2011年12月23日 星期五

平均可活到87歲以上

今天發趙老大的這封信
總想起Simon 先生在世時
我很天真
認為根據統計
他平均可活到87歲以上
真慚愧


感謝趙老師
今天春節前的餐會 改由我做東 請趙兄和林兄等選餐廳
("投票那天午餐"的主意似乎不錯)
趙老大閒來或可讀顧少川前妻的回憶錄
No Feast Lasts Forever《沒有不散的筵席》
一笑


Dear HC,


"聽到「鄉音」而淚流

那樣的一天,似乎也近了。"



Another story: One year ago, I met professor LJ Wei (a world famous bio-statistician) and said the average life span for men in Taiwan is 73.9, and I am sure I am in the 95% interval. One week ago, I met a friend in 國家衛生院, he said, don't worry, for men in Taipei, the average is 79 point something ...


Min-Te

2011年12月2日 星期五

一所工商學院的設計

Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossr...
這本漢譯缺索引
不過還是可以知道在末章引用Herbert A. Simon 的 一所工商學院的設計 (頁312)
2008年哈佛大學商學院慶百年的討論主題之一
各著名管理學院的個案在2009年有一小段檢討

MBA教育再思考 : 十字路口的工商管理教育

2011年11月21日 星期一

醫療專家系統

台灣這則新聞讓人想起 Simon 人工科學 書中的 醫療專家系統 在70年年代末已經建立




作家吳淡如最近在廣播節目,請醫師答覆call in電話,為了不讓醫師背上「隔空問診」的違法問題,請工作人員代接電話,轉述回答。 吳淡如上午接受台視獨家訪問表示,節目中特別提醒民眾一定要去看醫師,還說衛生署如果真要查,應該先查地下電台。 藝人吳淡如主持廣播節目,請來醫師回答Call in,只是這樣的節目現在卻疑似被盯上,就因為涉嫌醫師親自隔空問診的內容。 斬釘截鐵地說,就是過敏性鼻炎,到底是衛教宣傳,還是問診,醫師說他們心中也有一把尺,怎麼可能傻到跟著遊走法律邊緣。 衛生署表示,其實call in宣傳衛教問題都可以,只是一旦有診斷,就會違反醫事法。 節目企圖透過工讀生轉述規避罰則,但衛生署表示,根本就無效,重點在於醫師尺度拿捏,只能建議,不能斷定,否則依舊是違反醫事法。

2011年11月2日 星期三

日本Olympus 公司的諾貝爾經濟學獎者Robert Mundell醜聞

日本Olympus 公司的諾貝爾經濟學獎者Robert Mundell醜聞

Nobel Economist Served on Olympus Board
Olympus added its first-ever outside directors in 2005, shortly before making four acquisitions that have engulfed the camera maker in controversy. Among the outside directors was Nobel-laureate economist Robert Mundell.

2011年10月27日 星期四

John McCarthy (1927-2011)

John McCarthy (September 4, 1927 – October 24, 2011)[1][2][3][4][5] was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist who received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He was responsible for the coining of the term "Artificial Intelligence" in his 1955 proposal for the 1956 Dartmouth Conference and was the inventor of the LISP programming language.

John McCarthy (computer scientist) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


[綜合整理報導]倡導以數學邏輯發展人工智慧,Lisp語言發明者,曾榮獲被譽為計算機科學領域諾貝爾獎─杜林獎的John McCarthy本周於家中逝世,享年84歲。

McCarthy 倡導以數學邏輯發展人工智慧,於1958年提出advice taker概念,激發後來的問答系統與邏輯程式的發展,並曾發明garbage collection,自動管理不用的記憶體,解決了程式語言LISP所面臨的問題,LISP後來成為人工智慧領域最受歡迎的程式語言。

McCarthy從小就展現他在數學上的天份,大學進入數學系時跳級兩年,最後取得普林斯頓大學(Princeton University)數學博士。以下是關於這位元電腦大師的簡介:

-1927年生於美國波士頓

-1948年,加州理工,數學學士

-1951年,普林斯頓大學,數學博士

-1956年Dartmouth會議的發起人(該會議被視為AI作為一門學科誕生的標誌)

-1955年在為該會議寫的建議書中提出Artificial Intelligence一詞,從而被視為“人工智慧之父”

-1958,發明Lisp程式設計語言(該語言至今仍在人工智慧領域廣泛使用)

-1960左右,提出電腦分時(time-sharing)概念    

-1971因對AI的貢獻獲圖靈獎

–1985獲得IJCAI(the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence)頒發的第一屆”Research Excellence Award”(可看作是AI的終身成就獎)

-1991年獲得“美國國家科學獎”(National Medal of Science Award)

2011年10月可說是科技界傷心的時期,10月5日賈伯斯逝世、10月13日 C 語言之父 Dennis Ritchie 逝世,如今又一顆巨星殞落。(本文部份轉載自36氪)



 有「人工智慧之父」稱譽的美國科學家麥卡錫(John McCarthy)24日逝世,享年84歲。麥卡錫發明Lisp語言,這種程式言語為開發聲控系統科技鋪路,可說是蘋果iPhone 4S的Siri聲控技術之先驅。

   香港星島日報報導,麥卡錫任教於史丹福大學超過40年,校方表示麥卡錫在位於帕洛阿爾托的家中逝世,但沒有提及他的死因。這是繼編寫C程式語言及 UNIX系統之父里奇(Dennis Ritchie)和蘋果創辦人賈伯斯(Steve Jobs)之後,再有矽谷科技先驅在10月離開人世,社交網站twitter充斥悼念麥卡錫的悼文。

  麥卡錫是人工智慧(Artificial Intelligence;AI)發展的先驅,他在1955年於1份研究動議創立了「人工智慧」一詞,認為學習或智能可以機械模仿。

  麥卡錫後來創立麻省理工學院人工智慧實驗室及史丹福大學人工智慧實驗室,並在1965年至1980年間擔任後者的院長。

  在1958年,麥卡錫發明Lisp言語,這種程式言語為開發聲控系統科技鋪路,其中1種聲控系統Siri,已使用於最新蘋果產品iPhone 4S之上。

  此外,麥卡錫也開創電腦分時操作的構念,讓多名用戶透過1部電腦就能參與互動,為現今電腦雲端技術打下基石。

  麥卡錫曾在1971年獲頒發電腦界的最高榮譽圖靈獎。此外,他分別在1988年及1990年獲得京都獎和美國國家科學獎章。

2011年10月16日 星期日

從心理學評介胡適談中國禪學的發展(鍾 漢清)這篇應用許多Simon先生的論點


紀念胡適之先生110 冥誕

主題: 紀念胡適之先生110 冥誕

時間: 2011年12月17日/ 10:00-12:00

地址:台北市新生南路三段88號2樓
電話:(02) 23650127

題目: 
從心理學評介胡適談中國禪學的發展
(鍾 漢清)這篇應用許多Simon先生的論點

2011年10月10日 星期一

Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims/ 理性預期理論(rational expectations)

Simon 在預測等方面 在歐洲維也納編的作業研究刊物 有精彩的說明.....

----
FT 的標題翻譯總要添油加醋
Lex專欄:諾貝爾獎沒“惡搞”
Lex_Nobel in economics

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has a mischievous bent. At a time when everyone including the Queen of England wonders why economists did not anticipate the financial crisis and still cannot agree a cure, the academy awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize (it is not technically a Nobel) to two American professors synonymous with economic modelling. It is popular to question Thomas Sargent's line of work these days. In the 1970s, he revelled in the complex economic models that were the foundation of the so-called dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models now ubiquitous in central bank decision making. More important, he introduced into these models the burgeoning field of rational expectations – another idea increasingly under fire.


