cancer, or justifying one’s smoking. For example, a smoker could rationalize his or her behavior by concluding that everyone dies and so cigarettes do not actually change anything. Or a person could believe that smoking keeps one from gaining weight, which would also be unhealthy.
See also: How and Why We Lie to Ourselves: Cognitive Dissonance
NASA: The Galileo Project
The Galileo spacecraft, launched in 1989 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, studied Jupiter and its moons, finding warm ice, water and icebergs on the moon Europa before ending its mission in 2003.
Today we celebrate the birthday of of the Father of Modern Science, the brilliant 17th century mathematician, Galilei Galileo.
His story is one of the most notorious examples of persecution by The Inquisition.
Galileo had constructed his telescope to show how the earth revolved about the sun and not the sun around the earth. Since Copernicus advanced this hypothesis it had caused great controversy. Galileo now had proof.
When he demonstrated this, many highly intelligent people even refused to look through the telescope, so frightened were they of what they might see. Some people had such a strong dose of cognitive dissonance that they forced Galileo to his knees and made him withdraw his evidence and recant his discovery.
In 1633, Galileo, now 70 years old, sick and completely blind, was forced by the pope to make the arduous journey to Rome to stand trial for ‘heresy’. Urban VIII, taking time off from cannibalising the Colosseum to build his Barberini palace, accused Galileo of causing “the greatest scandal in Christendom” for contradicting the Scriptures.
Galileo thought of himself as a devoted Catholic. He argued that the bible was not a scientific text and that we should not expect its ‘scientific statements’ to be taken literally. He argued that it presents no challenge to faith that both nature and the bible are divine texts and cannot contradict one another.
On 21 June, after a long trial, he was found guilty of heresy, by the Inquisition. Not only that, he was bullied and actually forced into covering up his evidence. The pope demanded that he be tortured if he did not obey: “The said Galileo is in the judgement of the Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine which is false and contrary to the Sacred and Divine Scriptures that the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from east to west, and is not the centre of the world”.
Weary and broken, the old man knelt before the pope and made his confession: “I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilea, Florentine, aged seventy years … must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the centre of the world and immobile”.
His trial was a grave and solemn milestone in the history of the Church perhaps only surpassed, in poignancy, by the trial of Jesus before Pilate.
Galileo was a brilliant mathematician and a pioneer of science which tries not to rely on superstition. He advocated the idea that “The Book of Nature” is written in mathematical characters, a view which is enough to make him a founding father of the scientific method.
The universe which Galileo observed at the end of his telescope totally dwarfed the one that people were seeing with their ordinary vision. He tried to show that it was important to consider the value of new observable phenomena as a way of escaping from weak truths and moving to better ones.
The 17th century, superstitious, ecclesiastical, Roman inquisitors experienced such cognitive dissonance from Galileo’s discoveries that, to their enduring shame, they chose to abuse and bully an old man rather than to change their own mind.
The cognitive dissonance endured so strongly that it was only in 1993 (after a 12-year Pontifical Commission!) that, in a belated burst of Christian charity, the Vatican finally forgave Galileo for letting the sun out of the closet.
Better late than never, I suppose.
Santo Galileo?
So, today on his birthday, SOT would like to promote, seriously, the cause of the canonisation of Galileo Galilei.
If the Vatican really wanted to square the ledger with Galileo they could not only ‘forgive” him but also add him to the roster of saints.
Perhaps Santo Galileo could become the Patron Saint of Science.
The x10 ‘miracle’ of his telescope (actually x20!) and the objective cosmic revelations it gave to all mankind surely dwarfed the small subjective miracles that seem to satisfy The Vatican to qualify most contemporary candidates for canonisation.
One of the biggest challenges for American intelligence? The way the brain works.
What’s wrong with American intelligence?
That question became tragically urgent at the end of last year, with the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253, and then the deadly suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers in eastern Afghanistan.
These events put intelligence at the top of the national agenda and have been followed, predictably, by an outcry that our intelligence system needs to be overhauled.
Leaders and critics, from the president on down, are calling for a host of solutions: more people on no-fly lists, tighter control of visas, more thorough airport screening, better tracking of suspects. In sum, the thinking goes, we need to gather more information, then work harder to connect the dots.