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An Uberized education is when…

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An Uberized education is when –as in antiquity — one goes to a specific teacher to get lectures, bypassing the university. The students and the teachers are thus matched. If a piece of paper is necessary, it would be given by *that* teacher, or a group of teachers. It is not too different from the decentralized apprentice model.

This already works well for executive “education”. I give short workshops in my specialty of applied probability (I have given a few with PW, YBY and RD, though only lasting 1-2 days), limited to professionals. An Uberization would consist in making longer workshops, say of 2-3 week duration, after which the attendees would be getting a piece of paper of sorts.

From my experience, both students and lecturers are more sincere when they bypass institutions. And, as with other Uberizations, it would be much, much efficient economically.

A full education would be a collection of such micro-diplomas, which can be done on top of a conventional one.

Finally I would personally like to attend such workshops in disciplines outside my specialty. After my experience with Aramaic/Syriac last summer, I have a list of subjects I would be hungry to learn *outside* university systems…

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CHAINS OF RECIPROCITY

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CHAINS OF RECIPROCITY

Someone has done me favors in the past, when I needed them, say got me out of trouble. I naturally feel indebted to *that* person. But the ethical reaction should not be to pay the same person back since his generosity, if genuine, should be unconditional. My debt should be to the system (something called “society”), or, less abstract, someone else, preferably a stranger…

This is similar to the mechanism of bedouin hospitality. And it becomes multiplicative.

Likewise, like anyone who isn’t a saint, I have done things in my past for which I have remorse. But, to clear my conscience, I do not have to rectify the *exact* situation. I just need a large action that does not benefit me but helps the largest number of people, say, take risks by going after evil such as Monsanto, debunk BS vendors, prevent Hilary Clinton from getting close to the White House, etc.

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It is nearly impossible to change one’s opinion about ideas without *also* changing one’s opinion about the people associated with them.

The best way to know people is to find out what they lie about.

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Why GMOs are pretty much a lost cause, economically

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talebGmo20150829

Why GMOs are pretty much a lost cause, economically.
There is an asymmetry as follows. A tiny proportion of “stubborn” eaters could determine the consumption habits of the entire country. It is a key that Kosher people (representing <.3% of the US population) do not eat nonKosher, but nonKosher people eat Kosher. Many goods are Kosher but nonKosher people can’t tell because they do not recognize the small cryptic (U) or (K) sign on the can.
Which is why it suffices that a tiny portion of the population becomes “stubborn” NonGMO for the entire food to be NonGMO.
Now I discovered that the difference in price at the supermarket level between organic and nonorganic comes from distribution, not production. Production costs play a tiny role. Costco and Walmart are now into organic (they represent about 4% of US GDP) and growth of organic would not depend on demand, but on distribution efficiency.
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Where does this nonlinear effect come from? If the price differential is small, it is easier at a wedding to accomodate NonGMO people by having everybody eat so, rather than introduce a new category. Same thing at the level of a restaurant or a supermarket. This “scaling” is called renormalization group. I did a bit of work to show the asymmetry in attached exercise. Ignore the exact numerical details; what matters is the nonlinearity, how things tip one way. The moral: the GMO industry spends time “converting” journos and others, but all this is a waste of time when it radicalizes a segment of the population.
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INSPIRED BY A CONVERSATION WITH SERGE GALAM.
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PS: Got the GMO renormalization result in closed form: Renorm(n):=1-(1-p)^{4^n}… was too obvious.

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The only noteworthy correction I made in the 1900 pages of the INCERTO

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The only noteworthy correction I made in the 1900 pages of the INCERTO, written over 18 years, which should come out as single unit:
“To Benoit Mandelbrot, a Greek among Romans” [The Black Swan, 2007]
to
“To Benoit Mandelbrot, a Roman among Greeks”

As I came to realize that the Romans were noBS FatTonies; they resented grand theories and favored prudent and progressive tinkering. Much of what they built, from constitution, to Roman law, to bridges, to low income housing, to their literature, to their imperial administration (still around in the structure of the Catholic church), have survived 2000 years.

Nothing else of substance was changed.

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People rarely mean the same thing when they say “religion”…

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People rarely mean the same thing when they say “religion”, nor do they realize that they don’t mean the same thing.

For early Jews and Muslims, religion was law. For early Jews it was also tribal; for early Muslims it was universal. For the Romans religion was social events and festivals (law was separate ). For Jews today religion became ethnocultural, without the law –and for some, a nation. Same for Syriacs, Copts, and Maronites. For Orthodox and Catholic Christians religion is aesthetics, pomp and rituals. For Protestants religion is belief with no aesthetics, pomp or law. For Buddists/Shintoists/Hindus religion is philosophy. So when Hindu talk about the Hindu “religion” they don’t mean the same thing to a Pakistani as it would to a Hindu, and certainly something different for a Persian.

People keep talking past each other. When the nation-state idea came about, things got more complicated. When an Arab now says “Jew” he largely means belief; a converted Jew is no longer a Jew. But for a Jew it means a nation.

In Serbia/Croatia, or Lebanon, religion means something at times of peace, and something quite different at times of war.

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