Learning lessons: how listening makes us more local

How and why Toxoplasma makes us crazy.

For a long time, a latent toxoplasmosis, the lifelong presence of dormant stages of Toxoplasma in various tissues, including the brain, was considered harmless for immunocompetent persons. Within the past 10 years, however, many independent studies have shown that this parasitic disease, with a worldwide prevalence of about 30%, could be indirectly responsible for hundreds of thousands of death...

Evolution & Voting: How Nature Makes us Public Spirited

We reconsider the classic puzzle of why election turnouts are persistently so high even though formal analysis strongly suggests that rational agents should not vote. If we assume that voters are not making systematic mistakes, the most plausible explanation seems to be that agents receive benefits from the act of voting itself. This is very close to assuming the answer, however, and immediatel...

Evolution & Voting: How Nature Makes us Public Spirited (Preliminary)

We reconsider the classic puzzle of why election turnouts are persistently so high when formal analysis strongly suggests that rational agents should not vote. If we assume that voters are not making systematic mistakes, the most plausible explanation seems to be agents receive benefits from the act of voting itself. This is very close to assuming the answer, however, and immediately begs the q...

“ Truth from Trash . How Learning Makes Sense ”

This book is a risky bet. It is difficult to try to make sense from the so complex field that machine learning (ML) is today. It would be even harder if this were to be done in an informal way, avoiding mathematics as far as possible, and in scarcely more than 200 pages. And finally, to make the book amusing and enjoyable seems to me a bet on a losing horse. Even worse when the horse is made fr...

Polymeric Gas Separation Membranes: What Makes them Industrially more Attractive?