Deceptive Simplicity Research Articles

Deceptively simple: An outsider's perspective on natural language processing

AbstractThis article highlights a collection of ideas with an underlying deceptive simplicity that addresses several practical challenges in computational social science and generative AI safety. These ideas lead to (1) an interpretable and quantifiable framework for political polarization; (2) a language identifier robust to noisy social media text settings; (3) a cross‐lingual semantic sampler that harnesses code‐switching; and (4) a bias audit framework that uncovers shocking racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and other biases in a wide suite of large language models.

Beyond ‘Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay’: the simultaneous impacts of co-agency in migration

ABSTRACT What are the impacts of migration on those directly involved in it: those who stay and those who leave? The deceptive simplicity of this question becomes obvious once we look at the diverse and mutually contradictory empirical answers it has received. On the basis of Web of Science data, we provide a mapping of existing studies on migration’s impacts, which reveals a clearly pronounced modularity between different disciplines and theoretical approaches, with psychological studies on migrants’ mental health, political science studies of remittances, and economic studies on labour market impacts, for example, often speaking at cross-purposes and not engaging in a meaningful dialogue. To reconcile available evidence and bridge the gap between different disciplines and approaches, in this Special Issue, we put forward the concept of co-agency that underlines the dynamic, relational, co-constructed, and co-performed nature of migration and its impacts. The concept of co-agency draws attention not to what happens to actors involved in migration, but on what they attain, what they perform, ultimately: what they do through migration. Furthermore, co-agency emphasises what actors involved in migration – both those who leave and those who stay behind – do together, rejecting a distinction between migrants as active and those staying behind as simply passive recipients of remittances, development, etc. Focusing on the co-agency of a wide variety of actors – both individual and collective, our conceptual approach emphasises the need to study the interplay between simultaneous impacts of co-agency in migration – including, but not limited to, health impacts on individuals, care-provision impacts on families, and development and policy impacts on states as collective actors. Ultimately, rather than promoting migration-pessimism or migration-optimism, we argue for a nuanced multi-level understanding of the complex interacting impacts of co-agency in migration.

Hierarchy in Law: Practical Approachh

Modern practical jurisprudence is faced with many difficulties caused by the inconsistency of the current legislation. The resolution of conflicts of norms of different legal force, collisions of general and special norms, temporal (temporary) collisions is an integral part of the law enforcer’s work. This problem is particularly topical in relation to the interference of legal norms of different legal force. A hierarchically arranged legal system presupposes internal coordination of legal acts. The classical principle of resolving conflicts between normative legal acts of different legal force is the rule of the priority of a norm of greater legal force. However, when Russia is concerned, the deceptive simplicity of this rule is complicated by the lack of a legal system of legal acts, as well as by the principle of federalism. The hierarchy under discussion is developed by the efforts of theoretical science. The article also discusses the problematic aspects of using the hierarchy of legal acts in case of their collision.

Post-Scam Crypto Recovery: Final Clarity or Deceptive Simplicity?

Post-Scam Crypto Recovery: Final Clarity or Deceptive Simplicity?

Eternal Torments in the Westminster Confession

The Westminster Confession’s teaching on ‘eternal torments’ has nuances that need to be explored, and the historical context can be brought into sharper focus. Despite an almost deceptive simplicity, the chapters are contextually poignant. Also considered is just how vital eternal torments and eschatology are to the document. Puritanical eschatological expectation was rife in the 1630s and 40s, and Christ’s return was held to be the principal issue, so chs 32–33 are no mere addendum. The proposal is that eschatology, with eternal torments, forms one of the Confession’s metanarratives and is a contender for that which has architectonic status. Eschatology is woven throughout. It is an eschatological Confession.

The deceptive simplicity of mendelian genetics.

Mendel, a genius experimentalist, meticulously uncovered the genetic basis of heredity in work that transformed the science of biology. But does the alluring simplicity of Mendel's laws sometimes obscure the true complexity of genetics?

Mathematical aspects of application of fractional multidimensional Fokker-Plank equation to the theory of rate of chemical reactions based on spectroscopy experiments with examples.

Different types of spectroscopy experiments carried by multiple teams suggest some discrepancies between one-dimensional (1D) Kramers’ theory for the rate of chemical reactions with hydrodynamic Stokes-Einstein friction model. The disagreement continued despite multidimensional (multi-D), or non-Markovian, or not-exactly hydrodynamic modifications by Grote-Hynes, Hubbard, and other authors. The proposed fractional dimensional modification to multi-D model is based on theoretical and experimental findings of dimensional disagreement and deceptive simplicity between curves for barrier crossing at equilibrium and the boundary of the curves. Comparison of less anomalous fractional derivative exponents of 1.9 and 1.7 with more anomalous of 1.5 and 1.3 suggest Sierpinski carpet, Cesaro’s, and different attractors’ curves.

