Bayesian inference

Modern approaches to making decisions about concepts, models and parameters based on partial information require that you make the underlying assumptions explicit. This is key, for example, to understanding where the ideal gas law, equipartition, and mass-action work well, and to figuring out what to do when they don't.

It might help folks put political broadcast and pedagogical strategies to better use as well.  What kind of entries would you put into a table which outlines important assumptions that folks make everyday, as well as where those assumptions do and don't apply?

A sample table of this sort follows, to perhaps inspire your ideas:

Bayesian inference in political media

Concept	Assumption	Application Area
focus bandwidth on who's boss	leader choice solves problems	social hierarchy is a key for only select vertebrates
dollars spent is value lost	financial value is conserved	the household scale but not the national scale
treat unbelievers as inhuman	idea-pools always serve humans	may help only if unbelievers are few & can't hear
vote makes right	consensus is well-informed	only w/both incentives & time to update awareness
you're measured by your finances	all means to money are of value	this works in worlds w/o ways to prey on communities

e-culture possibilities

Authentication-accessed archival joint-editing space may allow families, schools, and cities to craft digital-space content useful for future as well as for current generations.

This is important because there is a key role (if our planet is to sustain a large sentient population) for parallel competition between individuals, between gene pools, and between idea pools.

For example, to families an archival wiki cloud-database might be a place for:

• family stories,
• genealogy information,
• recipes,
• operating protocols,
• links e.g. to other resources of interest to family members,
• and what else?

Resources (and developing business models) able over the long haul to host and manage access to such collaboration spaces may be possible to develop with existing technology (like cell phones) already available across much of the planet.

position vs frequency

I was heading west on highway 64 just past downtown St. Louis when ahead I saw a pickup truck pulling a trailer, veering a bit left then right then left as it traveled down the road. It was clear that the driver was aware of the problem, and figured that his job was to keep returning the truck to its own lane.

This logic, as simple and impeccable in intent as it was, was alas dead wrong because the driver's response-time fit beautifully with the resonant-frequency of the weave. Like someone kicking one's legs at exactly the right time to pump up the motion of a playground swing, the driver's logic loop repeatedly pumped energy into the weave, which got wilder and wilder until all of a sudden the truck and trailer spun out into a parked position across five lanes of traffic.

Likewise there's a danger when political communities run into problems whose natural response time is comparable to the election cycle.  Like the truck driver who was focused only on position on the road and oblivious to the response time of the system, the community could easily pump energy into an instability by reacting naturally from one election to the next.  

Can you think of places where this might be relevant today?

the joy of ideas

For those motivated by passion, love for ideas (3) is an important complement to love for family (2) and love for self (1).

Non-byline contributions motivated by love for elements of the idea-world could be crucial, if our large human population is to move toward sustainability on this planet.

What ways do you see for beefing up such contributions?

Passion aside, others for good reason might struggle to do only things that bring in reward on a linear (e.g. economic) scale. They may have little or no time for non-byline contribution.

For these folks, how might such value-scales also serve to catalyze (i.e. to help encourage with only loan rather than expenditure of resources) time spent on:  (1a) fitness, (1b) friends, (2a) family, (2b) home/work community, (3a) culture and (3b) profession?

layer multiplicity

Niche-network layer multiplicity analysis sets up a unified context:

• for recognizing the parallel importance of culture, family, & health,
• for defining (i) poverty without reference to dollars, & (ii) community health across species, 
• for respecting the contribution to earth's complexity of every individual, microbe, & raindrop on the planet.

Of course, much work (across disciplines and perspectives) remains to be done in putting it to use effectively.

self-concept layering

What social systems recognize the need for us to separately buffer our own idea-pool & gene-pool, as well as our organism, self-concepts?

Put another way, in what settings (delicate though they may be) is it NOT better to assume that everyone will be looking out for their own individual self-interest first?