Jared Diamond and the anthropologists

From Razib Khan on Gene Expression:

I want to be clear that I think Jared Diamond is wrong on a lot of details, and many cultural anthropologists are rightly calling him out on that. But, they do a disservice to their message by politicizing their critique, and ascribing malevolence to all those who disagree with their normative presuppositions. Scholarship is hard enough without personalized politicization, and I stand by Jared Diamond’s right to be sincerely wrong without having his character assassinated. As the vehemence of my post suggests the only solution I can see to this ingrained tick among many cultural anthropologists is to drop the pretense of genteel discourse, and blast back at them with all the means at our disposal. Telling them to stick to facts nicely won’t do any good, these are trenchant critics of Social Darwinism who engage in the most bare-knuckle war of all-against-all when given any quarter. Coexistence in the academy is simply not possible with this particular culture, extirpation is the only long term ESS for the rest of us.

Update (Mar 27, from Sankaran Manikutty): Hi Anand, an interesting story I came across on Discover magazine's blog. Any thoughts on this? If so, open up the comment section and comment away.

Response (from Anand, 7:39 pm): Not worth my time.

Quantum algorithm performs a true calculation for the first time

From the University of Bristol:

An international research group led by scientists from the University of Bristol, UK, and the University of Queensland, Australia, has demonstrated a quantum algorithm that performs a true calculation for the first time. Quantum algorithms could one day enable the design of new materials, pharmaceuticals or clean energy devices. 

The team implemented the ‘phase estimation algorithm’ — a central quantum algorithm which achieves an exponential speedup over all classical algorithms.  It lies at the heart of quantum computing and is a key sub-routine of many other important quantum algorithms, such as Shor’s factoring algorithm and quantum simulations.

Dr Xiao-Qi Zhou, who led the project, said: “Before our experiment, there had been several demonstrations of quantum algorithms, however, none of them implemented the quantum algorithm without knowing the answer in advance. This is because in the previous demonstrations the quantum circuits were simplified to make it more experimentally feasible. However, this simplification of circuits required knowledge of the answer in advance. Unlike previous demonstrations, we built a full quantum circuit to implement the phase estimation algorithm without any simplification. We don’t need to know the answer in advance and it is the first time the answer is truly calculated by a quantum circuit with a quantum algorithm.”

Hindu Studies Post 3 - Blistering barnacles

Bad ideas are like barnacles. They have a tendency to hold on. In Hindu Studies, there has been this tendency to think that every opinion is created equal. This is an understandable intellectual response to the organizational nature of Hinduism. If there is no organization that can serve as an 'Authority' (as, for example, the Catholic Church for Catholicism), then surely, all opinions must be equal. (Ed Note: Of course, they are not). My thesis, as part of this series of posts, is that Hinduism is different from other religions in that it does not possess a hierarchical structure but rather has a network structure. This is the reason for the mistaken intellectual response that you often see.

The same sort of mistake, oddly enough, also happens in India Studies, but it may be a bit more involved to state why. The reason is incentives. Professors have no incentive to point out mistakes in the work of others. Tenure decisions are not made based on how much you help other academics correct their analysis. It is much better to execute a policy of 'live and let live' wherein nobody finds fault with anybody else. This strategy is a Nash equilibrium. And not surprisingly, that is exactly what professors do.

Unfortunately for these professors, they are many of us who know that not all opinions are indeed created equal. An academic paper is much more likely to convince if it has the backing of sound mathematical statistics and solid numbers. The non-mathematical approach to academe continues to be popular, but it is unfortunately a recipe for disaster. What we have in place of actual intellectual analysis is a perfect storm of confusion. In the case of Hinduism, billions of people with billions of ideas about their faith, all of them somehow treated as correct. In the case of India Studies, hundreds of academics with conflicting ideas about India, all of them somehow consistent. I suppose anything else would be considered 'privileging' according to the so-called Theories of Power fancied by the Marxists.

Below is an example of this sort of a mess. The article I had linked to before by Paul Brass clearly suffers from this same sort of a non-mathematical analysis problem. The author argues that secularism in India is somehow different from that in other countries. To a social scientist, this is an inconsistent, even bizarre, position. Why is it be different? Why should it be different? Why are the social scientific methodologies that are already providing excellent insights on the economics and political economy of India invalid? The answer is straightforward : they are not.

Assorted links on secularism in India

Assorted links on secularism in India:

1. Secularism in India
2. Indian Secularism in Practice
3. Legalizing Religion : The Indian Supreme Court and Secularism

Also, see the Wikipedia article on Secularism in India.

Happy, snappy tweets

From the New Scientist:

Want to be popular on Twitter? There are plenty of people who claim they can help, but their tips rarely work and many of them are scammers. Now scientists have joined in, boiling down half a million tweets to a few simple rules for gaining a following. 

C.J. Hutto (@cjhutto on Twitter) and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta examined the content and retweeting fate of tweets sent by 500 non-celebrities over a 15-month period. They looked for 2800 terms that convey positive and negative emotions, including slang and swear words, a set of emoticons and common acronyms, like LOL. 

By giving each term a score on a sliding scale of positivity they were able to assess whether Twitter users who used each term gained or lost followers. The keys to success, they found, were to tweet positive messages, write clearly and retweet interesting titbits of news.

Block throwing robot

While on the topic of robots, here is a video that is too cool to not post. Behold BigDog! Boston-based Boston Dynamics has developed a four-legged robot called BigDog, which has a throwing arm strong enough to throw cinder blocks. See below. Enjoy!

Update (Mar 3): Updated post with typos fixed, etc.

Making mobile robots work together

From McGill University comes news of novel, innovative uses for robotic technology:

The danger that icebergs represent to both shipping and to the underwater cables that traverse the ocean floors is very real. It’s tricky for satellites to identify icebergs, and almost impossible to accurately predict the level of risk they present. Drifting clouds can make it difficult to see the movements of sea ice as well as the underwater shape of the icebergs that determines their movement and whether they are a threat. This is why ships moving off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks and the coast of Labrador are asked to report their position and ice observation to Ice St. John’s every six hours.  

But one of the goals of the newly formed NSERC Canadian Field Robotics Network (NCFRN), led by McGill University Computer Science professor Gregory Dudek, is to find ways to solve this problem by using robots to monitor both the above ground and underwater dimensions of icebergs. This is just one of many applications made possible by this network, which will develop robotic tools that will not only enhance our ability to measure and understand the Canadian environment, but will advance planetary exploration as well.