Lifeboat Foundation

The universe is kind of an impossible object. It has an inside but no outside; it’s a one-sided coin. This Möbius architecture presents a unique challenge for cosmologists, who find themselves in the awkward position of being stuck inside the very system they’re trying to comprehend.

It’s a situation that Lee Smolin has been thinking about for most of his career. A physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, Smolin works at the knotty intersection of quantum mechanics, relativity and cosmology. Don’t let his soft voice and quiet demeanor fool you — he’s known as a rebellious thinker and has always followed his own path. In the 1960s Smolin dropped out of high school, played in a rock band called Ideoplastos, and published an underground newspaper. Wanting to build geodesic domes like R. Buckminster Fuller, Smolin taught himself advanced mathematics — the same kind of math, it turned out, that you need to play with Einstein’s equations of general relativity. The moment he realized this was the moment he became a physicist. He studied at Harvard University and took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, eventually becoming a founding faculty member at the Perimeter Institute.

Continue reading “We’re Stuck Inside the Universe. Lee Smolin Has an Idea for How to Study It Anyway” »

The technology scans classrooms at Hangzhou No. 11 High School every 30 seconds and records students’ facial expressions, categorizing them into happy, angry, fearful, confused, or upset. The system also records student actions such as writing, reading, raising a hand, and sleeping at a desk.

The system is analyzing students’ emotions and actions in the classroom to tell whether they are happy, angry, or confused and to monitor whether they are working or sleeping at their desk. The facial-recognition technology has also replaced ID cards and wallets at the library and canteen.

Together with my fellow member of the World Futures Studies Federation, Dr. Thomas Lombardo, we have begun a YouTube video series of ongoing dialogues on topics pertaining to the future. In this first dialogue we focus on the book Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future and discuss the nature and value of science fiction in the modern world. We discuss the historical evolution of science fiction and the nature of mythology and why science fiction is the modern mythology. In future dialogues we will delve more deeply into books on science fiction and more broadly on futures studies and future consciousness.

A team of researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Université Paul Sabatier-Toulouse III (France) have developed a system that is capable of managing all traffic in a city, which will help to prevent traffic jams while reducing the driving times of vehicles and pollution levels. The system has been designed for autonomous vehicles and includes a route provider service capable of forecasting the present and future density of traffic in the city. It also takes that information into account when choosing new routes. The work has been published in Electronics.

Unlike existing systems that can suggest alternative routes depending on the bottlenecks at a certain time, the new system makes it possible to find out the present and future density of traffic in the entire metropolitan area, and controls traffic as a whole, aiming to minimize or totally eliminate traffic jams. In addition, it allows including different criteria—environmental, atypical situations, accidents, etc.—to dynamically provide advice about routes.

“Our proposal makes it easier for authorities to restrict or eliminate traffic in a certain area during the time period they find appropriate. For example, reducing traffic next to schools during the entry/exit hours, or in areas where ambulances circulate or an accident has happened, etc.,” explains Carlos Tavares Calafate, researcher at the Networking Research Group-DISCA of the UPV and coordinator of the work.

This purpose of this video is to GET DR. BILL ANDREWS ON THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE. You can help make this reality in many ways. Please start by joining the Facebook group: GET DR. BILL ANDREWS ON THE JOE ROGAN EXPERIENCE: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Get-Dr-Bill-Andrews-on-The-Joe-R…e_internal

I believe we can get closer to reversing human aging by finding stronger human telomerase activators if Dr. Bill Andrews/Sierra Sciences receives more funding ($50 million USD would probably be enough for Dr. Andrews and his team to discover stronger human telomerase activators within a year).

Continue reading “Get Dr. Bill Andrews on The Joe Rogan Experience” »

Time for my yearly proselytizing for PBS UK’s Rough Science. Awesome educational show where a bunch of scientists are dumped on an island and have to work together to make something crazy out of local scavenged materials.

The group is taken to a disused prison on the island where they have to determine the longitude and latitude of the island, create a radio from a saucepan and create an insect repellent.

The school district tweeted about the donation and Musk replied that he hopes “to do more help in the future.”

