Distracções

Há algum tempo deparei-me com esta notícia, sob o título "Os cérebros mais eficazes são os das pessoas mais distraídas". Como (quase) sempre, a minha primeira reacção foi um misto de curiosidade com incompreensão; o que é a eficácia de um cérebro? E como se mede?

Infelizmente a notícia não se alongava muito sobre e isso e, eventualmente por distracção, também não fui procurar mais informações. Aparentemente é algo que está ligado à memória operacional. Isto são excelentes notícias dado que de facto sou uma pessoa extremamente distraída. No entanto confesso que, do pouco que li, não consegui entender a relação. De facto sempre achei, talvez por experiência própria, que as pessoas distraídas nos detalhes do quotidiano o são por provavelmente estarem a pensar em algo mais importante (no seu entendimento, claro).  Isto por sua vez levaria a que, ao debruçarem-se novamente sobre um problema, partissem mais à frente visto que teriam feito grande parte do trabalho algo inconscientemente, correndo assim o risco de serem consideradas mais inteligentes ou eficazes (ambos termos para os quais nunca vi uma definição convincente neste contexto). De facto muitos dos grandes cérebros da história da Humanidade têm fama de serem particularmente distraídos ou desligados. É certo que não se pode descontextualizar as coisas, e em épocas onde a participação masculina nas lides domésticas se reduzia a comentar o jantar suponho que fosse fácil uma pessoa alhear-se dos problemas do quotidiano. Ainda assim, é um padrão que parece aparecer demasiadas vezes para ser ignorado.

A verificar-se esta história da memória operacional, contudo, representaria todo uma nova perspectiva sobre a dualidade distracção-eficácia cerebral. Talvez um dia já aprofundar os pressupostos, métodos e conclusões desse estudo e volte a escrever sobre o assunto. Se não me distrair.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

The Black Swan

Some time ago I decided to read The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb, after spotting several references in other books I enjoyed. Yesterday, when reading A Arte de Pensar com Clareza by Rolf Dobelli, I came across another respectful mention to Taleb and decided to finally put on paper my thoughts on the book.

The Black Swan describes and analyses the phenomena (named Black Swan* by the author) whereby single isolated and unpredictable events (so-called outliers) are sometimes more relevant and important than the remaining vast majority which obey some rule or appear to follow some logic. I will not try to summarise Taleb's marvellous book in a couple of pages, but rather try to describe the general picture and through it hopefully make the reader curious enough to go and read it for him(her)self.

The main idea of the book is that it is wiser to recognise our knowledge's limitations and act accordingly, then trying to use the best tools available to try and predict the unpredictable. Quoting one of the book's examples, you would not want to use a map of the Pyrenees when climbing to the Himalaias, even if that is the most similar to a map of the Himalaias available. This apparently small step, of recognising that we are using the wrong map and to throw it away, may be surprisingly hard. Near the end comes my favourite quote from the book: It is much more sound to take risks you can measure than to measure the risks you are taking.

For the ones more familiar with statistics and/or background in engineering or mathematics the book also offers some insight on normal and fractal distributions, highlighting the differences between both and the conditions under which one may expect to come across one or the other.

Finally, do not lose heart if, at the beginning of your reading, Taleb's writing seems arrogant and condescendent towards the reader. You will find his ideas are definitely worth the hassle.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

* The Black Swan (capital letters) is not the same as the black swan, which is often mentioned in philosofical debates and is basically a fallacy of inductive reasoning.

Safe Bet

A few weeks ago I came across this article complaining about the lack of originality in nowadays movies, particularly those from Hollywood and/or famous studios. It stated that, in this current era where a Blockbuster typically costs millions of dollars to shoot, studios would rather play it safe with sequels and/or already visited themes, characters, etc...

Examples of sequels are too easy to find: the hangover, fast & furious, etc etc... Re-visited characters are now blooming now with lots of new movies around Marvel characters which had already been to the big screen. I won't even get into repeated themes.

What really annoys me is when we see a supposably different movie copying some distancing trait from another already successful series of movies. The Tourist immediately comes to mind; while watching it it was impossible not to see the resemblance of the main character's way of moving/speaking with another of Johnny Depp's roles, the famous Captain Jack Sparrow. Now this is, in my opining, both maddening and unnaceptable. From the commercials I've seen, it seems like The Lone Ranger will follow the same path. This is particularly sad because Johnny Depp is a remarkable actor totally capable of accomplishing different and solid roles.

Of course there are exceptions, and hopefully there will always be some really innovative and original movies for us to watch. Let us just hope they get a fair share of the total budgets.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

A Cubic Interaction

As you all know, the Interactable project used to have a website with updated (*cough cough*) news and plans regarding the project, hosted at interactable.tk. Most unfortunately, the website seems to have been put down, and now redirects the visitors to some "interesting" ads. Although our technical staff is investigating the issue, it is still unclear why this happened; we suspect Korean hackers though. Either that or the republic of Tokelau (is it a republic?) went bankrupt and decided to make some budget cuts, namely on free hosting of websites.

For this reason this blog will now feature some of the posts that would be on that website, until our technical staff fixes the issue, which might obviously take a while since we will first need to hire them. That being said, not that much is expected to happen around Interactable in the next months anyway.

In a previous post it was announced that the project would participate in the E3 forum meeting and so it did, under the title "Interactable: a Cubic Interaction" Yep, we went with the cheesy style. It is a great pleasure to announce that Interactable's passing by the E3 Forum was a huge success: the crowd cheered with the live demos and the jury was impressed by the project's potential and innovative concept. The programme was filled with panels of respected speakers who gave their perspectives on the issues of employment and entrepreneurship, and how education is linked to both.
All in all it was an extremely full day where the team was also able to promote some networwking. Last but not least, Interactable was awarded the Most Innovative Product/Technology award by the international jury, leading to yet another boost in confidence and motivation.


Just the week after, Interactable was presented at the LarSyS (Laboratory for Robotics and Systems in Engineering) annual meeting. Despite being somewhat of an intruder (even though two of the team members are/were part of LarSys the project itself is totally out of its scope) the team had the opportunity to do some live demos and explanations, yet again generating interest, positive feedback and suggestions for new applications.

The team is now considering whether or not to let go of the project due to lack of time and added responsibilities. Still, there are already some people of the team's confidence interested in picking it up and taking over the next few miles. The project might then suffer massive changes in its team's composition, but will most likely endure. There should be an update on the project's situation before the end of 2013.


Filipe Baptista de Morais