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Field Notes

By Paul Kedrosky · Sunday, March 6, 2011 ·

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White House considers tapping oil reserves (Reuters)
Twitter share auction suggests doubling in three months to $7.7 billion valuation (Reuters)
What Census 2010 Is Telling us About Census 2020 (AdAge)
China opening roughly two new movie theaters a day (LAT)
The Geography of Fear (NBER)
Super-Angels Steal A March On VC (II)
Pareidolia (Source)
Mapping the U.S.'s wellbeing (NYT)
The science behind traffic jams (Autoblog)
Copper theft causes havoc on Santa Rosa CA train crossing (Source)
When income grows, who gains? A visualization (SWA)

Scaling of Prosocial Behaviors in Cities

By Paul Kedrosky · Saturday, March 5, 2011 ·

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Interesting work from my friend Sam Arbesman:

Scaling of prosocial behavior in cities

Samuel Arbesman, a, and Nicholas A. Christakisa

Abstract

Previous research has examined how various behaviors scale in cities in relation to their population size. Behavior related to innovation and productivity has been found to increase per capita as the size of the city increases, a phenomenon known as superlinear scaling. Criminal behavior has also been found to scale superlinearly. Here we examine a variety of prosocial behaviors (e.g., voting and organ donation), which also would be presumed to be categorized into a single class of scaling with population. We find that, unlike productivity and innovation, prosocial behaviors do not scale in a unified manner. We argue how this might be due to the nature of interactions that are distinct for different prosocial behaviors.

PZ Myers on David Brooks

By Paul Kedrosky · Saturday, March 5, 2011 ·

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The talk I liked least at this year's TED conference was that of David Brooks, a talented writer whose one-note values-obsessed NY Times columns are consistently passed around for their ... values-obsessedness. Biologist PZ Myers takes on Brooks recent book of neuroscience popularizing in a review. At TED I characterized Brooks' content-free neuroscience diddling as Jonah Lehrer on his worst day ever, but PZ really lays it (and Brooks) out.

An excerpt:

Harold and Erica, for instance, begin to fall in love. In the fictional episode of the book, this is represented by a moment of flat affect, when they are working out on their bicycles and take a moment of rest at the top of a hill to hold hands. That's "lovely," Harold thinks. Then, a few pages later, we get the technical explanation of what's going on: Harold's ventral tegmentum and caudate nucleus are releasing dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine!

Woo, as Homer Simpson would say, hoo. Harold's brain must be having a wild time.

That's it. Brooks drops the technical names of two brain regions and a couple of neurotransmitters, briefly mentions their association with learning and reward centers, and we hear nothing more about them for the rest of the book, and nothing in his abbreviated description helps us understand how or why or what. A proximate mechanical explanation is no explanation at all, especially if given to an audience that most likely has little awareness of what a brain nucleus represents, or what these chemicals do. They are polysyllabic magical incantations that allow shallow people to pretend to have knowledge.

Field Notes: Skiing, Complexity, Civilization, Cities, VCs, Coins, etc.

By Paul Kedrosky · Saturday, March 5, 2011 ·

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Book reviews: Civilization: The West and the rest (Source)
Consumer response to gas price changes: Inelasticity rules (Source)
TARP beneficiaries and their lending patterns during the financial crisis (Source)
Energy, complexity, and sustainability: A historical perspective (Source)
Non-uniform scaling of prosocial behavior in cities (Source)
Ski Mountaineering Competition: Fit for It? (Source)
"VC's with entrepreneurial backgrounds are just better, period". True or false ? (Source)
Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Save U.S. $5b (Source)

Head of Al Jazeera Speaks at TED