瑞典皇家科學院(Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)可真是喜歡“惡搞”。就在包括英國女王在內的所有人都想知道,為何經濟學家未能預見到金融危機、甚至到現在都拿不出一致對策的時候,瑞典皇家科學院卻將諾貝爾經濟學獎(Sveriges Riksbank Prize,嚴格說來,這並非諾貝爾獎)授予了兩位堪稱“經濟建模代名詞”的美國教授。這段時間,質疑托馬斯•薩金特(Thomas Sargent)所從事職業的做法已經十分流行。上世紀70年代,薩金特沉迷於復雜的經濟模型,建立了所謂的動態隨機一般均衡模型(DSGE)。如今,央行在進行決策時都要用到這些模型。而更重要的是,他在這些模型中引入了當時剛開始興起的理性預期——這在眼下已經成為又一個越發受到抨擊的觀點。

But to blame the current economic problems in the US or Europe on policymakers' over-reliance on models is unfair. Few think neuroscientific research is pointless just because we still know so little about the brain. In a speech last year, Christopher Sims, the co-prize winner, highlighted the many academics now focused on improving these models to understand better how financial shocks affect the economy. A little late, but a worthy aim nevertheless.


但將當前美國或歐洲的經濟問題歸咎於政策制定者過於依賴模型,則有失公平。很少有人認為神經科學研究沒有意義,這正是因為我們對於大腦所知甚少。與薩金特分享這一獎項的克里斯托弗•西姆斯(Christopher Sims)在去年的一次演講中強調,目前許多學者都專注於改進這些模型​​,以更好地了解金融衝擊是如何影響經濟的。儘管這來得有點晚,但仍頗具意義。

Forecasting will remain hard. Each crisis, however, brings more data to analyse. Prof Sims, for example, won his gong for advancing the crunching of numbers to draw out causes and effects of economic changes or shocks. This is useful stuff, whatever its predictive power. Both laureates have advanced their early work. Prof Sargent now recognises that people get confused sometimes, while Prof Sim models the fact that we all can only take in so much information while thinking about the future.


預測仍將是艱難的。不過,每一次危機都提供了更多可供分析的數據。比方說,西姆斯教授獲得諾貝爾獎,是由於他發展了用於分析經濟轉變或危機的原因和影響的數據處理方法。這是一種有用的工具,無論它的預測力如何。兩位得主都改進了他們早期的工作。薩金特現在承認,人們時常會犯糊塗,而西姆斯則針對“所有人在考慮未來時都只能吸收這麼多信息”這一事實建立了模型。

Just because economists get it wrong doesn't mean they should stop trying. Congratulations to you both.


不能僅僅因為經濟學家弄錯了,就認為他們應停止嘗試。恭喜二位。



Lex專欄是由FT評論家聯合撰寫的短評,對全球經濟與商業進行精闢分析


譯者/陳雲飛






「理性預期」助破困局 美雙傑獲經濟獎 2011諾貝爾獎 2011年 10月11日 【綜合報導】深究「理性預期」理論而徹底改變總體經濟學的兩位美國經濟學家,昨天成了今年諾貝爾經濟獎得主。瑞典皇家科學會讚譽,兩人的研究成果解析了財經政策與實際效果之間的關係,使當前無論是研究經濟理論,或是政府施政,都獲得更好的工具。
紐約大學教授薩金特(Thomas J. Sargent)與普林斯頓大學教授席姆斯(Christopher A. Sims)共同獲獎,將共享約4600萬元台幣獎金。
理論解釋央行決策 席姆斯昨說:「我和薩金特的理論對於協助我們走出當前的經濟困局,非常重要。」席姆斯說他沒有簡單答案,「我要知道,一定馬上告訴全世界。」
席姆斯主要獲獎研究是「向量自回歸模型」,可解釋為何央行的利率動作通常要一兩年後才會對物價出現實際效果。他曾與現任美國聯準會主席柏南克在普林斯頓一同研究。
薩 金特得知獲獎時正要出門上課,他開玩笑說:「我今天要教兩堂課,我不曉得這算不算慶祝。」薩金特獲獎理論是「結構性總體經濟學」。他指出,二次世界大戰結 束後,西方政府由於預期會出現一波超級通膨,嚴陣以待,各方都預期嚴打通膨的高利率政策將出現;結果這種心態反而直接壓制了物價上漲,升息大刀還沒動用, 物價已恢復平穩。
學者出身的經建會主委劉憶如表示,薩金特受到芝加哥大學理性預期學派大師、1995年諾貝爾經濟學獎得主盧卡斯啟發甚深,過去 10年更將以歐洲為何自1980年代以後,失業率始終高於美國為研究主題,得到結論就是在動盪不安、高風險的年代,一個國家基於保護勞工就業權利的前提 下,所提出的保護勞工政策,反而會造成就業市場大餅萎縮,且勞工一旦失業就會陷入長期失業的困境,無法達到保護勞工的政策目的。
保護勞工影響就業 劉憶如舉例,歐洲解僱勞工的成本很高, 且歐洲國家給予失業者的救助金都很好,但是卻造成歐洲企業降低聘僱歐洲員工的意願,使得整體歐洲就業市場萎縮。她對照台灣現況指出,在2005年前後台灣 也有很多保護勞工的政策,例如提高聘僱外籍白領員工門檻、取消本國勞工試用期等政策,但現在看起來確實造成一些衝擊。
用統計方式去實證 永豐金首席經濟學家黃蔭基昨說,薩金特主張的「理性預期」,是指人們會透過學習去對政府政策做反應,如美國總統歐巴馬實施減稅和企業投資抵減措施,民眾會認為這些優惠未來都將付出代價,反因準備未來繳稅、而減少消費,導致失業率仍高掛、房市仍無起色。這兩人得獎表彰理性預期學派大師在理論和計量實證的貢獻。台經院所長楊家彥說,以往總體經濟學較缺乏實證理論基礎,此次得獎的兩位學者,透過統計方式帶入總體經濟學加以實證,值得肯定。
報你知
理性預期理論心態影響經濟 理性預期理論(rational expectations)解釋的是人的預期心理與經濟、政策的互動關係。例如,如果央行設定物價增幅上限目標,民間會以此目標當薪資調幅參考,避免薪資刺激物價飛漲。
於是央行不必真正升息,一樣能透過「預期心理」掌控物價。紐西蘭等國央行已採用這個理論,明定「通膨目標化」,是理性預期理論拿來應用的例子。

****
據說他們的方法已入教科書 據孤陋者如筆者 Simon 先生從公共事務 如都市再生和規劃等 解釋所謂"理性預期理論(rational expectations)"




American Economists Win Nobel Prize Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims are credited with uncovering the two-way relationship between government policy and the economy. By Josh Voorhees | Posted Monday, Oct. 10, 2011, at 10:05 AM ET
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Two Americans were awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in economics on Monday for their research into the cause-and-effect relationship between economic policy and the broader economy as a whole.

The two men, Thomas Sargent of New York University and Christopher Sims of Princeton University, carried out their research independently in the 1970s and ‘80s, but their work “is highly relevant today as world governments and central banks seek ways to steer their economies away from another recession,” the Associated Press reports.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that awards the prize said the two economists, both 68, had developed methods for answering questions such as how GDP and inflation are affected by temporary interest rate hikes or a tax cut.

"Today, the methods developed by Sargent and Sims are essential tools in macroeconomic analysis," the academy said in its citation.

Here’s how the New York Times summed up their research: “Their work uses statistical analysis to disentangle the question of whether a policy change that happened in the past affected the economy or whether it was made in anticipation of events that policymakers thought would happen later. This research has also helped economists better understand how people’s expectations for policy affect the economy.”