Deceptive simplicity.

Deceptive simplicity.

A Warning Shot for Union‐Free Employers from NLRB Official

The National Labor Relations Act is oftentimes not considered by employers unless a union is on the scene. The “labor” law applies to labor, or so the mistaken belief goes. Section 7 of the Act provides, in deceptive simplicity, “Employees shall have the right to self‐organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities….” The focus of the Act is on employees, not unions per se.

Dissolving the Complex Role Aggregation Plays in Neurodegenerative Disease.

Prominent neuropathological hallmarks of many adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases include the deposition and accumulation of misfolded proteins or conformers; however, their role in pathogenesis has remained unclear. This is in part due to the deceptive simplicity of the question and our limited understanding of how protein homeostasis is maintained in the compartmentalized cells of the central nervous system, especially in the context of the adult brain. Building on studies from simple cell-based systems and invertebrate animals, we recently identified a protein central to the specific and selective turnover of aggregated proteins in the adult brain, the autophagy-linked FYVE protein (Alfy)/Wdfy3. Depletion of Alfy levels in a mouse model of Huntington's disease showed that it accelerated the accumulation of the aggregated mutant huntingtin protein, as well as the onset of behavioral deficits. Although the motor dysfunction was accelerated in the model, this was in the absence of increasing overt cell loss, implicating protein aggregates as a modifier of circuit dysfunction rather than driving degeneration per se. We discuss these findings in the context of what is known about protein accumulation and how we can use proteins such as Alfy to determine if protein accumulation is a shared pathogenic event across different adult-onset diseases. © 2021 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

Nanoparticle and Bioparticle Deposition Kinetics: Quartz Microbalance Measurements.

Controlled deposition of nanoparticles and bioparticles is necessary for their separation and purification by chromatography, filtration, food emulsion and foam stabilization, etc. Compared to numerous experimental techniques used to quantify bioparticle deposition kinetics, the quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) method is advantageous because it enables real time measurements under different transport conditions with high precision. Because of its versatility and the deceptive simplicity of measurements, this technique is used in a plethora of investigations involving nanoparticles, macroions, proteins, viruses, bacteria and cells. However, in contrast to the robustness of the measurements, theoretical interpretations of QCM measurements for a particle-like load is complicated because the primary signals (the oscillation frequency and the band width shifts) depend on the force exerted on the sensor rather than on the particle mass. Therefore, it is postulated that a proper interpretation of the QCM data requires a reliable theoretical framework furnishing reference results for well-defined systems. Providing such results is a primary motivation of this work where the kinetics of particle deposition under diffusion and flow conditions is discussed. Expressions for calculating the deposition rates and the maximum coverage are presented. Theoretical results describing the QCM response to a heterogeneous load are discussed, which enables a quantitative interpretation of experimental data obtained for nanoparticles and bioparticles comprising viruses and protein molecules.

Slowness and Renewed Perception: Revisiting Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho (1993) with Don DeLillo’s

In 1993 Douglas Gordon appropriated Alfred Hitchcock’s famous film Psycho and slowed it down to approximately two frames a second (instead of the usual twenty-four). The resulting work, 24 Hour Psycho, is a silent, disorienting installation that draws our attention to time and memory while questioning authorship. This article analyzes how American writer Don DeLillo revisits Gordon’s installation in his novel Point Omega (2010), which allows him to experiment with the relations between contemporary art and fiction. After presenting these various works and the intersemiotic reflexion they activate in DeLillo’s novel, the essay examines the deceptive simplicity of this brief text, in terms of syntax and diegetic structure (including the film-related framing device). Using Henri Bergson’s difference between chronological time and duration, it also focuses on DeLillo’s exploration of time (acceleration and deceleration, action and contemplation). It then argues that Point Omega can be read as a complex theoretical essay, blurring the boundaries between genres, notably by establishing a dialogue with Gordon and Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, while problematizing academic discourse. Lastly, relying on Deleuze’s texts on cinema (and on Hitchcock in particular), and on phenomenological thinking, the essay focuses on the position of the reader/viewer, between implication and distance, perception and performance.

