Catching Up With Life

Scarcity is rearing its ugly head once again. It seems that to the online and the physical lives or at least mine is not that integrated and it simply a case of not wanting to make a choice. Its oktoberfest friday, WordCamp Philippines Saturday Whole Day and Alumni HomeComing Saturday Evening. I’ve got around a thousand things to read in my feed reader and about 80 tabs of very long articles that I’ve decided I wanted to learn, a couple of books to read for fun, a couple of books to learn from for fun and a couple a whole lot of friends I’d like/love to hang out with. The thing is choices are choices and if choosing life means clicking mark all read or forgoing less important events , we have to choose.

We have set our lives in such a way as to maximize our choices creating the paradox that we actually create less choices for ourselves. I often hear people almost saying I’d like to do that, I’d like to try that. Too often that those words have turned into valueless words for me, they signify nothing, I don’t know at least I haven’t given up on people, When I hear those words I still try to help people if I can to help them towards something they want. I’ve just learned to keep my emotions in check because I used to get so frustrated by the lot of humanity who complains a lot but seems to never have enough to do anything about their predicament. Truth be told I was and still am part of that sorry lot, I constantly try to remove myself but it is something that is extremely hard to wrench out of your system.

I love the Choices taht I have, I owe them to God, My Parents and my Family, My Friends, My Teachers and the Lot of people who have done so much to open doors, to enrich me, to expand my horizons, to finetune my views and all in all make me a much better person.

CAST AWAY the shackles of choice and realize that choice is FREEDOM or ENSLAVEMENT, and its all up to us. And this is the RUB “YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE FREEDOM”

Idea For The Day 2008 09 03

Hmm, I think that maybe we can do something like this, accumulate lots of data to help people minimize visits to the doctors and the lab test. Need to study this further.
Thanks To Brad Delong , from here:

Clinical and Actuarial Judgment

Cosma Shalizi on how we are not as smart as the simple linear models our computers can estimate:

Clinical and Actuarial Judgment Compared: For something like fifty years now, psychologists have been studying the question of “clinical versus actuarial judgment”…. Say you’re interested in diagnosing heart diseases from electrocardiograms. Normally we have clinicians, i.e., expert doctors, look at a chart…. Alternately, we could ask the experts what features they look at, when making their prognosis, and then fit a statistical model to that data, trying to predict the outcome or classification based on those features…. This is the actuarial approach, since it’s just based on averages — “of patients with features x, y and z, q percent have a serious heart condition”.
The rather surprising, and completely consistent, result of these studies is that there are no known cases where clinicians reliably out-perform actuarial methods, even when the statistical models are just linear classification rules…. In many areas, statistical classifiers significantly out-perform human experts. They even out-perform experts who have access to the statistical results, apparently because the experts place too much weight on their own judgment…. [H]uman experts are… no better than simple statistical models.
On the other hand, there is another body of experimental work, admittedly more recent, on “simple heuristics that make us smart”, which seems to show that people are often very good judges, under natural conditions. That is to say, we’re very good at solving the problems we tend to actually encounter, presented in the way we encounter them. The heuristics we use to solve those problems may not be generally applicable, but they are adapted to our environments, and, in those environments, are fast, simple and effective.
I have a bit of difficulty reconciling these two pictures in my mind. I can think of three resolutions.

  1. The “clinicial versus actuarial” results… do not reflect the “natural” conditions of clinical judgment…. What one really wants is a representative sample of actual cases, comparing the normal judgment of clinicians to that of the statistical models. This may have been done; I don’t know.
  2. The “fast and frugal heuristics” results are… irrelevant…. [A]daptive mechanisms [that] let us figure out good heuristics in everyday life don’t apply in the situations where we rely on clinical expertise…. [S]omething… about the conditions of clinicial judgment… render our normal cognitive mechanisms ineffective there.
  3. Clinicial judgment is a “fast and frugal heuristic”, with emphasis on the fast and frugal…. [C]linicians are… as accurate as one can get, using only a reasonable amount of information and a reasonable amount of time, while still using the human brain, which is not a computing platform well-suited to floating-point operations…

I am unable to judge between these.