2011年10月9日 星期日

再開個simon university 遙遙無期

The University of Wherever By BILL KELLER
讀此文 想起:
我10年前就夢想開個網路"大學"
幾年後 我自覺沒這本事 就在pc home 的"新聞台"
開個simon university
由於那時後朋友多為譯人 所以將焦點放在翻譯

2011年10月1日 星期六

Mies van der Rohe 與 H. A. Simon

著名的建築書 Mies van der Rohe 是 Simon 在ITT的同事
那時候Simon 也是都市計畫/設計的名師
他有次請教Mies 如何取得一些著名的案子
Mies 說......喝完一/三杯之後
雇主多半接受他新奇的設計 (大意)
---

參考 ITT的校園設計:
凡.得.羅:鋼骨玻璃之美 收入《人與空間的對話:漢寶德看建築》

2011年9月12日 星期一

WellPoint Hires Watson, IBM's Computer Project

此則新聞似乎只是電腦協助醫療的實例而已

WSJ

Watson, the "Jeopardy!"-playing computer system, is getting a job.

WellPoint Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are set to announce a deal on Monday for the health insurer to use the Watson technology, the first time the high-profile project will result in a commercial application.

WellPoint said it plans to use Watson's data-crunching to help suggest treatment options and diagnoses to doctors. It is part of a far broader push in the health industry to incorporate computerized guidance into care, as doctors and hospitals adopt electronic medical records and other digital tools that can record, track and check their work.

2011年8月29日 星期一

Christopher Alexander


Christopher Alexander的論文是少數SIMON 在最新版 人工科學一書中的參考名單中拿掉的
我問題Simon 這問題 他沒給我肯定的答覆
或許他選用另外一本偏重 CAD的新書
或許他不贊成Christopher Alexander的博士後的 pattern language之發展
或許他倆在設計方法界上有些過節

Christopher Alexander
(1936– )

Vienna-born English architect and theorist, he settled in the USA in 1960. Believing that there are universal ‘timeless’ principles of form and space in architecture, that they are firmly based on the fundamentals of human cognition, and that they can be determined by study, providing the essentials of design, he has shown that they can be found in the architecture of all periods (and indeed of all cultures). His ideas about ‘paradigms’ for architecture were encapsulated in his Notes on the Synthesis of Form (1964), A Pattern Language (1977), and The Timeless Way of Building (1979). With Chermayeff he published Community and Privacy (1963). Advocating that designer, builder, and user should be either one and the same, or work closely together, he promoted self-build housing, and was involved in the evolution of user-designed apartment buildings at St Quentin-en-Yvelines, near Paris (1974), and elsewhere. More recently he has observed that most of the contemporary ways of dealing with architecture have been ‘insane’, and that we need to find new ways in order to become ‘reconnected to ourselves’. To him, Deconstructivism is ‘nonsensical’. From 2002 he published, through the Center for Environmental Structure, Berkeley, CA, The Nature of Order, setting out the essence of his ideas.

Bibliography

  • C. Alexander et al. (1985, 1987)
  • Wi. Curtis (1996)
  • Kalman (1994)
  • Grabow (1983)
  • Salingaros et al. (2004)
  • Jane Turner (1996)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.


Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/christopher-alexander-1#ixzz1WTKgUFnc


歌德 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


1999年德國大舉慶歌德誕生250周年
我與Simon 通信中討論到Goethe -- Simon 不怎麼喜歡他 尤其是不欣賞其"科學"的非專業/玩票
不過他也拿起歌德作品翻翻 (我忘記他讀那一本 應該不是義大利遊記)

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German pronunciation: [ˈjoːhan ˈvɔlfɡaŋ fɔn ˈɡøːtə] ( listen), 28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832)
歌德獎章在魏瑪頒發

樂觀主義者和謹慎的懷疑論者在周日(8月28日)相會於魏瑪參加今年歌德獎章的頒發儀式。今年歌德獎章被授予一位法國製片人,一名波蘭時政記者以及一位英國暢銷書作家。


"對於我們來說,這樣一個歐洲文化項目是打開了監獄的大門。"來自波蘭的米奇尼克(Adam Michnik)這樣說到。英國作家大衛·康威爾(David Cornwell)和約翰勒·卡雷(John le Carré)認為"歐洲現正處於令人擔憂的境地。文化機構和人民的距離從來沒有如此巨大。"

歐洲作為文化空間

成立60年以來,歌德學院一直希望通過歌德獎章的頒發來強調歐洲聲音的重要性,在頒獎之外還會組織相應的討論會。歌德學院主席克勞斯- 迪特爾·萊曼(Klaus-Dieter Lehmann)強調說:" 因為共同的文化之根使我們聯結在一起,我們的工作現在將來都會基於歐洲這片土地。"同時,他還推動一場"文化覺醒"。他說到,歐盟,一個同樣也是歐洲各國人民語言、文化共同的空間,在今天被更多地看作是政治和經濟的聯盟。這將會導致公民與政治的疏離。萊曼致頒獎詞萊曼致頒獎詞

他還強調,"我們必須摒棄制度化的歐洲"。勒卡雷也表達了相似的觀點。 "我們在自由的空氣中生活了那麼久,即便我們民主的製度中也存在瑕疵。"他強調道,民粹主義與社會不公平現象正在以同樣的速度不斷擴張, "我們必須當心"。波蘭評論家米奇尼克則不這麼認為,他表示,歐洲政治儘管存在過一些失誤,但對於世界其他地區仍然是一個積極的樣板。米奇尼克笑著總結道:"歐洲肯定可以沒有政客而生存- 但卻不能沒有約翰勒卡雷的書。"觀眾席中爆發出掌聲。

寬容、批判、團結

萊曼在他對米奇尼克的頒獎詞中稱他是"勇敢,堅定,寬容的波蘭反對派",是一個"擁有政治熱情,並能夠換位思考的中歐知識分子。"亞當·米奇尼克在波蘭共產黨中屬於公民權利活動家,地下黨成員,一直致力於東歐與西歐關係的緩和,尤其是德國與波蘭的和解,並支持獨立的工會運動。他曾多次被投入監獄。波蘭社會變革後米奇尼克成為波蘭發行量最大,極具影響力的日報《選舉日報》(Gazeta Wyborcza)的主編。他是一位著名的時政評論家,同時也是波蘭優秀的知識分子之一。


John le Carré - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John le Carré: The author's official websi



約翰·勒卡雷被萊曼稱為偉大的人文主義文學作家,對時事擁有著批判和敏銳的觀察,並具有"混亂和動蕩的全球意識"以及"對其他文化極大的好奇心。"萊曼還提到這位英國作家對德語的偏愛。這位間諜驚悚小說大師也是"最突出的以德語寫作的英國作家"。他在年輕時代學習德語,之後在設在瑞士,奧地利,德國的英國外交部門,情報部門工作。 1963年他出版了他的第一部小說《冷戰諜魂》。這本書像勒卡雷之後的許多作品一樣,描寫冷戰時期以當時冷戰雙方骯髒的間諜戰-這本書取得世界範圍內的巨大成功。直至今日,這位80多歲的作家依舊和社會時政主題打交道- 黑手黨,腐敗,恐怖主義。 "這些話題於他而言,永遠不會過時,"萊曼預言。

缺席的獲獎者

今年第三枚歌德獎章由法國女導演阿里亞娜·莫努虛金(Ariane Mnouchkine)獲得。但因為電影的緊張拍攝她無法前來魏瑪。萊曼稱她為"導演女神","一個直接關注人類的戲劇天才",還特別讚揚她對藝術自由和受迫害藝術家的貢獻。

