Posted 29 May 2012 / 0
NPR Planet Money “Who Decides Whether This 26-Year-Old Woman Gets A Lung Transplant?” Although this feature does make some interesting observations about the economic dilemmas associated with donated organ assignment, it misses the bigger picture: if everyone elected to donate their organs upon death, increased supply would diminish a lot of the dilemma.
A Minor Post, Altruism, Radio & Podcasts, Social Norms
Posted 21 May 2012 / 0
Marketplace “High-frequency trading: Bad for markets… and the soul?“
A Minor Post, Economic sustainability, Economics, Parasitism, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 19 May 2012 / 0
Marketplace Sustainability “Radiated tuna splashes up in California“
A Minor Post, Community Ecology, Pollution, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 09 May 2012 / 0
The Brian Lehrer Show “Inequality and Stability” As I have suggested in previous posts, debt has the potential to destabilize societies.
A Minor Post, Ethics, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, System Stability, System Stability
Posted 03 May 2012 / 5
This morning, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition featured a segment entitled “Put Away The Bell Curve: Most Of Us Aren’t ‘Average’“. I am generally vigilant about stories which make broad claims about human traits and their genetic and environmental underpinnings, and this particular segment triggered my alarms to scream. Analyzing a new study on “academics writing papers, Read More
Adaptation, Genetics, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 05 Feb 2012 / 0
On the Media “Life in Facebookistan” I am fascinated by the idea that we all belong to many overlapping social groups, and I wonder how these groups might be subject to multilevel selection. “Facebookistan” is an interesting conceptualization of a large international group: Facebook users. With characteristic incisive questioning, On The Media suggests that this might Read More
A Minor Post, Multilevel Selection, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts
Posted 07 Jan 2012 / 0
Contrails captured by NASA scientist Louis Ngyyen Global carbon emissions continue to increase, threatening future generations with catastrophic climate change. And while most of the world agrees that something needs to be done to curb our carbon emissions, several decades of international talks have provided little progress at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Most famously, the Read More
Altruism, Articles, Climate Change, Cooperation, Economics, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Pollution, Public Policy, Punishment, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainability, Web
Posted 15 Sep 2011 / 2
For those who don’t know Sam Harris, he is a rather famous critic of theism who often invokes science and broad rationalism in his arguments for the abandonment of organized religion. Along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins he is sometimes known as one of the “four horsemen of the neo-atheiest movement” (Wilson Read More
Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection, Philosophy, Radio & Podcasts, Religion, Talks & Seminars, Web
Posted 03 Aug 2011 / 0
I just checked out a lecture given by Martin Nowak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was recently posted on the MIT videos site. The video was recently posted on the MIT site, but it is not entirely clear when it actually happened. I suspect it is the same lecture listed here. Nowak recently Read More
Altruism, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Kin Selection, Mathematics, Multilevel Selection, Psychological Adaptation, Radio & Podcasts, Reciprocity, Talks & Seminars, Web
Posted 11 Jul 2011 / 0
If you read my blog regularly you know that issue of how genes and environment interact to produce traits is a topic near and dear to my heart. Generally the media misrepresent this subject as “nature versus nurture”, and even many scientists fail to properly explain modern scientific understanding in this area. When I learned Read More
Development, Epigenetics, Gene by Environment Interactions, Genetics, Radio & Podcasts
