Friday, April 23, 2010
Unemployment Compensation-Creating Entrepreneurial Incentives
I've been told that persons receiving unemployment compensation from the government must declare any income earned while receiving those benefits and that income will be 100% offset by a decrease in the benefit paid the unemployed person. This creates a disincentive to do anything other than seek long term employment where the compensation exceeds the benefit. Perhaps this is the best case but I also think it is worth investigating the cost and impact of decreasing or eliminating this offset so that income earned through self-employment would be income kept I think this could encourage many to consider entrepreneurial activities that may lead to improved communities and even more employment. What do you think? There is certainly reason to consider unintended consequences.
Nuclear Proliferation: Is the Church the only hope?
i wonder if nuclear proliferation can be stopped and if not...what are the consequences when authoritarian regimes possess these weapons. Are we inevitably left to rely on the rational thinking and good intentions of dictators? Is it too late to devote WWII level national energy towards global development and democracy?
This is worth considering. A nuclear detonation in a major city could eliminate confidence in government and currency threatening a collapse of civilization. It seems conceivable that if society and government did remain intact the constitution and it's notions of liberty would be immediately challenged. It's even imaginable that a majority would support martial law and the suspension of all rights except the right to vote.
If the Church could achieve a new conversion and evangelism..this would certainly reduce the numbers of people willing to be complicit to activities aimed at killing millions. Even if everyone were given the millionaire lifestyle, would this stop the mindset that supports the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il? Is there any solution other than to bring hearts to Christ?
Just some thoughts...What do you think?
This is worth considering. A nuclear detonation in a major city could eliminate confidence in government and currency threatening a collapse of civilization. It seems conceivable that if society and government did remain intact the constitution and it's notions of liberty would be immediately challenged. It's even imaginable that a majority would support martial law and the suspension of all rights except the right to vote.
If the Church could achieve a new conversion and evangelism..this would certainly reduce the numbers of people willing to be complicit to activities aimed at killing millions. Even if everyone were given the millionaire lifestyle, would this stop the mindset that supports the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il? Is there any solution other than to bring hearts to Christ?
Just some thoughts...What do you think?
Improving Nursing Home Quality of Life
i wonder how to improve the quality of life of nursing home residents. What is that quality? How significantly does dementia impair residents? Would quality be improved by helping residents do activities of spiritual and societal significance? What about prayer missions, or a history project where they record their stories and memories? How often are those done? What else would be good? How could best practices in this area be identified?
Best Practice Diffusion Rates-How fast do good ideas spread?
I wonder how fast good ideas get to those that could benefit from them. I once read that it can take ~15 years for best practices to permeate primary care practice in medicine but that was in a book probably 4 years old citing even older research. I just read an article where a researcher, who published a filtering list for use in drug screening, was contacted by pharmaceutical companies 48 hours after his research was published in a journal.
How did these companies find his research? Did they have a subscription to the journal or did they use some service like Google Reader that compiles a number of RSS feeds. Do they rely mostly on a single third party news service? How efficient are each of these methods. I use Google Reader to view feeds from sites like physorg.com and sciencedaily.com. Physorg.com says they have 7 full time staff and 6 contributing authors and produce about 100 news articles a day about the latest research. Many times these articles are comprised mostly of the press release of a research center. These sites also have no specialty, they cover any science and technology related research. 13 full time people avails 520 hours a 40hr week. How many scholarly articles are published a week?
Barriers to diffusion
When I survey journal articles I often don't read past the title. I look for things that seem to be significant to my inexpert eye. If it seems significant I'll read the abstract and sometimes stop there because it doesn't meet the significance threshold (and often because I don't want to pay $30). Sometimes it appears the most significant idea in a published article is the research procedures used and developed as opposed to the specific focus of the research. I wonder how often procedural developments aren't appropriately highlighted in the title, abstract, or entire article to reflect their significance and what this costs in terms of the diffusion of such best practices and advancing the field. Furthermore the perusing of on-topic research articles or the use of on-topic keyword searches could omit relevant developments in other fields. What is the cost of this?