Vibration Damping Performances of Buildings with Moving Façades Under Harmonic Excitation

BackgroundFaçade technologies are in continuous evolution and the idea to realize buildings equipped with cladding systems capable to undergo significant displacements relatively to the main structure has been considered by many authors as an opportunity to improve their vibration performances.MethodFrom a structural dynamics viewpoint, a building with a monolithic Moving Façade is essentially the same thing as a building with a Tuned Mass Damper. However, in the presence of excitations directly acting on the external surface of the building, there may be significant diferences of behavior. In this work, a first step towards a systematic comparison between the performances of buildings with Moving Façades and Tuned Mass Dampers is carried out in the simplest setting of 2 degrees of freedom modeling and harmonic excitation.ResultsDespite the deceptive simplicity of the setting, some of the aspects related to the potential applicability of moving façades to vibration damping and the correlated limitations are discussed and critically analyzed. The analyses show that, depending on the tuning of the system, monolithic Moving Façades could effectively act as vibration absorbers with a potentially high efficiency. However, it turns out that good performances could be realized at the price of extremely large displacements of the façade. The possibility to pursue potential applications of this type of systems seems therefore to be subordinated to the search of solutions to limit such displacements within functionally acceptable ranges.

How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century

In a world where capitalism alone rules the global economic system, who better than Erik Olin Wright to provide an accessible, clear-eyed argument for how we might realistically resist and move beyond it? Wright’s lovely How to be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century was the first of a planned two-part book series. Anticapitalist would be the short, reader-friendly introduction, to be followed by a more traditionally academic, rigorous second part fleshing out arguments, countering objections, and layering footnotes for the studious reader. Tragically, acute myeloid leukemia took Wright’s life before he could complete part two. What we have is a treasure that can be used by academics to motivate new generations of skeptics of status quo economic organization who are not content merely to dream of a more just future, but who look for guidance to move toward its realization. In this book, Wright recommends that we not accept our current capitalist system just because it has monopolized much, if not most, of human organization. Wright asks us to reorient our perspective on economic and social organization to focus on their contribution to human flourishing, or an all-around sense that a person’s life is going well, including access to both the material and social means necessary to flourish. Held to this standard, Wright quickly demonstrates how capitalism’s capacity to create a broadly flourishing humanity, both currently and historically, can be improved. Thus, can we envision a future in which our form of capitalism, both the method of economic production and the power relations rooted in economic production, differs for the better? To give such a dream a chance to become real in some way, we need a set of concepts that, while described with deceptive simplicity and clarity, cover the near entirety of social organization. We must be able to define what capitalism is and what it does that might lead one to oppose it (chapter 1). We need a coherent normative foundation of values and interests to name the harm that capitalism can cause to human society (chapter 2). We must understand the set of strategic approaches that can be taken to oppose capitalism (chapter 3). We need a positive vision of infusing a capitalistic system with more democratic mechanisms that can fundamentally alter power relationships across class locations (chapter 4). We need a definition of the state and a conceptual framework for understanding the many relationships that can exist between state governance and capitalist economic systems (chapter 5). And we need a view of individuals and collective groups as agentic bundles of interests, identities, and values to give hope to meaningful collective action to give hope to any attempt at anticapitalist mobilization (chapter 6). This is what Anticapitlism provides. He argues that another world is possible, that it could increase human flourishing, that the tools to create this new world already exist, and that we have access to the tactics to move from here to there.

A museum, like a tomb, is a whole theatre of weird temporality: an interview with Sofia Samatar

A museum, like a tomb, is a whole theatre of weird temporality:an interview with Sofia Samatar Andy Hageman (bio) and Sofia Samatar (bio) The compact complexities of Sofia Samatar's short stories and the archival eccentricities of her critical theory essays embody powerfully "Weird Temporalities." Samatar's short story "Ogres of East Africa" (open-access available online at Uncanny Magazine) was the first story of hers I read, and yet it opens up anew when considered with the theme of this special issue in mind. It is also a wonder to analyze with students; what can initially be a deceptive simplicity of form grows increasingly strange the more intently one examines the temporalities bound together, even at times battling one another, in the story. "Ogres of East Africa" is a list story, more specifically a taxonomic catalogue, commissioned by a European hunter seeking ever more exotic (to his mind) game. Writing the catalogue, while traveling with the hunter and a retinue of porters, is Alibhai M. Moosajee, who was born in Mombasa to a father who immigrated from Karachi. As a translator and scribe, Alibhai extracts the names, descriptions, and tales of the ogres he puts in the catalogue from Mary, a local who has been educated, or more accurately, re-educated, in a mission school, though she initially and vehemently denies this part of her past. Mary's accounts originate in diverse sources and recount a wide temporal range of ogres' histories. Alibhai underscores the notion of plural temporalities in the very first entry of the catalogue: She claims that he [the ogre called Apul Apul] has been sighted far from his native country, even on the coast, and that an Arab trader once shot and wounded him from the battlements of Fort Jesus. It happened in a famine year, the 'Year of Fever.' A great deal of research would be required in order to match this year, when, according to Mary, the cattle perished in droves, to [End Page 145] one of the Years of Our Lord by which my employer reckons the passage of time; I append this note, therefore, in fine print, and in the margins. (10) This brief excerpt points to the fact that Alibhai's work requires a capacity to navigate distinct temporalities, and find ways to make them interoperable for the catalogue. At the same time, the excerpt helps to introduce a paratext of notes by Alibhai that run alongside the primary catalogue entries. The paratext begins somewhat as a space for footnotes and reminders of supplemental work to do in the future, but the paratext space quickly shifts into Alibhai's reflections on his employer, the project, and Mary, as well as speculations on what will become of all involved when the hunting party departs to pursue the ogres as prey. What's more, the paratext is ostensibly written in a language unknown to the hunter yet presented to us in English. Constructed in this way, each ogre entry is a weird node of temporalities: the time of the ogres' lives, especially as encountered by people and passed on orally; the time of the hunter's journey and employment of Alibhai and the location of Mary as informant; the time Alibhai and Mary spend talking; the transcription/translation sessions; and the unspecified time of our access to be reading this catalogue, and accessing its secret paratext. And this level of temporal complexity comprises the mere existence of the catalogue; the weirdness intensifies deeply with the stories of each ogre. These are filled with temporal repetitions, elisions, and other aberrations tied to trauma, radical fear, the modernity of railways, and projections into possible futures. Through this bundling together of prolific form and content levels temporalities, a rather short story turns out to be immense in scales and sophistication. Reading Samatar's story is something like taking that line of Timothy Morton's Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People, "The year 2015 was when a very large number of humans figured out that they had more in common with a lion than with a dentist," and dropping it into a Petri dish of narrative mastery (33). Similar intensities of weird temporalities permeate Samatar's...

