January 6, 2013
Cosmicism [koz-mih-siz-uhm] is the literary philosophy developed and used by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft in his fiction. Lovecraft was a writer of philosophically intense horror stories that involve occult phenomena like astral possession and alien miscegenation, and the themes of his fiction over time contributed to the development of this philosophy.
The philosophy of cosmicism states that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos, ever susceptible to being wiped from existence at any moment. This also suggested that the majority of undiscerning humanity are creatures with the same significance as insects and plants in a much greater struggle between greater forces which, due to humanity’s small, visionless and unimportant nature, it does not recognize.
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January 4, 2013
In statistics, a null hypothesis is the ‘no-change’ or ‘no-difference’ hypothesis. The term was first used by English geneticist Ronald Fisher in his book ‘The design of experiments.’ A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for some event or problem. Every experiment has a null hypothesis. If you do an experiment to see if a medicine works, the null hypothesis is that it doesn’t work.
If you do an experiment to see if people like chocolate or vanilla ice-cream better, the null hypothesis is that people like them equally. If you do an experiment to see if either boys or girls can play piano better, the null hypothesis is that boys and girls are equally good at playing the piano. The opposite of the null hypothesis is the alternative hypothesis (a difference does exist: this medicine makes people healthier, people like chocolate ice-cream better than vanilla, or boys are better at playing the piano than girls).
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January 4, 2013
In statistics, Type I and type II errors are errors that happen when a coincidence occurs while doing statistical inference, which gives you a wrong conclusion. A Type I error is saying the original question is false, when it is actually true (e.g. a jury finding an innocent person guilty, a ‘false positive’); a Type II error is saying the original question is true, when it is actually false (e.g. a jury finding a guilty person not guilty, a ‘false negative’ or simply a ‘miss’).
Usually a type I error leads one to conclude that a thing or relationship exists when really it doesn’t: for example, that a patient has a disease being tested for when really the patient does not have the disease, or that a medical treatment cures a disease when really it doesn’t. Examples of type II errors would be a blood test failing to detect the disease it was designed to detect, in a patient who really has the disease; or a clinical trial of a medical treatment failing to show that the treatment works when really it does.
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January 3, 2013
Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal or explicit knowledge) is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. For example, stating to someone that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient.
However, the ability to speak a language, use algebra, or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge that is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult to explicitly transfer to users. While tacit knowledge appears to be simple, it has far reaching consequences and is not widely understood.
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January 3, 2013
Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, popularized the theory in his 1962 book ‘Diffusion of Innovations.’ He said diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.
The origins of the diffusion of innovations theory are varied and span multiple disciplines. Rogers espoused four main elements that influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation, communication channels, time, and a social system.
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January 2, 2013
Heterophily [het-er-uh-fil-ee], or ‘love of the different,’ is the tendency of individuals to collect in diverse groups; it is the opposite of homophily (‘love of the same,’ the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others). This phenomenon is notable in successful organizations, where the resulting diversity of ideas is thought to promote an innovative environment. Recently it has become an area of social network analysis. Most of the early work in heterophily was done in the 1960s by sociologist Everett Rogers in his book ‘Diffusion Of Innovations.’
Rogers showed that heterophilious networks were better able to spread innovations. Later, scholars such as Paul Burton, draw connections between modern Social Network Analysis as practiced by Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter in his theory of weak ties (if A is linked to both B and C, then there is a greater-than-chance probability that B and C are linked to each other) and the work of German sociologist Georg Simmel. Burton found that Simmel’s notion of ‘the stranger’ is equivalent to Granovetter’s weak tie in that both can bridge homophilious networks, turning them into one larger heterophilious network.
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January 2, 2013
Noises are classified based on their spectral properties; they are named for the color they most resemble in the visible light spectrum. If the sound wave pattern of ‘red noise’ were translated into light waves, the resulting light would be red, and so on. White noise is an audio signal that contains all the frequencies audible to the human ear. It is analogous to white light, which contains all the colors of light visible to the human eye.
Pink noise is a signal that is louder at low frequencies and decreases at a constant rate. It is sometimes referred to as flicker noise particularly when it describes background noise emitted by an electronic device. Pink noise is used to make music, sound effects, or merely as a pleasant background sound and is reported to sound more like the ocean than white noise (which is often compared to the sound of rainfall or TV static) because of its bias towards lower frequencies.
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December 30, 2012
Neophobia [nee-oh-foh-bee-uh] is the fear of new things or experiences. It is also called cainophobia. In psychology, neophobia is defined as the persistent and abnormal fear of anything new. In its milder form, it can manifest as the unwillingness to try new things or break from routine.
Mild manifestations are often present in young children (who want the small portion of the world that they ‘know’ to remain constant) and elderly people (who often cope using long established habits and don’t want to learn ‘new tricks’).
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December 29, 2012
The tragic mulatto [muh-lat-oh] is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, from the 1840s.
The ‘tragic mulatto’ is an archetypical mixed-race person (a ‘mulatto’), who is assumed to be sad, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit in the ‘white world’ or the ‘black world.’ As such, the ‘tragic mulatto’ is depicted as the victim of the society they live in, a society divided by race.
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December 29, 2012
Negative capability describes the capacity of human beings to transcend and revise their contexts. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability of the individual to perceive, think, and operate beyond any presupposition of a predetermined capacity of the human being.
It further captures the rejection of the constraints of any context, and the ability to experience phenomenon free from epistemological bounds, as well as to assert one’s own will and individuality upon their activity. The term was first used by the Romantic poet John Keats to critique those who sought to categorize all experience and phenomena and turn them into a theory of knowledge.
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December 29, 2012
Ithkuil is a constructed language marked by outstanding grammatical complexity, expressed with a rich phonemic inventory or through an original, graphically structured, system of writing. The language’s author, John Quijada, presents Ithkuil as a cross between an a priori philosophical and a logical language designed to express deeper levels of human cognition overtly and clearly, particularly in regard to human categorization, yet briefly. It also strives to minimize the ambiguities and semantic vagueness found in natural human languages.
The many examples from the original grammar book show that a message, like a meaningful phrase or a sentence, can usually be expressed in Ithkuil with fewer sounds, or lexically distinct speech-elements, than in natural human languages. Quijada deems his creation too complex and strictly regular a language to have developed ‘naturally,’ but nonetheless a language suited for human conversation. No person is hitherto known to be able to speak Ithkuil fluently; Quijada, for one, does not.
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December 24, 2012
‘No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies’ is a book by Canadian author Naomi Klein.
First published in December 1999, shortly after the 1999 WTO Ministerial Conference protests in Seattle had generated media attention around such issues, it became one of the most influential books about the alter-globalization movement. The book focuses on branding, and often makes connections with the alter-globalization movement (also known as the the global justice movement).
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