Lifeboat Foundation

A very seductive hypothesis: did Cambridge Analytica use its psychographics profiles to find the audience for our post-truth world? Did they target gullible voters on behalf of Trump’s campaign? Why is a Cambridge Analytica employee reading about the Need for Cognition Scale?

In a remarkable paper (summarised here), Fording and Schram analysed some survey results from January 2016 and highlighted the disproportionate support for Trump among “low-information voters”. They define those as voters who either score low in political knowledge or low on the so-called Need for Cognition Scale. The latter criterion means that they tend to make decisions based on heuristics rather than by thinking through the issue methodically. Of course, the two factors correlate: if you don’t think much about politics, you are unlikely to know a lot about it and vice-versa.[1]

Fording and Schram went on to assess the preference for Trump or Clinton segmented through those criteria. Because the data was collected in January, this is not expressed as a vote preference, but as a “warmth index” (or a difference of warmth), in the Y-axis.

Continue reading “Microtargeting of low-information voters” »

Tiny electric airplanes could transform air travel.

On its own, swapping conventional aircraft engines for electric motors could have significant benefits, reducing the cost of air travel and emissions per flight. But the bigger opportunity here is to make air travel practical in situations where no one would think to take an airplane today.

Back in October, Uber published a white paper describing its vision of the future small VTOL aircraft could make possible. Uber envisions a network of on-demand aircraft carrying passengers among many landing spots distributed throughout a metropolitan area. For example, right now it takes at least an hour to drive from San Jose, California, to San Francisco — and closer to two hours during rush hour. In contrast, Uber estimates, the same trip could take 15 minutes in a VTOL airplane.

Continue reading “Why Google co-founder Larry Page is pouring millions into flying cars” »

Cultured couture.

As humans explore other worlds, the colonies they develop may change over time. While the first settlements may rely on individuals, as the outposts grow more self-sustaining, families will likely become the colonists of choice, a panel of experts said.

“The socioeconomic origins of colonists are going to change over time,” science fiction author Charles E. Gannon told Space.com.

Earlier this year at Dragon Con in Atlanta, Gannon was part a panel of scientists and science communicators who discussed how future space colonies might look and act, and how such developments might affect the rest of humanity on Earth. Gannon was joined by nuclear physicist Ben Davis, forensic anthropologist Emily Finke, science teacher Lali DeRosier and moderator Kishore Hari, a self-described “professional nerd.” [NASA’s Wild Space Colony Concepts in Images].

Amazing Lift!!!

Some end of year thoughts on what we can hope to expect over the next few decades in terms of pushing the envelope of space travel.

Thoughts on a few benchmark dates for pushing humanity offworld and beyond the solar system. Here are few estimates for when we should expect future milestones in our crewed voyages beyond low-Earth orbit and to Proxima Centauri b.

Meaning “alone”, and ipse, meaning “self”) is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.

This video is targeted to blind users.

Continue reading “Solipsism: Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɨpsɪzəm/; from Latin solus” »

Fans of science fiction movies that depict weird, speculative or dystopian futures have plenty to look forward to in 2017. Here are our picks of the movies you should put on your radar if you enjoy cinematic depictions of future technology, from a couple of space station thrillers to a story that turns our current social media exhibitionist tendencies into an Orwellian take on the importance of privacy in a digital age.

Some research suggests macrophages might be the best target for senescent cell therapies. Here is Mantas from cell age answering a reader question “Are senescent macrophages the problem of other cell types?”

Mantas from CellAge answers a question from one of our readers who asked if senescent macrophages (the cleaner cells of the body) should be the focus of senescent cell removal. Some research this year by Gudkov et al. suggests that macrophages become tainted by senescent cell signals and become dysfunctional and that removing them could be beneficial as they could be replaced with macrophages that do work properly.

Continue reading “CellAge Campaign Q&A: Are Senescent Macrophages The Problem Or Other Cell Types?” »