現在72歲的莫努虛金四十度年前創立了"劇場劇團" (Theatre du Soleil),其以獨特的,多彩童話般的,但同時也具有明確政治含義的戲劇引起轟動。他們與許多國家保持緊密的聯繫。例如2005年,莫努虛金和她的演員們就在阿富汗的戲劇工作坊進行排練表演。

歌德獎章是1955年以來每年頒發一次。歌德學院每年向那些在傳播德語語言以及為國際文化交流中做出貢獻的個人頒獎。歌德獎章是聯邦德國的正式勳章。歷屆歌德獎獲得者包括:指揮家巴倫博伊姆(Daniel Barenboim)、作曲家布列茲(Pierre Boulez)、建築師裡伯斯金(Daniel Libeskind)、以及作家克呂格(Ruth Klüger) 、桑普蘭(Jorge Semprun)。



作者: Cornelia Rabitz 編譯:林實

責編:葉宣





歌德奖章在魏玛颁发

乐观主义者和谨慎的怀疑论者在周日(8月28日)相会于魏玛参加今年歌德奖章的颁发仪式。今年歌德奖章被授予一位法国制片人,一名波兰时政记者以及一位英国畅销书作家。


2011年8月24日 星期三

卡耐基-梅隆大學(CMU)校長室的告別紀念會之信 2001





There is no limit to the amount of good you can do in the World,
if you do not try to take the credit (Benjamin Franklin)

2001年3月16日回永和,接到卡耐基-梅隆大學(CMU)校長室(Office of the President)的信,稱呼我' Dr. Hanching Chung' 的。(司馬賀的朋友也許遍天下,大概很少沒博士銜的,這樣稱呼最保險。)

原來是該校校長室和董事會(Boards of Trustee)邀請我參加3月18日的告別紀念會的;內有特別事件辦公室(Office of Special Events)。我嘆聲氣。決定在網路上紀念你。可惜你一向未介紹師母,我未能致點哀,失禮。

你的正式銜是:Herbert A. Simon
The Richard King Mellon University of Computer Science and Psychology

我們的紀念專輯就從這職銜談起罷!今晨讀你的演講和訪問,神情活現。

無 限緬懷 司馬 賀教授 :Herbert Simon( 1916-2001)I interview with your sharpest needle in the Haystack, we might agree that we had our satificed lives.

2011年7月31日 星期日

電影


Simon 結婚生子前很迷電影 太太分娩時 他在戲院

人工智能一書中關於電影名和內容有小差錯 我去信更正之

Hitchcock: The Man Behind the Movies

He's been called the master of suspense. But Alfred Hitchcock isn't without a bit of mystery of his own. A rare collection of Hitchcock sketches was recently discovered in England.

They were storyboards from one of his movies. And they seem to offer some fascinating insights into the legendary director's creative mind. Nick Glass has the details in this week's edition of "The Revealer."


Post by: ,
Filed under: The RevealerbackstoryHitchcock

Digital analysis (the connoisseur)

Art criticism and computers

Painting by numbers

Digital analysis is invading the world of the connoisseur

JUDGING artistic styles, and the similarities between them, might be thought one bastion of human skill that machines could never storm. Not so, if Lior Shamir at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan is correct. A paper he has just published in Leonardo suggests that computers may have just as good an eye for style as humans do—and, in some cases, may see connections between artists that human critics have missed.

Dr Shamir, a computer scientist, presented 57 images by each of nine painters—Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Vasily Kandinsky, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mark Rothko and Vincent van Gogh—to a computer, to see what it made of them. The computer broke the images into a number of so-called numerical descriptors. These descriptors quantified textures and colours, the statistical distribution of edges across a canvas, the distributions of particular types of shape, the intensity of the colour of individual points on a painting, and also the nature of any fractal-like patterns within it (fractals are features that reproduce similar shapes at different scales; the edges of snowflakes, for example).

All told, the computer identified 4,027 different numerical descriptors. Once their values had been established for each of the 513 artworks that had been fed into it, it was ready to do the analysis.

Dr Shamir’s aim was to look for quantifiable ways of distinguishing between the work of different artists. If such things could be established, it might make the task of deciding who painted what a little easier. Such decisions matter because, even excluding deliberate forgeries, there are many paintings in existence that cannot conclusively be attributed to a master rather than his pupils, or that may be honestly made copies whose provenance is now lost.

To look for such distinguishing features, Dr Shamir programmed the computer to use a statistical method that scores the strength of the distance between the values of two or more descriptors for each pair of artists. As a result, he was able to rank each of the 4,027 descriptors by how useful it was at discriminating between artists.

Surprisingly, the values of 19 of the 20 most informative descriptors showed dramatically higher similarities between Van Gogh (left below) and Pollock (right) than between Van Gogh and painters such as Monet and Renoir, who conventional art criticism would think more closely related to Van Gogh’s oeuvre than Pollock’s is. (Dalí and Ernst, by contrast, were farther apart then expected.)

What is interesting, according to Dr Shamir, is that no single feature makes Pollock’s artistic style similar to Van Gogh’s. Instead, the connection is based on a broad set of image-content descriptors which reflect many aspects of the two artists’ styles, including a shared preference for low-level textures and shapes, and similarities in the ways they employed lines and edges.

What was intended, then, as a way of improving the ability to distinguish between different hands has also thrown up a new way of looking for stylistic similarities. Whether Pollock was actually influenced by Van Gogh, or merely happened upon a similar way of doing things through a similar artistic sensibility, is not clear. But it gives art historians a new line of investigation to pursue.


2011年7月20日 星期三

Kenneth J. Arrow says US debt limit concept is 'crazy idea'

United States | 20.07.2011

Nobel Laureate says US debt limit concept is 'crazy idea'

Kenneth Arrow

Despite all the partisan political posturing, Nobel Prize winning economist Kenneth Arrow rates the risk that the US debt limit won't be raised as low. He also tells Deutsche Welle why the debt limit is a crazy idea.

Kenneth J. Arrow is professor of economics emeritus at Stanford University and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1972. He is the youngest Nobel Laureate to have been awarded the prize in economics. Arrow also served on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President John F. Kennedy.

Deutsche Welle: What many people around the world probably still deem impossible and what for many experts seemed unrealistic just a few weeks back could become reality. The US, the world's biggest economy and strongest power, may be unable meet its debt payments within days. How big is the risk that the US will in fact default?

Kenneth Arrow: I think it's unlikely. I think that the pressures from the financial sector are going to be sufficient to avoid this. I have seen proposals such as the one by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to somehow dodge the issue. I have a feeling that's how it is going to end up, but you can't be 100 percent sure. It could be that they somehow have a deadlock in which case the debt limit will be not raised. There's a 10 percent chance that could happen.

With each day of failed political talks in Washington to raise the debt limit the US is edging closer to default and the finger pointing between Democrats and Republicans intensifies. Is the impression one gets from abroad correct that the political players are worried more about not blinking too early and scoring a political victory than about avoiding a possible fiasco?

There are a lot of factors at work here and one I think is ideology. There are some people in the Republican Party who have said they wouldn't vote for an increase in the debt limit no matter what concessions are made. They just feel the government is too big and we should cut it back and this is a very convenient weapon. So it's not entirely just about political advantage.

There is that of course in every political confrontation in every democratic country that's true. But the same Republican Minority Leader, Senator McConnell, said a few months ago my main aim in everything is to make sure that President Obama is a one-term president. So he said explicitly that political advantage is what he is concerned about. So I think there is a mixture of reasons.

Couldn't they just detach the political issue over taxes and spending for the time being and raise the debt limit simply to avert a default which is arguably in no one's interest or is this too naïve?

