This book did an amazing job at convincing me that for some people, certain concepts are simply inconceivable, now matter how hard one tries to explain. The parallel is a 2-dimensional’s “person” attempt to understand the third dimension.

Here is the free PDF version of God’s Debris by Scott Adams.

I find it very annoying that Allconsuming has dozens of versions of a particular movie. Who cares if I saw this movie in Widescreen, Fullscreen, 2-Disc Set, Collector’s Edition, or Blu-ray!?

Here is the most popular version of Lord of War.

I find it very annoying that Allconsuming has dozens of versions of a particular movie. Who cares if I saw this movie in Widescreen, Fullscreen, 2-Disc Set, Collector’s Edition, or Blu-ray!?

Here is the most popular version of Lord of War.

This is the first book I decided to quit reading. I had reached page 150, and the book had simply failed to become relevant.

Update 2008-12-09: I read the Wikipedia summary) today and don’t regret my decision at all. Even if one is not aware of the concepts in the novel (mainly, apophenia), they can be explained much more succinctly.

If you can only hope to read 4,000 books in your lifetime and there are 100,000 published each year in the US alone, being selective suddenly gets a much more powerful meaning.

Fascinating insights into group dynamics. Debunks the myth that mobs are stupid. Under certain conditions, mobs make consistently better decisions than the smartest individuals in the mob.

Summary of what I’ve read so far:

• decision – choosing among a set of answers, form “how many marbles are in a jar” to “what was the most likely cause of the Challenger explosion”
• coordination – e.g. flock flight, pedestrian traffic, efficient transportation of goods to consumers. Achieved usually by letting individuals pursue their best interests, without information on the whole. For example, farmers grow oranges, packagers sell them to wholesalers, grocers buy them and sell them in stores, where shoppers finally enjoy the product. Each player in this chain makes decisions not on what’s best for everyone, but on what’s best for them. Yet, people are able to coordinate their economic activities remarkably well.
• cooperation – individuals working together to achieve a goal that benefits the entire group. Famous experiment: The ultimatum game

  A group of people are organized in pairs. One of the persons in the pair, the “proposer”, is given $10, and has to make this offer to the other person (who is given nothing): accept between $1 and $9, or refuse the deal. If the other person accepts, they receive the amount of money the proposer offered them, and the proposer keeps the rest. If the other person refuses, both lose all the money.
  If both players are completely rational, the proposer will make a low offer of $1, and the other person will take it. In practice, though, this rarely happens. Studies have shown that offers below $2 are routinely rejected. People prefer to practically give away money, rather than see their partner walk away with most of the $10. As a result, the proposers don’t make many low offers. In fact, the most common offer is $5.

• large enough
• diverse – a group of individuals with similar backgrounds and information will usually reach a suboptimal solution because it lacks the “alternative” information that diverse individuals bring
• independent – the more independent individuals in the group are from one another, the better the solution found by the group

All those who cannot conceive that we might be simulated should be forced to watch this movie.

Actually I’m consuming this edition, but it had no entries.

By the way, I think this model of pulling in all books from Amazon.com into allconsuming.net creates an artificially high number of items. Does it really matter which of the 100 editions of the 50+ editions of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged you consume?

This is just stupid. Librarything.com unifies all editions of a book into a “work”. Translations, audiobooks, hardcover, paperbacks, they are all ONE WORK.

Mind boggling hard science fiction!

I read the Bible end-to-end when I was 18 and had lots of time on my hands. For those who don’t have much time to read the Holy Bible, I would recommend this short Bible video, which God in His wisdom gave us to summarize the Bible in only 10 minutes.

Amen.