Ford

• FordMar 26, 2011, 11:05 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Bayesi­ans vs. Barbarians

  We do use mercenaries: http://​​www.newsweek.com/​​2010/​​08/​​10/​​mercenaries-in-iraq-to-take-over-soldiers-jobs.html

  But there might be cheaper options. If we paid Afghan girls $10/​day to go to school, would the Taliban collapse?

  We could be a little more subtle. Start by offering jobs to do something the Taliban wouldn’t consider threatening—Mechanical Turk work-from-home stuff not requiring literacy, via some kind of specialized radio or satellite link with no access to porn or feminism or anything the Taliban would object to. Every family wants one of those terminals and they can make twice as much money if the girls work (from home) too. Gradually offer higher pay for higher skill levels, starting with nonthreatening stuff like arithmetic but escalating to translating the Koran and then to tasks that would involve reading a wide variety of secular material, analyzing political and judicial systems of different countries (still maybe disguised as a translating job)…

• FordMar 26, 2011, 10:20 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Crime and punishment

  Yes, literal feuds. Cycles of tit-for-tat revenge that involve violence or are likely to escalate to violence unless the injured party (or their surviving relatives) perceive that “justice has been done” through state-imposed punishment. I lived in West Virginia, which such feuds were common before effective law enforcement was substituted for private revenge.

  This is clearly not an argument for punishment in the case of victimless “crimes” or offenses unlikely to provoke escalating retaliation.

• FordMar 25, 2011, 7:52 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Crime and punishment

  I agree that we should imprison as few people as possible.

  My point was that having murders punished by the state rather than by the victim’s families leads to fewer people in prison. If we don’t jail Bob for killing Ken, then Ken’s brother kills Bob, so then Bob’s brother kills Ken’s son, and so on. At least, that’s what tends to happen in societies without effective law enforcement.

• FordMar 24, 2011, 11:23 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: FAWS’s comment on: Crime and punishment

  Yes, preempt is better.

• FordMar 24, 2011, 9:07 PM

  8 points

  on: Crime and punishment

  One reason we punish criminals is to deter private revenge, which tends to escalate into long-lasting feuds. This function isn’t incompatible with rehabilitation in prison, though, teaching people life skills that will keep them out of trouble after release.

• FordMar 24, 2011, 8:58 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: taryneast’s comment on: The trou­ble with teamwork

  I’d rather have a motivated group that’s poorly organized than a well-organized bunch of goof-offs. Given motivation, though, I wonder whether some forms of organization (especially voluntary organization) work better than others.

  I’m particularly interested in situations where there’s a significant opportunity cost to collaboration, that is, where any time participants spend on collaborative project X comes at the expense of time they would otherwise spend on worthwhile project Y. How can we get things done together while wasting as little of each others’ time as possible?

• FordMar 24, 2011, 6:33 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Gray’s comment on: death-is-bad-ism go­ing a lit­tle bit more main­stream?

  If I wanted to be revived, I’d hide a bunch of gold and tattoo a note to that effect on my chest before being frozen.

• FordMar 24, 2011, 6:10 PM

  0 points

  on: Rant­ing about Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Democracy

  Randomly grouping voters into districts might be worth considering. With geographic districts, incompetent and corrupt incumbents get reelected by bringing their district more than its share of national resources or by playing to regional prejudices (religion, etc.). If those options were off the table, character and competence might win more often.

• FordMar 24, 2011, 5:55 PM

  0 points

  on: The trou­ble with teamwork

  Post and comments seem useful for students and teachers, but I was hoping for hints or links for teams of motivated adults. The teams I’ve been on mostly produce scientific publications (original research or reviews). Some observations: 1) work doesn’t need to be divided equally, so long as each team member makes an essential contribution, but major contributors need to get more credit; 2) “you do most of the work and we share credit” can work if the one doing most of the work is essentially an apprentice (e.g., a grad student or postdoc) -- it’s understood what the roles were—but maybe not for two people with similar status; 3) two (or maybe three) people can brainstorm effectively without needing much structure; 4) big teams are tricky; if one or two people do most of the work with small contributions from many others (each getting a little credit), that seems to work OK. But I would have no idea how to organize a project that took major effort from more than 3-4 people; 5) email works OK, especially with collabators many time zones away; I always wonder about shared-screen-plus-audio tools, though.

• FordMar 18, 2011, 8:07 PM

  0 points

  on: Marginally Zero-Sum Efforts

  If we assume that the time wasted writing multiple grants outweighs the benefits of stiffer competition (stimulating creativity or harder work?), there are several ways success rates could be increased: more total funding, smaller grants, limiting grants/​researcher, or fewer researchers. One reason we have so many researchers is that overhead payments to universities exceed the marginal cost of doing more research. So they keep hiring more researchers, independent of teaching needs.

  http://​​blog.lib.umn.edu/​​denis036/​​thisweekinevolution/​​2011/​​03/​​the_problem_of_pronatalist_pro.html

• FordMar 17, 2011, 8:56 PM

  10 points

  on: Con­jur­ing An Evolu­tion To Serve You

  As an evolutionary biologist with an interest in practical applications to agriculture and to human longevity, I think your emphasis on the slow pace of evolution is misplaced. It took most of life’s 3.85 billion year history to evolve multicellularity, but that slowness seems to mainly reflect lack of selection for multicellularity over most of that period. With strong selection, primitive multicellularity can evolve quickly under lab conditions ( Boraas,M.E. 1998 “Phagotrophy by a flagellate selects for colonial prey: A possible origin of multicellularity” and current work in my lab).

  Your point about individual vs. group selection is correct and important, though. Individual selection, like free-market competition, is an effective way of making certain kinds of improvements. But some form of group selection (the chicken example, or small-plot trials in plant breeding) is often key to improvements missed by individual-based natural selection. See my 2003 review article and forthcoming book on Darwinian Agriculture.