Of course. The whole thing to my mind is somehow a crazy idea. We have a budgetary process. We have a budget and it was passed earlier this year. Why isn't that the end of the story? Why is there a separate vote on the debt limit? When you have a budget that has certain implications for the debt you don't know exactly what they are because tax revenues at least are uncertain. So when you pass a budget you have projections, but you don't actually know what's going to happen. So the question is why don't you just pass the budget and if you need to borrow you borrow. That's all there is to it. So why is there a second vote?

This is an old thing and I don't know how far back this principle goes. But typically the debt limit has been automatically raised. It's not really controversial. So the idea that we have a vote on the debt limit is crazy in my opinion. You make a budgetary decision, you have your debate and that's it. But once it's there it's used as a political weapon and people don't want to abandon it. It's the same with the filibuster rule in the Senate, but I won't go into that.

There is disagreement over the severity and the consequences of failing to raise the debt limit or an actual default. How bad would the failure to raise the debt limit be in concrete, practical terms?

It would be bad obviously, but more for symbolic reasons. The possibility of a default is very well known and that means that the immediate consequences would be much less severe than if there is a sudden collapse coming out of nowhere as it happened for instance with the subprime mortgage fiasco. The financial system has been adjusting to this.

Second, the fundamental soundness of the United States is not really in question. The United States obviously has an edge by being able to borrow as a safe borrower and as the place where foreigners park their money in times of trouble. And we see that currently by the fact that the interest rate of US government debt is extremely low in spite of the financial problems. In fact if you go back a number of years you find that the United States has been borrowing money at low rates of interest even during prosperity and investing abroad at relatively high returns because the US is considered safe.

Now this is going to shake that somewhat. Not too much, because everybody knows that fundamentally there is no real problem and it's just a political issue. Still it does mean that the United States is a less stable country politically than was expected and it will have consequences.

So how would this play out?

I think the first reaction would be to cut something else. Social security would be possible target because it would be a very big political signal. But at some point there will demands as to why shouldn't the holders of government bonds suffer if the poor, old people are suffering. That will be the next in line. I think at that point or even before that you will see a big rise in interest rates.

Government debt will start going down and of course this will affect the holdings of banks throughout the world. So I suppose there will be a tightening of the belt and I imagine there will be spillover to private enterprise. In any case interest rates will rise, that's a clear consequence and when interest rates rise that is going to affect investment in the United States and abroad probably.

My feeling is there would be lowering of the American economy and probably some of the European economies too because the banking systems are so interlinked. Probably China will be the net gainer in all of this. They will be getting more money on the bonds they hold on the United States.

Interview: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge

2011年7月18日 星期一

繞地球7.5周

謝謝KJ 轉給我的信

仲庸的日本辦公室同事儀勳說:『對永遠的大哥也是 Mr. Always Say Yes--san 大家的阿伯上最深的悼念與敬意. …..

我們通常不太知道自己在朋友心中的形象

所以有些人如卜少夫先生或曹又方女士,採取生前讓朋友公開懷念或送別的方式…..

(今年615日在中原大學,三呆介紹我,讓我自己嚇一跳….)

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人人都有另外一面。我們的2位大樓管理員,各有妙處:一位經常在研究號碼名牌,另一位在2周前某天晚上,給他兩位朋友架著,在這片水泥森林中尋找家……

暑假總有新室內裝璜工程,所以兩處的電梯間都被保護起來。換句話說,三個月內在電梯間看不到鏡子。據Ackoff 先生等說,此鏡對等待的人的去除焦慮心理,是相當重要的。所以我偶爾小破壞一下,不過立刻給人修好…….妙的是,修的人不是裝璜相關人,而是另有好事(公益)者。

工人帶來另外的、似曾相似的文化:便當,午睡說安全梯,Radio 的節目更妙…….

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昨夜窗子紗窗失靈,所以苦讀張君勱先生百齡冥誕紀念文集/張君勱先生遺著叢書……。印象最深刻的是蔣復璁先生的回憶,他說張先生有不忍人之心

所以不搭人力車等 一向安步當車 所以很健康…..

Herbert Simon 也有他的設計 他到卡內基理工 (後來改為CMU) 任教時 買的房子距學校適中 每天上學僕徒步 如此他70歲時 已繞地球7.5

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1986年在內壢MOTOROLA上班 三呆建議在附近買屋……反正 沒錢命…..

2011年7月13日 星期三

Herbert Simon 的說法: 任何學問都可自修

感謝Kenny 送的安全文化會議的紀錄

Kenny 來談起他高中讀過的這本感人的故事 (包括性的描寫) 約翰克利斯朵夫 (傅雷譯 ) 約翰克利斯朵夫Jean-Christophe
(他買一套送兒子 兒子將它當壁紙.....)

這是我初二讀過的 不過幾乎都忘了
上大一時 老康借的是英譯本 那時我還自以為先知先覺

他大學通學車上都苦K 尼采的查拉圖書特拉
這本我1977年才買企鵝版 現在還沒全讀完
前幾年中國出幾本詳註譯本 說許多句是從聖經來的

我喜歡聽朋友的教養過程的讀書故事
我大一是在中央書局約160元買未央歌 (當時普通物理/微積分等翻印書約50元) 大三下才重拾 讀完
英文方面是買虹橋翻印的羅素作品 (圖書館有數學原理 只能讚嘆
( 我高一自修過符號邏輯 竟然可以作習題 讀完它 所以我後來深信Herbert Simon 的說法: 任何學問都可自修)

2011年7月6日 星期三

How to cope with data overload

Too much information 這一問題 HERBERT SIMON 先生在30-40年就提出他的一些辦法
譬如說 將看報/網路 的時間和頻率漸減 從讀每日新聞 改成周刊/月刊 還有其他.....

Schumpeter

How to cope with data overload

Correction to this article

GOOGLE “information overload” and you are immediately overloaded with information: more than 7m hits in 0.05 seconds. Some of this information is interesting: for example, that the phrase “information overload” was popularised by Alvin Toffler in 1970. Some of it is mere noise: obscure companies promoting their services and even more obscure bloggers sounding off. The overall impression is at once overwhelming and confusing.

“Information overload” is one of the biggest irritations in modern life. There are e-mails to answer, virtual friends to pester, YouTube videos to watch and, back in the physical world, meetings to attend, papers to shuffle and spouses to appease. A survey by Reuters once found that two-thirds of managers believe that the data deluge has made their jobs less satisfying or hurt their personal relationships. One-third think that it has damaged their health. Another survey suggests that most managers think most of the information they receive is useless.

Commentators have coined a profusion of phrases to describe the anxiety and anomie caused by too much information: “data asphyxiation” (William van Winkle), “data smog” (David Shenk), “information fatigue syndrome” (David Lewis), “cognitive overload” (Eric Schmidt) and “time famine” (Leslie Perlow). Johann Hari, a British journalist, notes that there is a good reason why “wired” means both “connected to the internet” and “high, frantic, unable to concentrate”.

These worries are exaggerated. Stick-in-the-muds have always complained about new technologies: the Victorians fussed that the telegraph meant that “the businessman of the present day must be continually on the jump.” And businesspeople have always had to deal with constant pressure and interruptions—hence the word “business”. In his classic study of managerial work in 1973 Henry Mintzberg compared managers to jugglers: they keep 50 balls in the air and periodically check on each one before sending it aloft once more.

Yet clearly there is a problem. It is not merely the dizzying increase in the volume of information (the amount of data being stored doubles every 18 months). It is also the combination of omnipresence and fragmentation. Many professionals are welded to their smartphones. They are also constantly bombarded with unrelated bits and pieces—a poke from a friend one moment, the latest Greek financial tragedy the next.

