(1/5)Leveraging Decentralised Knowledge

Thought provoking @valkenburgh - 1945 Hayek critiqued central planning as a deterrent to economic efficiency. A single agent is only a small fraction of the sum total of knowledge held by all members of society.

(2/5)Leveraging Decentralised Knowledge

Google won by leveraging the decentralised social interactions of internet users, through the use of the Page Rank algorithm.
(3/5)Leveraging Decentralised Knowledge

Projects initially deploy on a small pool of knowledge. The project's capacity to accrue decentralized knowledge, arrive at & deploy the best conclusions enhance its ability to evolve & sustain.
(4/5)Leveraging Decentralised Knowledge

Ergo the more rigid and fixed a system is on its initial pool of knowledge and design, the more it hinders its ability to evolve. Think AltaVista vs Google.
(5/5)Leveraging Decentralised Knowledge

Successful projects know their limits and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Unsuccessful projects fail to move beyond proximate wisdom and lean excessively on the "fractional knowledge" available to them.

More from All

https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.


Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.

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I just finished Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics, and wanted to say something about Joel Christiansen's review linked below. I am not sure what motivates the review (I speculate a bit below), but it gives a very misleading impression of the book. 1/x


The meat of the criticism is that the history Adler gives is insufficiently critical. Adler describes a few figures who had a great influence on how the modern US university was formed. It's certainly critical: it focuses on the social Darwinism of these figures. 2/x

Other insinuations and suggestions in the review seem wildly off the mark, distorted, or inappropriate-- for example, that the book is clickbaity (it is scholarly) or conservative (hardly) or connected to the events at the Capitol (give me a break). 3/x

The core question: in what sense is classics inherently racist? Classics is old. On Adler's account, it begins in ancient Rome and is revived in the Renaissance. Slavery (Christiansen's primary concern) is also very old. Let's say classics is an education for slaveowners. 4/x

It's worth remembering that literacy itself is elite throughout most of this history. Literacy is, then, also the education of slaveowners. We can honor oral and musical traditions without denying that literacy is, generally, good. 5/x