A mind bending discussion on the Making Sense podcast: what we perceive as reality is only a “user interface wrapper” that natural selection has created to enhance our fitness. It has no necessary mapping to the truth of reality.
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an imaginative literary romance novel wrapped in a time travel espionage plot. I really enjoyed it, though it was not at all like my usual sci-fi reading 📚
Gamer
I’ve just bumped up my monthly support of CANADALAND to the next tier. Plenty of great content that I’m happy to pay for.
Great fun at the Axe Pancreatic Cancer fundraiser last night! Thanks to everyone that joined us to raise money to support two promising clinical trials.
A cool visualization and exploration of the network of scientific papers
As a daily AeroPress user, I enjoyed watching this documentary on its origin and culture
I finally got my flu shot and hope you did too 😷🦠
A great conversation between Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins on the Making Sense podcast. Nice to hear Dawkins talking about evolution again.
Several catchy songs on Joseph Arthur’s new album Come Back World
Recursion by Blake Crouch is an entertaining time-travel, multiverse story. Distinct from his previous Dark Matter novel, but with the right kinds of echos 📚
With an agent based model you can explore interesting scenarios. Our latest post models the 🇨🇦 election with another Liberal scandal, new Conservatives climate change policy, or proportional representation. The results are not obvious, showing benefits of non-linear modelling.
Using our Agent-Based Model to scenario test the Canadian federal election
As outlined in our last two posts, our algorithm has “learned” how to simulate the behavioural traits of over 2 million voters in Toronto. This allows us to turn their behavioural “dials” and see what happens. To demonstrate, we’ll simulate three scenarios: The “likeability” of the Liberal Party falls by 10% from the baseline (i.e., continues to fall); The Conservative Party announces a policy stance regarding climate change much more aligned with the other parties; and People don’t vote strategically and no longer consider the probability of each candidate winning in their riding (i.
Dumbing down voters
In our last post, our analysis assumed that voters had a very good sense of the winning probabilities for each candidate in their ridings. This was probably an unfair assumption to make - voters have a sense of which two parties might be fighting for the seat, but unlikely that they know the z-scores based on good sample size polls. So, we’ve loosened that statistical knowledge a fair amount, whereby voters only have some sense of who is really in the running in their ridings.
At my son’s soccer game, but I’m not that familiar with the game. Anyone know what position he’s playing in this picture?
Axe Pancreatic Cancer is back! Join us to throw axes, drink beer and wine, and raise money for pancreatic cancer research. Early bird tickets are sold out. So, don’t wait!
We’ve been using our agent-based model to analyze the upcoming Federal election here in Canada. Now that we’ve generated our predictions, we’re going to explore how best to explain the outcomes. 🗳🇨🇦
My “Best Dad” mug has been recalled. Apparently it may break when filled with hot liquid, which is exactly its function. Hopefully this isn’t some metaphor for my parenting
Using Agent-based modeling to explain polls
Modeling to explain, not forecast The goal of PsephoAnalytics is to model voting behaviour in order to accurately explain political campaigns. That is, we are not looking to forecast ongoing campaigns – there are plenty of good poll aggregators online that provide such estimation. But if we can quantitatively explain why an ongoing campaign is producing the polls that it is, then we have something unique. That is why agent-based modeling is so useful to us.
Task management with MindNode and Agenda
For several years now, I’ve been a very happy Things user for all of my task management. However, recent reflections on the nature of my work have led to some changes. My role now mostly entails tracking a portfolio of projects and making sure that my team has the right resources and clarity of purpose required to deliver them. This means that I’m much less involved in daily project management and have a much shorter task list than in the past.