The data fog is thickening at a time when companies are trying to squeeze ever more out of their workers. A survey in America by Spherion Staffing discovered that 53% of workers had been compelled to take on extra tasks since the recession started. This dismal trend may well continue—many companies remain reluctant to hire new people even as business picks up. So there will be little respite from the dense data smog, which some researchers fear may be poisonous.

They raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.

Curbing the cacophony

What can be done about information overload? One answer is technological: rely on the people who created the fog to invent filters that will clean it up. Xerox promises to restore “information sanity” by developing better filtering and managing devices. Google is trying to improve its online searches by taking into account more personal information. (Some people fret that this will breach their privacy, but it will probably deliver quicker, more accurate searches.) A popular computer program called “Freedom” disconnects you from the web at preset times.

A second answer involves willpower. Ration your intake. Turn off your mobile phone and internet from time to time.

But such ruses are not enough. Smarter filters cannot stop people from obsessively checking their BlackBerrys. Some do so because it makes them feel important; others because they may be addicted to the “dopamine squirt” they get from receiving messages, as Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, two academics, have argued. And self-discipline can be counter-productive if your company doesn’t embrace it. Some bosses get shirty if their underlings are unreachable even for a few minutes.

Most companies are better at giving employees access to the information superhighway than at teaching them how to drive. This is starting to change. Management consultants have spotted an opportunity. Derek Dean and Caroline Webb of McKinsey urge businesses to embrace three principles to deal with data overload: find time to focus, filter out noise and forget about work when you can. Business leaders are chipping in. David Novak of Yum! Brands urges people to ask themselves whether what they are doing is constructive or a mere “activity”. John Doerr, a venture capitalist, urges people to focus on a narrow range of objectives and filter out everything else. Cristobal Conde of SunGard, an IT firm, preserves “thinking time” in his schedule when he cannot be disturbed. This might sound like common sense. But common sense is rare amid the cacophony of corporate life.

2011年6月20日 星期一

Herb. SIMON 好辯

"徐復觀講座、被家屬控告,這是怎麼回事?" 據許老師說 事先未徵詢家屬之同意 這可能有"專名權的問題
以前Berg 先生將他的公司賣給杜邦公司 後來--30年後 杜邦公司決定賣掉它

某公司買DuPont Connector System公司 要改回原先的公司名 Berg Electronics
他們取得Berg 先生的遺孀的同意


我說的校友會介入歷史系的內政是我認為這很可能是學校的行政權
校友會可以放砲 就像我過去浪費許多時間寫些東西一樣 但是介入人事是不恰當的 除非接到投訴 與校方共同處理 這樣可能有點"合法"


我想再追憶一下上周末 許老師的一些重要的話
總體而 我希望許老師可寫小說 或回憶錄
(前衛會出版他的散文精選集)


我提起郭冠英90年代企畫的張學良 不精彩--- 張的部下品質很差 張晚年很得意 "他家不收刮土地 有錢是做買賣的" 可惜沒講做什麼買賣..... 許老師提醒我們 張的藏書大半捐給東海 所以研究它們 (不少是外文) 也可以了解張---- me: 只是有書跟研讀過該書很難建立關係......

看來 許老師夫婦已挑出美國藏書要送東海的 因為他提到有本 JimmyCarter 簽名的書似不宜送 免得後人誤解 (他事先簽300本給書商發 因為現場戒備森嚴)....

許老師是芝加哥大學畢業的 所以問起 Herb. SIMON來
我跟他解釋Leo Strauss的學生的圍勦事件 現在可以補充
用Simon 自己的話

在第4章裡,我談到了政治學中的行為主義運動,它的先鋒是芝加哥大學的查爾斯‧梅里亞姆(C.Merriam)的系。赫伯特‧斯托林(H.Storing)編了一本書,書名叫《政治學的科學研究論文集》,在這本書裡,他每人一章分別批判了行為主義的帶頭人物,其中也包括我。

要回答這個政擊,需要一本同《管理行為》一樣厚的書,我壓根也沒想過寫這樣一本書。在我看來,《管理行為》一書本身就為自己做了最好的辯獲。我的判斷似乎經受住了時間的考驗,時光的流逝並沒有減少這本書的光彩。

當然,我現在仍然被指控為“實證主義”,而且好像這是多大一個罪過似的,不是大罪也是小罪。同時,至今仍有相當普遍的人不太理解,如果在前提中不是至少有一個“應當”的話,為什麼就不能按邏輯推導出“應當”來。然而,我想這些困難與斯托林的書沒有多大聯繫。它們起源現今的總趨勢,把實證主義作為貶義詞用,而對於實證主義者相信的是什麼,卻沒有個清楚的概念。

在經濟學方面,論戰開始得比較緩慢。我最初的攻擊是幾篇關於稅會落在誰的身上[1]和技術改變的文章,這幾篇論文與新古典主義的框架相安無事。然後是幾篇文章,建議需要認識到理性的限度以便創造比較真實的企業形象。在這些論文中,已經提供了進行這種挑戰的素材。



[1] 著者對此的解釋是,例如,房東按法律理應交稅,但是他通過提高房租的辦法,將稅“轉嫁”到房客頭上。—譯注



許老師跟我們介紹美國的保險制
他還講了一則老友婦產科醫師的糗事
為了防止醫療糾紛賠償 他將所有財產過給太太 所以有一次到大學辦事 車被拖走
辛苦找到拖吊場 不給車 因為連車子都是太太的
只好打電話 要求授權取車
許老師說 朋友 人生賺這樣多錢 意義何在?

2011年6月15日 星期三

H A. Simon的冥誕 2011

這活動對我準備投影片2天 99張
6/15 歷時 (含交通)約7小時半
將陸續公布相關資料和照片 敬請期待
(王老師今天簽近80人的書 不亦樂乎.....)
我在介紹約200年前法國人畫拿破侖的兵力損失圖時
突然了解這種圖可以用來表示各種 "損失函數" 譬如說 等車的不對稱損失......

恰好今天是H A. Simon的冥誕
我在演講中指出Simon 在1999年給我的一封信
談如何將自己的學校當一組織/系列來研究


我還舉舉2009年演講題目是台中港路
這對東海大學而言是系統的環境---2位來自台中的博士生的印象就很深刻.....其一還是吳國精先生的親戚
鳥瞰20世紀的品質、生產力與系統思考中的變革:一些反思

v如何教管理學(Administration)是個難題。目前美國大多數商學院所選出來MBA(企管碩士)大多至少有兩、三年商業實務經驗,這樣教起來就極不一樣了。
v
v要是學生沒有這種經驗背景,我總是試著要求學生把所就學的的大學看成一個組織,以組織學的話來看待大學中的事情,從而能把大學當作實驗室的代品。
v
v這並不改變你的論點(按:其實這是司馬賀在自傳《我生活的種種模式》中的看法):許多管理學上的原理(principles 很簡單而又明白清楚;難在如何根據所信的原理養成力行的習慣。
v
v然而,我們不該從中得出結論說:習慣是不可改的。(按:管理行為》中有專節討論組織的習慣與創新。)

2011年6月11日 星期六

The organization of complex systems - Simon

有關 herbert simon organization complex system 的學術文章

The organization of complex systems - Simon - 被引用 498 次
The sciences of the artificial - Simon - 被引用 10463 次
The architecture of complexity - Simon - 被引用 2907 次

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    由 HA SIMON 著作 - 被引用 498 次 - 相關文章
    The Organization of Complex Systems. HERBERT A. SIMON .... HERBERT A. SIMON suffer the fate of Sisyphus: As often as he rolls the rock up ...
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    Herbert Simon was educated as a child in the public school system in ... Any given individual or organization attempting to implement this model in a .... The papers grouped under the category "The Structure of Complex Systems"– dealing ...

