Pigeons and Monty Hall

The Monty Hall problem is a blind spot in our rationality. No trouble for pigeons.


(image credit: broadwayworld.com)
 
 
 
 

More Darwin

Watch NOVA's "What Darwin Never Knew".

Darwin and Lincoln

Happy Birthday Chuck and Abe! Two of history's most consequential lives began this day 201 years ago. When the book on the most important days in human history is written, February 12, 1809 deserves a mention.

Adam Gopnik wrote about Darwin and Lincoln last year in Smithsonian:

"The obvious truths of 1809, the kind that were taught in school, involved what could be called a "vertical" organization of life -- one in which we imagine a hierarchy of species on earth, descending from man on down toward animals, and a judge appraising us up above in heaven. Man was stuck in the middle, looking warily up and loftily down.

...People also believed, using what they called examples ancient and modern -- and the example of the Terror in France, which had only very recently congealed into Napoleon's Empire, was a strong case -- that societies without inherited order were intrinsically weak, unstable and inclined to dissolve into anarchy or tyranny. "Democracy" in the sense we mean it now was a fringe ideal of a handful of radicals."

(image credit: abcnews.com)

Social Networking Medicine

Jamie Heywood discusses his brother and PatientsLikeMe. Frontline covered their story in 2007.

The Greenlander

The short list of people who have had their complete genome sequenced includes James Watson, George Church, Craig Venter and a Greenlander who lived 4,000 years ago.

(image credit: impression of ancient Greenland man, Nuka Godfredson, via nytimes.com)