Language is another barrier to the diffusion of information. According to "Science and Engineering Indicators:2010" by NSF the US comprises 33% of total global spending on R&D with Japan and China in second and third place. Citing the OECD the same report also shows china, the US, and the EU as all having about the same number of researchers. A UK government report indicated that China moved into second place in total number of published papers, displacing the UK and raising their percent of total papers published to something around 11 percent however these stats aren't indicative of the number of papers published in non-english languages which I wasn't able to find in my brief attempt (highlighting a failure in information diffusion as it seems likely such information exists..I just can't find it). These stats do however indicate that the potential for language barriers in best practice diffusion is worth evaluating
Additionally of course the myth of free information that the internet let's us indulge in must be put in it's place. The internet reduces the cost of information diffusion to near zero but not information necessarily information creation. All the arguments for copyrights and patents apply. Thus funding and motivating research by charging for access to the results is a reasonable model. i think it best to consider this barrier to information diffusion a separate question and ponder simply the diffusion of information that is made freely available by it's authors
Diffusion mechanisms
Of course any thought on information propagation can't omit consideration of search engines in general. Suffice it to say it seems were are in the infancy of search engine development. That term presumes a natural development with time but i suppose it's possible, that to go much beyond keyword frequency and other present algorithms, it could essentially require the development of human level AI..so we may be in for a wait.
What do you think? This is another top of the head rambling so correct and guide.
How did these companies find his research? Did they have a subscription to the journal or did they use some service like Google Reader that compiles a number of RSS feeds. Do they rely mostly on a single third party news service? How efficient are each of these methods. I use Google Reader to view feeds from sites like physorg.com and sciencedaily.com. Physorg.com says they have 7 full time staff and 6 contributing authors and produce about 100 news articles a day about the latest research. Many times these articles are comprised mostly of the press release of a research center. These sites also have no specialty, they cover any science and technology related research. 13 full time people avails 520 hours a 40hr week. How many scholarly articles are published a week?
Barriers to diffusion
When I survey journal articles I often don't read past the title. I look for things that seem to be significant to my inexpert eye. If it seems significant I'll read the abstract and sometimes stop there because it doesn't meet the significance threshold (and often because I don't want to pay $30). Sometimes it appears the most significant idea in a published article is the research procedures used and developed as opposed to the specific focus of the research. I wonder how often procedural developments aren't appropriately highlighted in the title, abstract, or entire article to reflect their significance and what this costs in terms of the diffusion of such best practices and advancing the field. Furthermore the perusing of on-topic research articles or the use of on-topic keyword searches could omit relevant developments in other fields. What is the cost of this?
Language is another barrier to the diffusion of information. According to "Science and Engineering Indicators:2010" by NSF the US comprises 33% of total global spending on R&D with Japan and China in second and third place. Citing the OECD the same report also shows china, the US, and the EU as all having about the same number of researchers. A UK government report indicated that China moved into second place in total number of published papers, displacing the UK and raising their percent of total papers published to something around 11 percent however these stats aren't indicative of the number of papers published in non-english languages which I wasn't able to find in my brief attempt (highlighting a failure in information diffusion as it seems likely such information exists..I just can't find it). These stats do however indicate that the potential for language barriers in best practice diffusion is worth evaluating
Additionally of course the myth of free information that the internet let's us indulge in must be put in it's place. The internet reduces the cost of information diffusion to near zero but not information necessarily information creation. All the arguments for copyrights and patents apply. Thus funding and motivating research by charging for access to the results is a reasonable model. i think it best to consider this barrier to information diffusion a separate question and ponder simply the diffusion of information that is made freely available by it's authors
Diffusion mechanisms
Of course any thought on information propagation can't omit consideration of search engines in general. Suffice it to say it seems were are in the infancy of search engine development. That term presumes a natural development with time but i suppose it's possible, that to go much beyond keyword frequency and other present algorithms, it could essentially require the development of human level AI..so we may be in for a wait.
What do you think? This is another top of the head rambling so correct and guide.
Arguments for space investment-do they point towards weaknesses in education?
Is it fallacious reasoning to say that the space program should be supported for the unknown and unpredictable advances in unrelated technologies that may come from it? If the goal is general technological progress, aren't there better investments? What about education, general research, business incubators or X-prize competitions? The use of fallacious arguments in public discourse could highlight a weakness in the public education system.