2011年5月30日 星期一

A man-made world

當然這一領悟
多少與"自然科學"和"人工科學"的區分方式相關


The Anthropocene

A man-made world

Science is recognising humans as a geological force to be reckoned with

THE here and now are defined by astronomy and geology. Astronomy takes care of the here: a planet orbiting a yellow star embedded in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, a galaxy that is itself part of the Virgo supercluster, one of millions of similarly vast entities dotted through the sky. Geology deals with the now: the 10,000-year-old Holocene epoch, a peculiarly stable and clement part of the Quaternary period, a time distinguished by regular shifts into and out of ice ages. The Quaternary forms part of the 65m-year Cenozoic era, distinguished by the opening of the North Atlantic, the rise of the Himalayas, and the widespread presence of mammals and flowering plants. This era in turn marks the most recent part of the Phanerozoic aeon, the 540m-year chunk of the Earth’s history wherein rocks with fossils of complex organisms can be found. The regularity of celestial clockwork and the solid probity of rock give these co-ordinates a reassuring constancy.

Now there is a movement afoot to change humanity’s co-ordinates. In 2000 Paul Crutzen, an eminent atmospheric chemist, realised he no longer believed he was living in the Holocene. He was living in some other age, one shaped primarily by people. From their trawlers scraping the floors of the seas to their dams impounding sediment by the gigatonne, from their stripping of forests to their irrigation of farms, from their mile-deep mines to their melting of glaciers, humans were bringing about an age of planetary change. With a colleague, Eugene Stoermer, Dr Crutzen suggested this age be called the Anthropocene—“the recent age of man”.

The term has slowly picked up steam, both within the sciences (the International Commission on Stratigraphy, ultimate adjudicator of the geological time scale, is taking a formal interest) and beyond. This May statements on the environment by concerned Nobel laureates and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences both made prominent use of the term, capitalising on the way in which it dramatises the sheer scale of human activity.

The advent of the Anthropocene promises more, though, than a scientific nicety or a new way of grabbing the eco-jaded public’s attention. The term “paradigm shift” is bandied around with promiscuous ease. But for the natural sciences to make human activity central to its conception of the world, rather than a distraction, would mark such a shift for real. For centuries, science has progressed by making people peripheral. In the 16th century Nicolaus Copernicus moved the Earth from its privileged position at the centre of the universe. In the 18th James Hutton opened up depths of geological time that dwarf the narrow now. In the 19th Charles Darwin fitted humans onto a single twig of the evolving tree of life. As Simon Lewis, an ecologist at the University of Leeds, points out, embracing the Anthropocene as an idea means reversing this trend. It means treating humans not as insignificant observers of the natural world but as central to its workings, elemental in their force.

Sous la plage, les pavés

The most common way of distinguishing periods of geological time is by means of the fossils they contain. On this basis picking out the Anthropocene in the rocks of days to come will be pretty easy. Cities will make particularly distinctive fossils. A city on a fast-sinking river delta (and fast-sinking deltas, undermined by the pumping of groundwater and starved of sediment by dams upstream, are common Anthropocene environments) could spend millions of years buried and still, when eventually uncovered, reveal through its crushed structures and weird mixtures of materials that it is unlike anything else in the geological record.

The fossils of living creatures will be distinctive, too. Geologists define periods through assemblages of fossil life reliably found together. One of the characteristic markers of the Anthropocene will be the widespread remains of organisms that humans use, or that have adapted to life in a human-dominated world. According to studies by Erle Ellis, an ecologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the vast majority of ecosystems on the planet now reflect the presence of people. There are, for instance, more trees on farms than in wild forests. And these anthropogenic biomes are spread about the planet in a way that the ecological arrangements of the prehuman world were not. The fossil record of the Anthropocene will thus show a planetary ecosystem homogenised through domestication.

More sinisterly, there are the fossils that will not be found. Although it is not yet inevitable, scientists warn that if current trends of habitat loss continue, exacerbated by the effects of climate change, there could be an imminent and dramatic number of extinctions before long.

All these things would show future geologists that humans had been present. But though they might be diagnostic of the time in which humans lived, they would not necessarily show that those humans shaped their time in the way that people pushing the idea of the Anthropocene want to argue. The strong claim of those announcing the recent dawning of the age of man is that humans are not just spreading over the planet, but are changing the way it works.

Such workings are the province of Earth-system science, which sees the planet not just as a set of places, or as the subject of a history, but also as a system of forces, flows and feedbacks that act upon each other. This system can behave in distinctive and counterintuitive ways, including sometimes flipping suddenly from one state to another. To an Earth-system scientist the difference between the Quaternary period (which includes the Holocene) and the Neogene, which came before it, is not just what was living where, or what the sea level was; it is that in the Neogene the climate stayed stable whereas in the Quaternary it swung in and out of a series of ice ages. The Earth worked differently in the two periods.

The clearest evidence for the system working differently in the Anthropocene comes from the recycling systems on which life depends for various crucial elements. In the past couple of centuries people have released quantities of fossil carbon that the planet took hundreds of millions of years to store away. This has given them a commanding role in the planet’s carbon cycle.

Although the natural fluxes of carbon dioxide into and out of the atmosphere are still more than ten times larger than the amount that humans put in every year by burning fossil fuels, the human addition matters disproportionately because it unbalances those natural flows. As Mr Micawber wisely pointed out, a small change in income can, in the absence of a compensating change in outlays, have a disastrous effect. The result of putting more carbon into the atmosphere than can be taken out of it is a warmer climate, a melting Arctic, higher sea levels, improvements in the photosynthetic efficiency of many plants, an intensification of the hydrologic cycle of evaporation and precipitation, and new ocean chemistry.

All of these have knock-on effects both on people and on the processes of the planet. More rain means more weathering of mountains. More efficient photosynthesis means less evaporation from croplands. And the changes in ocean chemistry are the sort of thing that can be expected to have a direct effect on the geological record if carbon levels rise far enough.

At a recent meeting of the Geological Society of London that was devoted to thinking about the Anthropocene and its geological record, Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton pointed out that pale carbonate sediments—limestones, chalks and the like—cannot be laid down below what is called a “carbonate compensation depth”. And changes in chemistry brought about by the fossil-fuel carbon now accumulating in the ocean will raise the carbonate compensation depth, rather as a warmer atmosphere raises the snowline on mountains. Some ocean floors which are shallow enough for carbonates to precipitate out as sediment in current conditions will be out of the game when the compensation depth has risen, like ski resorts too low on a warming alp. New carbonates will no longer be laid down. Old ones will dissolve. This change in patterns of deep-ocean sedimentation will result in a curious, dark band of carbonate-free rock—rather like that which is seen in sediments from the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum, an episode of severe greenhouse warming brought on by the release of pent-up carbon 56m years ago.

The fix is in

No Dickensian insights are necessary to appreciate the scale of human intervention in the nitrogen cycle. One crucial part of this cycle—the fixing of pure nitrogen from the atmosphere into useful nitrogen-containing chemicals—depends more or less entirely on living things (lightning helps a bit). And the living things doing most of that work are now people (see chart). By adding industrial clout to the efforts of the microbes that used to do the job single-handed, humans have increased the annual amount of nitrogen fixed on land by more than 150%. Some of this is accidental. Burning fossil fuels tends to oxidise nitrogen at the same time. The majority is done on purpose, mostly to make fertilisers. This has a variety of unwholesome consequences, most importantly the increasing number of coastal “dead zones” caused by algal blooms feeding on fertiliser-rich run-off waters.