Learned Today 2008 09 02

Relics like lectures have to give way to the advances in cognitive sciences specifically, we must account for the fact that we know a whole lot more on how we learn (ok, not that much but enough). This means that we must have more interactive classes, more lab and less lectures. The sad thing is that I think that only a few people specially from my alma mater try to buck these relics of the past. I long for the day when instead of lectures we have coaches. If the academic programs can learn something from the sports programs its that coaches are also good teachers and its mainly due to how they teach.

from Brad Delong here, do read the whole thing:

Why Are We Here? (In a Big Lecture, That Is)

Why do we still have big lecture courses in universities? It is somewhat of a mystery…
The Pre-Gutenberg University:

  • Universities have their origins in the medieval need of the powerful to train theologians (for the church) and to train judges (for the emperor and the kings of France, England, Castile, and other kingdoms.
  • A manuscript hand-copied book back in 1000 cost roughly the same share of average annual income as $50,000 is today.
  • Hence if you have a “normal” college–eight semesters, four courses a semester–and demand that people buy and read one book a course, you are talking the equivalent of $1.6M in book outlay. Can’t be done.
  • Hence you assemble the hundred or so people who want to read Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy in a room, and have the professor read to them–hence lecture, lecturer, from the Latin lector, reader–while they frantically take notes because they are likely to never see a copy of that book again once they are out in the world administering justice in Wuerzburg or wherever…
  • Choosing

    On a personal note since graduation I’ve noticed people getting gym memberships and the marked improvement in their self images. I feel that its the fact that when you really start to choose for yourself , choosing becomes easier and its self reinforcing.  I read somewhere that we have a limited amount of self control but as we practice more self control this limit expands. I feel that this is the same thing, after finally deciding to improve and bit by bit trying to improve we expand this self control.

    So if we could get people to exercise more, would they become more risk-loving, want less insurance, make more aggressive investments, and induce faster economic growth?  Would this be a good thing?

    That’s Robin Hanson, the basic empirical result is that physically weaker people are more risk-averse in a wide variety of settings.

    from Overcoming Bias blog here.

    OktoberFest

    Punta Tayo!! More Accurately punta ako text ninyo ako if nasa area kayo!
    from here:

    Yup, you read that right, San Miguel Pale Pilsen is bringing Third Eye Blind to Manila for the grand opening of this year’s Oktoberfest. On September 5, this world renowned rock band, along with Philippine’s top bands will be gracing one of the four stages along San Miguel Avenue. San Miguel is aiming to break two Guiness records with this year’s grand Oktoberfest: the most number of people toasting, and the longest bar. Apart from the copious amounts of beer, participants can also interact with SMB’s personalities, like Efren Bata Reyes and PBA players.

    How Gyms Really Work

    Actually this is how gyms work, they just dropped the pretenses.
    thanks to Marginal Revolutions:

    Peter Risager, a loyal MR reader, relays the following to me:

    A Danish chain of gyms is now offering membership free of charge, with the only caveat that you have to show up, in order for the membership to be free. If you fail to show up once per week you will be billed the normal monthly membership fee for that month. This should solve the problem with incentives that gym-membership normally carries – there is suddenly a very large (membership is around 85$ per month) incentive to show up each week.

    He offers also a link in Danish.

    In The Face Of Changes

    Just got a raise, Its not big but in the high inflationary environment we are in coupled with the growing pains of adulthood I’ll take what I can.
    I’ve been very vocal with my urging of friends to not change lifestyles after a pay raise and the like. I still remember last saturday when Rain and I somewhat ganged up on Jizelle for her “lifestyle changes”.
    We were just doing those things for fun. Its nice (and quite entertaining) to make people conscious of the changes they undergo. Oft times when they are not too mindful of a majority of the moments of their lives people change a lot without realizing it. This happens often enough that the change comes too fast and in a relatively short time we sometimes no longer recognize who we already have become. This is somewhat problematic for people who do not take great pains on being true to themselves at almost all times because sometimes we become or have turned into a something who we (or at least our former selves) do not like.
    This is one of the challenges of adulthood trying to find your center what some people call “wal” where we retreat to in times of distress, Where although almost everything around and most definitely about us is changing , this is what stays the same.
    I’ve always lived mindfully and have suffered a constant battle within because of this.  When lying/lies are the one of the most potent of tools to use against a lot of the pain, doubt , questions, and the tragedies that we encounter losing the capability or at least the knee jerk reaction of not facing reality becomes a stake unto itself.When one can only see too well into ones own lies, One becomes naked to self-examination, and when one sees who we really are we may or may not understand what has become of us.
    But the Sorrow of Truth is the Happiness of Reality, For one can only love something when you know that thing, If not know at least have an Idea what the essence of that thing is, and in this place of Sorrow and Happiness one can truly love ones self.
    I’ve made my choice and its A choice I’ve long made and have never regretted. I try to live as someone who knows who I am warts and all and have suffered through it. I look at myself in the mirror and do not regret the image that I see. I am who I am by the force of my environment but also by the force of my will.
    In The Face Of Changes the one that can change and not change at all is the same person.