Few parts of the curricula would appear directed at more important objectives than teaching logic and reasoning. We might find that support for these other parts are justified by reasoning not dissimilar to the one mentioned above for NASA-they offer some positive effect so must be good instead of first asking how to achieve the positive effect then considering all possible ways to best attain that effect.
Of course I'm not an expert in either issue and am speaking only to the nature of the argument with a slant towards provocation:)
Feel free to correct and improve!
Few parts of the curricula would appear directed at more important objectives than teaching logic and reasoning. We might find that support for these other parts are justified by reasoning not dissimilar to the one mentioned above for NASA-they offer some positive effect so must be good instead of first asking how to achieve the positive effect then considering all possible ways to best attain that effect.
Of course I'm not an expert in either issue and am speaking only to the nature of the argument with a slant towards provocation:)
Feel free to correct and improve!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
The Media, Polls, and Education: Their Impact on National Security
It is only rational that nations determine the makeup, strength, and disposition of their military based on threat assessments. Such an assessment would be incomplete without considering not only the military capability of other nations but their potential behaviors. Much of Europe of course invites the presence of US military assets on their soil whereas the Russians seem to fear minuscule US military deployments even in border countries. One key explanation for the difference is the assessment of potential behavior.
How should the likely future behavior of a country be determined. In a dictatorship or totalitarian regime a primary determinant of behavior is the psychology and world view of it's leaders. When assessing the potential behavior of a democracy, the psychology of the population becomes of increasing importance because, no matter the words of the present leadership, the future leadership will be determined by that population.
So assessing the threat a democratic country poses to a nation requires evaluating the world view and disposition of the population. One tool in that approach is to evaluate the popular media and polls. If the most popular voices are the ones calling for territorial expansion or war against another country one would conclude that the population is more likely to elect a government that will carry out those policies.
In addition to foreign policy proposals that seem to have popularity, determining the ability of the population to be swayed by irrational argument is also a necessary consideration in assessing the potential future threat posed by democratic countries. If the population seems easily taken by absurd thinking or conspiracy theories, that country's future behavior could rightly be considered a larger threat than if the population largely dispelled such thinking. In making this assessment any national movement or debate could shine light on the extent of irrationality in the population.
These principles, along with others of course, are likely used in assessing the threat the US poses to other countries. The larger threat the US seems to pose, the more resources countries might rationally decide they need to spend on countering that threat. This would tend to increase the size and capability of militaries in threatened countries as well as increase the risk of nuclear proliferation. These tendencies threaten US security directly but also in raising the potential for human and economic crisis that effect it morally and financially.
Education and christian evangelization (the real type the recognizes that God humbled Himself even to an unjust death, the type that knows giving sacrificially is worth more than spare billions) are two things that can reduce these tendencies.
How should the likely future behavior of a country be determined. In a dictatorship or totalitarian regime a primary determinant of behavior is the psychology and world view of it's leaders. When assessing the potential behavior of a democracy, the psychology of the population becomes of increasing importance because, no matter the words of the present leadership, the future leadership will be determined by that population.
So assessing the threat a democratic country poses to a nation requires evaluating the world view and disposition of the population. One tool in that approach is to evaluate the popular media and polls. If the most popular voices are the ones calling for territorial expansion or war against another country one would conclude that the population is more likely to elect a government that will carry out those policies.
In addition to foreign policy proposals that seem to have popularity, determining the ability of the population to be swayed by irrational argument is also a necessary consideration in assessing the potential future threat posed by democratic countries. If the population seems easily taken by absurd thinking or conspiracy theories, that country's future behavior could rightly be considered a larger threat than if the population largely dispelled such thinking. In making this assessment any national movement or debate could shine light on the extent of irrationality in the population.
These principles, along with others of course, are likely used in assessing the threat the US poses to other countries. The larger threat the US seems to pose, the more resources countries might rationally decide they need to spend on countering that threat. This would tend to increase the size and capability of militaries in threatened countries as well as increase the risk of nuclear proliferation. These tendencies threaten US security directly but also in raising the potential for human and economic crisis that effect it morally and financially.
Education and christian evangelization (the real type the recognizes that God humbled Himself even to an unjust death, the type that knows giving sacrificially is worth more than spare billions) are two things that can reduce these tendencies.
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