Industrial nitrogen’s greatest environmental impact, though, is to increase the number of people. Although nitrogen fixation is not just a gift of life—it has been estimated that 100m people were killed by explosives made with industrially fixed nitrogen in the 20th century’s wars—its net effect has been to allow a huge growth in population. About 40% of the nitrogen in the protein that humans eat today got into that food by way of artificial fertiliser. There would be nowhere near as many people doing all sorts of other things to the planet if humans had not sped the nitrogen cycle up.

It is also worth noting that unlike many of humanity’s other effects on the planet, the remaking of the nitrogen cycle was deliberate. In the late 19th century scientists diagnosed a shortage of nitrogen as a planet-wide problem. Knowing that natural processes would not improve the supply, they invented an artificial one, the Haber process, that could make up the difference. It was, says Mark Sutton of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Edinburgh, the first serious human attempt at geoengineering the planet to bring about a desired goal. The scale of its success outstripped the imaginings of its instigators. So did the scale of its unintended consequences.

For many of those promoting the idea of the Anthropocene, further geoengineering may now be in order, this time on the carbon front. Left to themselves, carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere are expected to remain high for 1,000 years—more, if emissions continue to go up through this century. It is increasingly common to hear climate scientists arguing that this means things should not be left to themselves—that the goal of the 21st century should be not just to stop the amount of carbon in the atmosphere increasing, but to start actively decreasing it. This might be done in part by growing forests (see article) and enriching soils, but it might also need more high-tech interventions, such as burning newly grown plant matter in power stations and pumping the resulting carbon dioxide into aquifers below the surface, or scrubbing the air with newly contrived chemical-engineering plants, or intervening in ocean chemistry in ways that would increase the sea’s appetite for the air’s carbon.

To think of deliberately interfering in the Earth system will undoubtedly be alarming to some. But so will an Anthropocene deprived of such deliberation. A way to try and split the difference has been propounded by a group of Earth-system scientists inspired by (and including) Dr Crutzen under the banner of “planetary boundaries”. The planetary-boundaries group, which published a sort of manifesto in 2009, argues for increased restraint and, where necessary, direct intervention aimed at bringing all sorts of things in the Earth system, from the alkalinity of the oceans to the rate of phosphate run-off from the land, close to the conditions pertaining in the Holocene. Carbon-dioxide levels, the researchers recommend, should be brought back from whatever they peak at to a level a little higher than the Holocene’s and a little lower than today’s.

The idea behind this precautionary approach is not simply that things were good the way they were. It is that the further the Earth system gets from the stable conditions of the Holocene, the more likely it is to slip into a whole new state and change itself yet further.

 You maniacs! You blew it up!

The Earth’s history shows that the planet can indeed tip from one state to another, amplifying the sometimes modest changes which trigger the transition. The nightmare would be a flip to some permanently altered state much further from the Holocene than things are today: a hotter world with much less productive oceans, for example. Such things cannot be ruled out. On the other hand, the invocation of poorly defined tipping points is a well worn rhetorical trick for stirring the fears of people unperturbed by current, relatively modest, changes.

In general, the goal of staying at or returning close to Holocene conditions seems judicious. It remains to be seen if it is practical. The Holocene never supported a civilisation of 10 billion reasonably rich people, as the Anthropocene must seek to do, and there is no proof that such a population can fit into a planetary pot so circumscribed. So it may be that a “good Anthropocene”, stable and productive for humans and other species they rely on, is one in which some aspects of the Earth system’s behaviour are lastingly changed. For example, the Holocene would, without human intervention, have eventually come to an end in a new ice age. Keeping the Anthropocene free of ice ages will probably strike most people as a good idea.

Dreams of a smart planet

That is an extreme example, though. No new ice age is due for some millennia to come. Nevertheless, to see the Anthropocene as a blip that can be minimised, and from which the planet, and its people, can simply revert to the status quo, may be to underestimate the sheer scale of what is going on.

Take energy. At the moment the amount of energy people use is part of what makes the Anthropocene problematic, because of the carbon dioxide given off. That problem will not be solved soon enough to avert significant climate change unless the Earth system is a lot less prone to climate change than most scientists think. But that does not mean it will not be solved at all. And some of the zero-carbon energy systems that solve it—continent- scale electric grids distributing solar energy collected in deserts, perhaps, or advanced nuclear power of some sort—could, in time, be scaled up to provide much more energy than today’s power systems do. As much as 100 clean terawatts, compared to today’s dirty 15TW, is not inconceivable for the 22nd century. That would mean humanity was producing roughly as much useful energy as all the world’s photosynthesis combined.

In a fascinating recent book, “Revolutions that Made the Earth”, Timothy Lenton and Andrew Watson, Earth-system scientists at the universities of Exeter and East Anglia respectively, argue that large changes in the amount of energy available to the biosphere have, in the past, always marked large transitions in the way the world works. They have a particular interest in the jumps in the level of atmospheric oxygen seen about 2.4 billion years ago and 600m years ago. Because oxygen is a particularly good way of getting energy out of organic matter (if it weren’t, there would be no point in breathing) these shifts increased sharply the amount of energy available to the Earth’s living things. That may well be why both of those jumps seem to be associated with subsequent evolutionary leaps—the advent of complex cells, in the first place, and of large animals, in the second. Though the details of those links are hazy, there is no doubt that in their aftermath the rules by which the Earth system operated had changed.

The growing availability of solar or nuclear energy over the coming centuries could mark the greatest new energy resource since the second of those planetary oxidations, 600m years ago—a change in the same class as the greatest the Earth system has ever seen. Dr Lenton (who is also one of the creators of the planetary-boundaries concept) and Dr Watson suggest that energy might be used to change the hydrologic cycle with massive desalination equipment, or to speed up the carbon cycle by drawing down atmospheric carbon dioxide, or to drive new recycling systems devoted to tin and copper and the many other metals as vital to industrial life as carbon and nitrogen are to living tissue. Better to embrace the Anthropocene’s potential as a revolution in the way the Earth system works, they argue, than to try to retreat onto a low-impact path that runs the risk of global immiseration.

Such a choice is possible because of the most fundamental change in Earth history that the Anthropocene marks: the emergence of a form of intelligence that allows new ways of being to be imagined and, through co-operation and innovation, to be achieved. The lessons of science, from Copernicus to Darwin, encourage people to dismiss such special pleading. So do all manner of cultural warnings, from the hubris around which Greek tragedies are built to the lamentation of King David’s preacher: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity…the Earth abideth for ever…and there is no new thing under the sun.” But the lamentation of vanity can be false modesty. On a planetary scale, intelligence is something genuinely new and powerful. Through the domestication of plants and animals intelligence has remade the living environment. Through industry it has disrupted the key biogeochemical cycles. For good or ill, it will do yet more.

It may seem nonsense to think of the (probably sceptical) intelligence with which you interpret these words as something on a par with plate tectonics or photosynthesis. But dam by dam, mine by mine, farm by farm and city by city it is remaking the Earth before your eyes.


--

Anthropocene was originally coined by ecologist Eugene Stoermer but subsequently popularized by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen by analogy with the word "Holocene." The Greek roots are anthropo- meaning "human" and -cene meaning "new." Crutzen has explained, "I was at a conference where someone said something about the Holocene. I suddenly thought this was wrong. The world has changed too much. So I said: 'No, we are in the Anthropocene.' I just made up the word on the spur of the moment. Everyone was shocked. But it seems to have stuck."[6] Crutzen first used it in print in a 2000 newsletter of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), No.41. In 2008, Zalasiewicz suggested in GSA Today that an anthropocene epoch is now appropriate.[7]