    rePost: ‘Man of mercy’ lost own life saving others

    We call them hero but let them fly in not air safe 50 year old planes (maybe more), knowing that the fleet is not safe but because of a lack of anything to replace them insisting they fly to their deaths. We must stop this We call them heroes but we let them die over and over again. They are not only heroes but martyrs Their politicians fly first class whilst their people fly to their graves. What to say, but Sorry For We Did Nothing.
    from Philstar here

    ‘Man of mercy’ lost own life saving others
    Thursday, August 28, 2008
    Air Force Maj. Manuel Zambrano was known as the “man of mercy” who flew food and medicine to typhoon victims in Eastern Samar and evacuated Filipinos from war-torn Iraq, and he died ferrying troops to the front in Mindanao.
    People trapped in floods in Borongan, Eastern Samar clapped their hands when Zambrano successfully landed a C-130 aircraft loaded with food and medicine on an unpaved airstrip five months ago.
    The 39-year-old seasoned military pilot also had to fly a C-130 thousands of kilometers into a war zone to rescue Filipino workers after the US invaded Iraq.
    Zambrano also ferried Filipino doctors to help typhoon victims in Myanmar.
    He flew medicine and a medical team to help tsunami victims in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
    “He died so that others may live,” Air Force chief Lt. Gen. Pedrito Cadungog said.
    Last Monday, Zambrano was piloting a C-130 from Davao International Airport when it burst into flames and crashed shortly after takeoff.
    The military aircraft had just unloaded Army Scout Rangers from Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija.
    Cadungog said while emerging from the aircraft in an airstrip in Borongan, Eastern Samar five months ago, he was moved to see people clapping their hands.

    rePost: Filipino teachers continue to fly to US for higher pay

    A recession bound USA offers probably more opportunities for enrichment than our small country the Philippines. Sad but there are tens of thousands of teachers from the Philippines without work. I remember a conversation I had with the Filipino Couple we had met on the hotel in Thailand a couple of years back. They had two house helps who graduated as Education Majors , or even the feature in a GMA documentary of a Domestic Helper working in Hong Kong who also graduated with a degree in education, or I could go on and on. The problem is not how many teachers our country has but that the best are leaving to educate the young ones of another country. A country that could at least pay them a higher percentage of what they really are worth. That’s modernday international trade for you. Welcome to the Philippines the No Exporter of Human Resources.

    Filipino teachers continue to fly to US for higher pay
    By Cynthia Balana
    Philippine Daily Inquirer
    First Posted 17:51:00 08/28/2008
    Most Read
    Other Most Read Stories x
    MANILA, Philippines—More and more competent Filipino teachers are flocking to the United States where they are paid more, according to the Philippine Embassy in Washington.
    The embassy, in a statement, said that only last week, 93 Filipino teachers arrived in the US and were welcomed by Philippine Ambassador to Washington Willy Gaa.
    The new arrivals attended orientation seminars organized by the embassy where they were also given “practical advice” to ease their transition into a new teaching environment.
    The 93 teachers will be teaching special education classes, focusing on Mathematics, Science and English subjects in public schools in Prince George’s County in Maryland.
    Gaa said the new recruits followed a group of 115 teachers who were also welcomed by the embassy last July.
    The first batch of Filipino teachers moved to Maryland in 2005. As of the fall of 2006, 400 Filipino teachers were already in Baltimore City alone.

    rePost: One Visayas

    I respect the jest that this comment was said, but I don’t know sometimes some joke must be left unsaid.
    from Inquirer here do read the whole thing its a short post:

    Past Forward
    One Visayas
    By Jobers Bersales
    Cebu Daily News
    First Posted 12:44:00 08/28/2008
    Antique Gov. Sally Zaldivar-Perez charmed — or maybe I should say outsmarted — the local media last week when, at the presscon following the initial meeting for what will tantamount to be the largest Visayas-wide culture and arts festival early next year. She was asked if this was nothing more than a political vehicle to propel Gov. Gwen Garcia to a national position in 2010. Her answer was an unexpected “Why not?” quickly followed by “I would be happy if this would evolve into a political movement that would eventually make Governor Garcia the Prime Minister of the Federal State of the Visayas.” This left the media stunned, unable to react while Governor Garcia was left shaking her head in bemused denial.