Cooperating bacteria are vulnerable to slackers : Not Exactly Rocket Science

Game theory applies to all living organisms. I was recently saying this to a surprised undergraduate. Yet, it is true, as this blog post from Not Exactly Rocket Science illustrates: Cooperating bacteria are vulnerable to slackers : Not Exactly Rocket Science. It tells the story of a kind of bacterial colony in which some members freeload on the efforts of the others to make the environment more nourishing for all members of the colony. In a range of population sizes of the colony, the freeloading bacteria do so well that they multiply faster than the rest. This advantage dissipates, however, when they become so preponderant in the population of the colony that the whole colony is weakened. It seems like these bacteria have figured out how to deal with the “tragedy of the commons”, where people (or living creatures of any kind) overexploit a common resource because it is in the benefit of each individual to do so, even if it harms the group.

Testing posterous -> WordPress blog by Gmail

This should show up on my wordpress.com site.

Embarrassing admission

So after saying on this blog that I would not buy Superfreakonomics, Amazon informed me it was shipped to me. It arrived today. Apparently, I had put a preorder in several weeks ago and totally forgot about it. OK then, I can now read that infamous chapter about global warming by myself. But not before I read the two dozen or so books that are ahead in the queue!

Dubner’s response to the “superfreakonomics” accusations

Read it here. I note it does not discuss Krugman’s criticism, which I deem serious, and which aired in a NYT blog, just as the freakonomics blog is a NYT blog. I am curious to see what their response will be to Krugman, if any. Dubner and Levitt can hardly say Krugman is spreading smears about them; they either misread the Weitzman article, or they did not. It looks like they misread it; it’s up to them to convince me otherwise.

I still have no intention of buying Superfreakonomics. I’ll be damned if I reward the authors and the publisher of such stuff that passes for science writing. Again, I will keep an eye open for any adequate answers by Levitt and Dubner; I have not seen any yet.

The “superfreakonomics” brouhaha continues

A bunch of links form today:

Matthew Yglesias, Mark Liberman, Mark Thoma. My elaboration of the last two is in my more scient-y site. It has some thoughts spurred by Liberman and Thoma’s posts.

More on Superfreakonomics and its early terrible reviews

Mark Thoma has a blog entry that quotes Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong and some responses from Levitt and Dubner. My curiosity continues (are Levitt and Dubner really this blinded by what they want to believe in?) but I most definitely will not buy or recommend this book.

Superfreakonomics appears to have jumped the shark

Error-riddled ‘Superfreakonomics’: New book pushes global cooling myths, sheer illogic, and “patent nonsense” — and the primary climatologist it relies on, Ken Caldeira, says “it is an inaccurate portrayal of me” and “misleading” in “many” places. « Climate Progress

Wow. I am shocked but not surprised. The need to appear smart by claiming counterintuitive results is widespread in academia.

Thebrowser.com

This is a wonderful site for finding good things to read. Why did I not pay it more attention until now? Who knows…

The “Nobel” prize in economics for 2009

Well-deserved praise for Ostrom, the one no economist expected to win, is in order. Williamson was a favorite to win for decades. I have very short comments in my other blog. I hope to write more there about the prizes later, but there are classes to prepare and homework assignments to grade…

The Daily Beast Seeks to Speed Up the Publishing Process for Books – NYTimes.com

The Daily Beast Seeks to Speed Up the Publishing Process for Books – NYTimes.com. This is a good idea, one of the side-effects of internet competition that pressures book publishers. I don’t think it will affect the kinds of books I purchase, in the main, though. They are not the kinds of things you can rush and their audience (including me) prefers quality to timeliness, within reason.