Category: Social World

Scale of the Universe: 62 Orders of Magnitude (1062)

Scale of the Universe 2, by Cary and Michael Huang. WARNING: look out for ads on the site.

In a modern variant on the Powers of Ten video, Cary and Michael Huang have created an excellent flash game that spans the scale of the universe, from the smallest, only hypothesized particles, through atomic, human, planetary, and galactic scales (to name a but a few), to the size of the universe itself. It goes further than the Cell Size and Scale flash app.

The link is here, but look out for an advertisement that takes up the game window, which will eventually let you through (or you can click the “Skip Ad” link on the bottom right of the ad).

Will the New Arab Democracies Survive?

The key countries at the heart of the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Image adapted from Wikimedia Commons User:Danalm000.

What are the chances that the revolutions of the Arab Spring succeed at creating democracies? According to a regression model created Jay Ulfelder: maybe.

[T]he probability that each of those new democracies would make it to their sixth birthday…:

  • Tunisia: 82%
  • Egypt: 48%
  • Libya: 89%

Ulfelder’s blog post is worth the read. It’s an excellent (if somewhat technical) example of how to do (and write up) some quick research, and how the ability to blog is changing the way scientists share ideas, and get feedback (check out the comments section).

Different Types of Values

There are some things in this world that we are willing to trade, things that we can put a dollar value on, but there are other things — call them sacred things — values and beliefs that just don’t register on any monetary scale. New research (summarized by Keim, 2012) emphasizes this intuitive understanding, by showing that different part of the brain are used to evaluate these two different types of things.

[W]hen people didn’t sell out their principles, it wasn’t because the price wasn’t right. It just seemed wrong. “There’s one bucket of things that are utilitarian, and another bucket of categorical things,” [neuroscientist Greg Berns] said. “If it’s a sacred value to you, then you can’t even conceive of it in a cost-benefit framework.”

— Keim, 2012: Profit vs. Principle: The Neurobiology of Integrity in Wired (via The Dish).

Some of the biggest implications of this work has to do with economics. The traditional, rational view has been that people evaluate everything by comparing the costs versus the benefits. When economists take that rational view of human behavior into other fields, there is a strong sense of overreach (see Freakonomics).

The growing research into behavioral economics, on the other hand, is making a spirited effort grapple with the irrationality of human behavior, much of which probably stems from these two different value systems (sacred vs. cost/benefit). While it’s not exactly the same thing, Dan Ariely‘s books are a good, popular compilation of observations and anecdotes that highlight how people’s irrational behavior extends even into the marketplace.

The Last 100 Years: World History as Seen from the U.S.

YouTube user derDon1234 has compiled an interesting video montage of historical events over the last 100 years. derDon1234 makes some interesting choices about what to show — condensed into 10 minutes — but it’s a valuable perspective, with some fascinating and poignant video. It’s worth a look.

The Emergence of Capitalism in China

Planet Money recounts the story of the seminal document that, in 1979, sparked the transformation of China’s economy into capitalism.

A key thing to note: the document was a contract, which assigned property rights to individuals (families actually) rather than the collective. And even though the contract could not be legally binding in communist China, the signers had to be confident enough that it would be respected — by each other at the least.

The result of the change was a 5 fold increase in the amount of food produced by the farm.

Despite the risks, they decided they had to try this experiment — and to write it down as a formal contract, so everyone would be bound to it. By the light of an oil lamp, Yen Hongchang wrote out the contract.

The farmers agreed to divide up the land among the families. Each family agreed to turn over some of what they grew to the government, and to the collective. And, crucially, the farmers agreed that families that grew enough food would get to keep some for themselves.

The contract also recognized the risks the farmers were taking. If any of the farmers were sent to prison or executed, it said, the others in the group would care for their children until age 18.

— Kestenbaum and Goldstein (2010): The Secret Document That Transformed China on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Based on the quotes from the story, the market vs. socialist simulation game seems to capture much of the farmers’ real motivations.

How Primary Elections Work

C.B.P. Grey explains how primary elections work. Right now the Republican Party is conducting its primaries to choose a candidate to face Pres. Obama in the November general elections, and all their debates, as well as the sequence of primaries highlighting different parts of the United States, provides for a quite interesting view of the social and political diversity in the country. The video below, however, focuses on the details of the voting process.