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You never stop learning, that why in my spare time I enjoy scouring the web in search of topics, courses, articles concerning the maritime sector. When I saw the online course, the title immediately caught my attention, because it’s a very special title in the eyes of a seaman. In addition to h

This interview made some very interesting points when discussing the overall evolution of the concept of the Padua rainbow. Especially when tying in ancient Mesopotamia and their practices when viewing space and tracking the planetary movement. I found it interesting to see how even in early human h

This week I watched the interview with philosopher Ned Hall and found the conversation between him and Professor Goodman absolutely amazing--I am very astonished by philosophy and glad to see in what ways it relates to what we have been discussing in class. What partially shocked me during the inter

It was fascinating to hear divergent perspectives on the future of human exploration in space. In week 11, Lord Martin Rees argued that robot exploration is likely to become the primary mode of space exploration, citing the difficulties associated with maintaining human life in space. In contrast, J

Link: blundell 2 of 2.mp3 The most interesting part of the interview for me was when Blundell was speaking about searching for other solar systems and how scientists are limited by their own imaginations. She recalled that at the time, researchers were only searching for solar systems exactly like

One aspect of the behavioral economics discussion that I watched between David Laibson and Alyssa Goodman came during the discussion of economic modeling. I found it surprising how forthcoming Professor Laibson was about the inability to project stock performance over any far-reaching time frame.

Link to interview with Dr. Avi Loeb: https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:HarvardX:c1543a73:lx_simulation:1 Some of the most suprising and cool things I took away from the PredictionX Video Prediction in Astrophysics with Avi Loeb were his analogies for extraterrestrial life and his calm de

This was an incredibly interesting interview to me because it felt like we received two contrasting perspectives on how to think about the future. On the one hand, Agustin Rayo represented a very philosophical perspective, Professor Goodman provided one rooted more firmly in science. It was a very i

The conversation regarding determinism and free will was super interesting to me. He relies a lot on the concept of life paths and learned behavior. One example that Agustin Rayo brought up that were interesting to me is the “Alyssa in 10 years” scenario. He said that it is not feasibly possible to

This week I listened to Professor Goodman's interview of Ned Hal about the intersection of psychology and prediction. One thing that I found really interesting about the interview was Ned's breakdown of what needs to happen in order for climate change to be properly dealt with. Professor Goodman had

I was interested in Prof. Gilbert’s discussion of how people internalize uncertainty and accuracy estimations. In his interview, he notes that individuals are typically unmotivated by statistics such as “a certain accuracy estimation improved by x%,” and are instead more impacted by behavior changes

This week I watched Professor Goodman's interview of Ned Hall. What I found most interesting about the talk was Professor Goodman and Ned's conversation about rules and theories. From what I gleaned rules are more tailored to specific situations and do not involve concepts that can't be directly obs

I was most surprised in the interview to learn about the accelerated understanding of Exoplanets. As discussed, these are very hard to detect, because they produce no light or other emissions. Therefore, the tuning of telescopes and other sensors to detect a planet is extremely precise, and requires

In the interview with Jill Tarter, I found myself surprised by the amount of uncertainty. There is such a wide range of frequencies that extraterrestrial communication could be found on that it has led to false signals of extraterrestrial life. It seems really difficult to parse out what is normal a

While listening to this interview with Professor Laibson, several intriguing facts about behavioral economics and how it has been used historically, how it is used today, and how it may be used in the future, stuck out to me. I think one of the most striking things is how recent the development of t

I think the most interesting bit of information I learned is that, in the search for extraterrestrial communication, scientists look for communication in a really broad range of frequency. This is where a good portion of the uncertainty in this field comes from and, according to Jill Tarter, has bee

Link to interview: https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:HarvardX:c1543a73:lx_simulation:1 Some of the most suprising and cool things I took away from the PredictionX Video Prediction in Astrophysics with Avi Loeb were his analogies for extraterrestrial life and his calm demeanor in regards

I really enjoyed Professor Goodman and Professor Firestein's discussion regarding the importance of uncertainty and “ignorance” in science, as they consistently note that scientific discoveries rarely get at a universal truth and are instead stepping stones in letting us understand more about what w

The interview with Katherine Blundell discussed how scientific exploration was limited by preconceptions that restricted scientists' creativity. The example provided was of solar systems. In this example, Blundell discussed how part of what caused scientists difficulty when initially searching for o

I thought the discussion of present bias was very interesting. It is cool to see how we can quantify and predict decisions a person makes based on a relative assessment of the impact of an action. For instance: humans naturally weigh present events more heavily than future events. This means that if

The concept of uncertainty is one I have grappled with in various contexts this year. Whether it's not knowing what you're going to do after college or figuring out daily plans, there is power in not knowing what comes next and building a life for yourself that is based on genuine choices. In a lett

As someone who didn't know a lot about space, I thought the fact that we looked across a massive frequency range to look for extraterrestrial life was really interesting. This of course could lead to a larger amount of uncertainty, which was also discussed, which I also thought was interesting. I wo

• Identify and explain (in a paragraph) the most surprising bit of information you learned. (20 points) • If you had conducted the interview, what unasked and/or unanswered question would you have asked, and why? (another ~paragraph) (20 points) This conversation was really interesting and a va

I was especially interested in the intersection of philosophy and prediction because much of what we’ve learned about modern prediction falls within a very practical context. Prediction is often used to help in very practical ways in our everyday lives: informing clothing choices, our driving routes

What I found most surprising from the conversation between Prof. Goodman, Prof. Rayo, Cassandra, and Elizabeth was their discussion about the relationship between prediction, morality, and free will. I had never considered that if someone's actions can be predicted with complete certainty and accura

Something that surprised me when I watched Professor Goodman’s conversation with Ned Hall was the discussion that they had about how we practically use models to promote understanding and make predictions. Dr. Hall brings up an example from his time as an undergraduate where he predicted different q

Find the interview here. I was surprised to hear Ned Hall referring to predictive systems as a patch of truth. I am skeptical about this framing which I will get into shortly. As a preliminary aside, Newton thought some wacky things about what space is, and what forces are. This led Hume and Berkely

I thought what Avi had to say about dark matter was interesting. I don't know much about space or the matter that it is filled with, but the concept of keeping something consistent until you know it is changing seemed to make sense from a modeling perspective. It seems that astronomers are not yet

I watched the interview with philosopher and professor Agustín Rayo. I was most surprised by his strong assertion that physics does not speak to free will in the free will-determinism debate. This was part of his interesting perspective that determinism is just a very good predictor of the exercise

I greatly enjoyed watching this chat with Stuart Firestein, professor of Columbia University who teaches not only the Introduction to Neuroscience but also a course called "Ignorance: What We Don't Know." I learned that the course is based on the idea that ignorance is not the opposite of knowledge,