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Comment by jrcii | Hacker News Reader

"Nick reminds me of writers like Jared Diamond, people who develop a grand theory that explains a lot about the world. He is one of those original thinkers who makes you say: More people should know about this guy’s work."

I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world but no one cares because Bill Gates didn't tell everyone to listen to me.

* Can anyone remind me why we care what Bill Gates thinks about biology? If this was a post about the software business that would be one thing. It's so ubiquitous I don't necessarily expect anyone to understand my point, but this strikes me as a form of worshiping money. Because he has money we care what he thinks about anything and everything. It's a more covert form of the absurdity in reading and caring about what some celebrity likes to eat for breakfast.

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>I have original ideas that explain a lot about the world

Surely you aren't going to leave us hanging without giving us a synopsis of the top three...

1. The evolutionary advantage of cooperative problem solving is what gives rise to the human tendency to self-identify with mutually exclusive groups of every scope including political territories, religions, sports teams, etc. and in turn some of the largest aspects of human culture. 2. Our concept of knowledge, which is based on prediction from past observations, is rooted in the design of our nervous system. Intuition is the product of micro-observations and predictions calculated with this system. 3. Organic life responds to its environment using a closed-loop feedback system that can be modeled as a series of steps (Sense, Organize, Analyze, Decide, Execute) where the Execute step changes the input in the Sense step.

#2 seems like it could be tested.

#3 seems like a decent model, but is the model actually consistent with how "all organic life" functions? And what is the distinction between Organize&Analyze and Analyze&Decide and Decide&Execute?

You're claiming those ideas as original?

Are you suggesting they're not? Where did he plagiarize them from if so? He can't exactly prove they're original, but you could prove they have at least been said before, if not plagiarized.

At least from an etymology perspective, analyze should come before organize. My version is Anticipate->Sense->Decide->Understand but I think it's not mine exclusively.

You might have better ideas as you understand them in your head, but the actual words you use to communicate with other humans matter. These don't say that much. In contrast, Nick Lane's are intriguing.

Respect you putting up.

#1 Original. More importantly, I like it :) Game theory meets ideology. I reckon that an multi-agent based simulation model with enough features could test your hypothesis. I think sociology will get there in about a decade. If you do this now you'll revolutionise a part of the field.

#2 Not original. Epistemological theories have this covered. Also, you're blurring or at least not making distinct different kinds of knowing. Check out phenomenology as well. Check out cognitive neuroscience. I know these are huge areas but you seriously think nobody has thought about this following on from McCullogh-Pitts? There's knowing how versus knowing that for a start. There's knowing facts versus intuitions. Inductive reasoning has been studied. Intuitionism is a thing.

#3 Not original. Cybernetics has this covered. Also, Your steps are far far far too general.

1 is not necessarily original. Filip Buekens et al have worked on a model that constructs social institutions as emerging from incentivization structures like those present in cooperative games.

See for example J. P. Smit, Filip Buekens and Stan du Plessis (2011) "What is Money? An Alternative to Searle's Institutional Facts", Economics and Philosophy 27(1), pp 1 - 22, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&...

Interesting. Thanks.

Along related lines (I think): Author Fleischmann, Anselm.

Title A simple Luhmann economy market mechanisms that lead to the emergence of the economy as proposed by Niklas Luhmann are explored by agent based modelling

Imprint Saarbrücken : VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2008.

https://library.ucc.ie/record=b2094907

Your asterisked point about Bill Gates I 100% agree with. Your ideas vs. Nick Lane's, not as much.

Bill Gates is into biology because (A) he's curious and (B) his foundation pursues innovations in diverse fields all of which are not software. I don't know if he writes his own copy or not but I appreciate these reviews and TIL Nick Lane's books sound awesome and I did not know that before.

Also, for you to win it is not necessary for others to fail :)

We don't necessarily care what he thinks but we are made aware of what he thinks so when he mentions a book people are going to talk about it. What's the alternative? Ignore him because he's rich? Treat every media outlet like some photocopied fanzine publishing the random thoughts of random people with no reputation for anything?

Send him a copy of your book.

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