UPDATE: Water filters from Elon Musk being installed, tested in Flint Community Schools

The district says it will use Musk’s donation to replace drinking fountains with water stations using ultraviolet filtration equipment. The drinking fountains have been out of service since the Flint water crisis in 2015.

Anticipation and to remain hopeful and patient in expecting a preferred future have a special place and a critical role in some moral and religious systems of faith. As a personal virtue, there are many natural, cultural, social, and educational factors that play a role in its development. However, for an economic agent and in general forward looking decision makers who follow a more secular worldview, the argument in favor of anticipation and how much it could be reasonable might be less clear. Therefore, it is worthwhile to explore when and under which circumstances we should choose anticipation. A convincing argument might be helpful. In this blog post I will build a framework based on game theory to provide a better and deeper insight.

Economists, mathematicians, and to some degree, engineers have contributed to the development of game theory. In neoclassic economics, it is assumed that each economic agent has a rational behavior. According to the prediction model based on such an assumption, decision makers, if they sell goods and services, tend to maximize profit and if they buy tend to maximize utility. In other words, people naturally seek the best and the most. Moreover, decision making is based on the principle of “predict then act”. The individual first predicts the likely consequences of choices and attribute to them utilities. In the next step, an alternative is chosen that has the best consequence or the most utility. This camp or school is often called the normative decision analysis.

Nonetheless, empirical studies on the behavior of real decision makers demonstrate that despite the prediction of rational models of choice, the individuals or economic agents, do not always follow the principle of the best and the most. In 1950s, for instance, Herbert Simon showed that when faced with uncertainty and due to lack of information about the future, there are cognitive limits to rationality such that contrary to the neoclassic economic theory, people do not make decisions rationally and logically in search of the optimal alternative. Instead they seek a combination of satisfaction and sufficing levels of utility which is also called “satisficing”. This camp or school is often called the behavioral or descriptive decision analysis. To further explain, no one can claim that in a certain decision the best alternative has been chosen, regardless of the choice criteria or the ideal level of utility. Because there is always a better alternative than the best alternative known to us now. That better alternative either exists now beyond our awareness or will appear in the future. But we never can choose it if we do not know about it. In brief, we can possibly choose from a subset of the best, the best element.

In light of the flaws of the actual decision making by humans, we tend to recognize both the pros and cons of normative and descriptive decision analysis. Pioneers of decision analysis therefore have attempted to work on a new integral school that is wise enough and take into account the natural cognitive limits. This camp or school is often called the “prescriptive” decision analysis. The aim is to educate and train better decision makers, both individually and collectively. Our approach here to the question of anticipation is also integral and prescriptive.

Continue reading “Is Anticipation a Good Strategy?” »

MANILA, Philippines — Now in its 8th year, Space Apps is an international hackathon for coders, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, technologists, and others in cities around the world, where teams engage with NASA’s free and open data to address real-world problems on Earth and in space. Space Apps 2018 included over 18,000 participants at more than 200 events in 75 countries.

Since its inception in 2012, NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge has become the world’s largest global hackathon, engaging thousands of citizens across the globe to use NASA’s open data to build innovative solutions to challenges we face on Earth and in space.

The NASA International Space Apps Challenge (or Space Apps) is an international hackathon that will take place over a 48-hour period in cities around the globe between October 18 and 20, 2019. The event embraces collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing open-source solutions to challenges we currently face on Earth and in space.

In the Philippines, it is the fourth time for this event to take place again in Manila on October 18 to 20, 2019. “I am thrilled and excited to continue the tradition of inviting students and professionals, beginners and veterans from the Philippines to join this prestigious global hackathon by NASA,” software developer Michael Lance M. Domagas said, who is currently leading the hackathon since 2016. “In fact, a Pinoy team winning globally last year makes Filipinos inspired to use these technologies in helping the society we live in, especially now that a law has been passed creating the Philippine Space Agency,” he added.

The Pinoy winning team who developed an app seeking to use scientific data to benefit fishermen, even without Internet connection, is being incubated at Animo Labs, the technology business incubator of De La Salle University in partnership with DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development. “Animo Labs looks forward to see these kinds of projects being developed by Filipinos with the help of NASA data and resources, and we are happy to host it again at De La Salle University,” Animo Labs Executive Director Mr. Federico C. Gonzalez said.