Tags / 12 quotes from 7 sources
#experiments
A Bubble Popper : Nature Genetics : Nature Research
A bubble popper (semantic assertions)
Here, inspired by the bubble-popping metaphor as much as by Popper himself, we propose a way in which research articles can become partially or wholly semantic publications. This means that a publication can state not only that the entire article is fit for the journal but also…
Brain Rules for Baby (John Medina)
Harlow's monkeys wanted comfort, not food
Harlow’s classic attachment experiments involved two of these iron maidens—doll-like structures serving as maternal stand-ins. One was made of harsh wire, the other of soft terry cloth. He took newly born rhesus monkeys, removed them from their biological mothers, and placed…
Edge.org
The chinese room experiment is flawed
For an example of the difficulties involved, consider John Searle's celebrated Chinese Room thought experiment, which purports to show— contrary to Alan Turing's claims—that input-output characteristics alone are insufficient to determine the existence of a conscious mind…
Human, All Too Human: A Book For Free Spirits
The free spirit overturns whatever he finds veiled or protected by any reverential awe
With a sardonic laugh he overturns whatever he finds veiled or protected by any reverential awe: he would see what these things look like when they are overturned. It is wilfulness and delight in the wilfulness of it, if he now, perhaps, gives his approval to that which has…
Introducing Artificial Intelligence (Henry Brighton and Howard Selina)
The frog and the fly
Maturana and Varela illustrate this point by first presenting a juicy fly to the top-left area of the frog’s field of view.
Rotating the frog's eye
Next, they sever part of the frog’s eye, such that the whole eye can be rotated by 180 degrees.
The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian)
Situation versus character: the dime experiment
important is it in determining what we do? It is a truism to say that how we behave is a result of two factors: our own natures and the situations we find ourselves in. Many are now claiming, however, that it is situation, not character, which often makes the biggest difference…
Milgram's obedience experiments
More worryingly, our willingness to cause terrible harms also seems to be highly situation-dependent. Two classic studies stand out. In his notorious ‘obedience experiments’, Stanley Milgram asked subjects to deliver increasing levels of electric shock to someone in an…
The Stanford Prison Experiment
The other infamous case is the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which Philip Zimbardo and his team simulated conditions in a prison with student volunteers taking on the roles of prisoners and guards. The two-week experiment was abandoned after six days, because the guards had…
Prison guards bounce back
It had taken Zimbardo five days to fall into this mentality, and a furious hour-long argument to change his mind back. But, as is usually the case, having stepped back, he was in no sense corrupted for life. ‘Most people, including all the research I know on Nazi guards, bounce…
The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)
Validated learning through scientific experimentation
I identify who is an entrepreneur, define a startup, and articulate a new way for startups to gauge if they are making progress, called validated learning. To achieve that learning, we’ll see that startups—in a garage or inside an enterprise—can use scientific experimentation…
If you cannot fail, you cannot learn
These are some of the questions teams struggle to answer if they have followed the “let’s just ship a product and see what happens” plan. I call this the “just do it” school of entrepreneurship after Nike’s famous slogan.1 Unfortunately, if the plan is to see what happens, a…