
Numeric Pareidolia and Vortex Math - robdoherty2
http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2012/06/03/numeric-pareidolia-and-vortex-math/
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tomerv
Talks like this one are going to be a real problem for TED if they don't start
curating the various TEDx events. The TED brand is basically a trademark
representing high quality talks. If this continues, they'll lose all their
credebility. At $4000+ per ticket, we're talking about a lot of money.

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petercooper
I think that's why they're carefully branded as TEDx rather than TED. I think
you're mostly right, but I also wonder if it'll lead to more people thinking
'screw it, I wanna go to the real TED and not these TEDx things anymore'.

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kghose
I think everyone should let a few crackpots in

a) It's entertaining - it's good exercise to figure out what mistakes the
crackpots are making b) Some of the crackpots might turn out to be right

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yummyfajitas
c) It's good for the audience to listen to teach speaker skepticism, and a
2-3% crackpot rate will force them to do so.

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joshuahhh
It's actually quite useful to have talks like this spreading across the Net.
They act like chemical tracers, flowing through the memetic channels of
crackpottery -- once a blog picks one up, you know immediately who you can
ignore.

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jerf
"We've had the capacity to create ternary computers for a long time - there's
just no reason to. We _have_ built decimal computers."

Actually, there was a ternary computer built [1]. And there is sort of a
reason to, just not a great one, but one that may come back once we hit the
frontier of miniaturization [2].

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun>

[2]: [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/issue.aspx?id=3268&#...</a>

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gatlin
I know some intelligent people who fall for this. The thing is, if you tell
them the arguments in this article (which I have, though doubtless less
adeptly), they just find a way to insist that it's intentional. Of course the
sequence is simple! _That's the power of it!_

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reader5000
Trying to kind of figure out the features of this sort of thing.

1\. Talks quickly. 2\. Fairly good mastery of appropriate buzz words. 3\. Very
much focused on the narrative "and then this was discovered and then this"
rather actual analysis of any given topic. 4\. Never particularly makes any
claims other than the broadest generalities.

Has the guy ever read mainstream scientific analysis?

It's kind of like timecube, where the guy just repeats over and over amazing
claims without really saying anything else. It's a very weird phenomena, but
kind of makes me wonder what the exact difference between this and "real"
science is. It's not really the truth/falsity of the claims being made, since
the claims are so general or otherwise incoherent I'm not sure they have a
truth/falsity.

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petercooper
There's a related effect called the Dr Fox Effect:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Fox_effect> .. it's not _exactly_ what
you're describing, but looks at the correspondance between speaker
expressiveness and the likelihood of the audience to believe what they're
saying, even if it's nonsense.

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seats
Amazing to me that there was enthusiastic applause in that room. wtf.

Say what you will about TED and TEDx being elitist and uppity, but I think
it's fair to assume that was an educated audience. How was that not perceived
as complete absurdity in the moment by the crowd?

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Permit
I sometimes wonder if it would be better not to talk about these sorts of
things and hope they die off in obscurity.

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ZenPsycho
That's not how it works. The way crackpottery thrives is exactly because the
people most qualified to debunk it refuse to do so because it is boring and
beneath them. So it never gets debunked, and those who are less critical
spread the bullshit around. This is how global warming skepticism gets spread
around- Climate scientists just declare it so stupid they never bother to take
the time to analyse point for point the bogus claims of skeptics and point out
evidence for why the skepticism is wrong. I mean- it happens, just not often
enough.

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powertower
Where/how can I send this man money?

I need to get in on the ground floor.