Path Contraction Faster than $2^n$

A graph $G$ is contractible to a graph $H$ if there is a set $X \subseteq E(G)$, such that $G/X$ is isomorphic to $H$. Here, $G/X$ is the graph obtained from $G$ by contracting all the edges in $X$. For a family of graphs $\cal F$, the $\mathcal{F}$-Contraction problem takes as input a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, and the objective is to output the largest integer $t$, such that $G$ is contractible to a graph $H \in {\cal F}$, where $|V(H)|=t$. When $\cal F$ is the family of paths, then the corresponding $\mathcal{F}$-Contraction problem is called Path Contraction. The problem Path Contraction admits a simple algorithm running in time $2^{n}\cdot n^{{\mathcal{O}}(1)}$. In spite of the deceptive simplicity of the problem, beating the $2^{n}\cdot n^{{\mathcal{O}}(1)}$ bound for Path Contraction seems quite challenging. In this paper, we design an exact exponential time algorithm for Path Contraction that runs in time ${{1.99987}^n}\cdot n^{{\mathcal O}(1)}$. We also define a problem called 3-Disjoint Connected Subgraphs and design an algorithm for it that runs in time $1.88^n\cdot n^{{\mathcal O}(1)}$. The above algorithm is used as a subroutine in our algorithm for Path Contraction.

Reciprocal Learning in the Partnership Project: From Knowing to Doing in Comparative Research Models

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to describe an international project aimed at building a knowledge base between Canada and China and beyond for cross-cultural educational understanding and harmonious relationships. The overall purpose of this work is to move beyond cross-cultural comparison and competition to collaborative reciprocity. Reciprocal learning is the guiding term for the Canada–China Partnership Project. The term is relatively commonplace and its deceptive simplicity veils important research and public discourse consequences. The Partnership Project, though not explicitly comparative in nature, draws heavily on the literature of comparative education, particularly with respect to methodology and understandings of Chinese and Canadian education. We describe four comparative education approaches which we think of as models of reciprocal learning across cultures. In the following remarks, we unpack these ideas of reciprocal learning as they apply to collaborative studies of Chinese and Canadian education. The models are assessed for their potential to generate collaborative teaching and learning situations with associated reciprocal learning.

Split Contraction

The edit operation that contracts edges, which is a fundamental operation in the theory of graph minors, has recently gained substantial scientific attention from the viewpoint of Parameterized Complexity. In this article, we examine an important family of graphs, namely, the family of split graphs, which in the context of edge contractions is proven to be significantly less obedient than one might expect. Formally, given a graph G and an integer k , S PLIT C ONTRACTION asks whether there exists X ⊆ E ( G ) such that G / X is a split graph and | X | ≤ k . Here, G / X is the graph obtained from G by contracting edges in X . Guo and Cai [Theoretical Computer Science, 2015] claimed that S PLIT C ONTRACTION is fixed-parameter tractable. However, our findings are different. We show that S PLIT C ONTRACTION , despite its deceptive simplicity, is W[1]-hard. Our main result establishes the following conditional lower bound: Under the Exponential Time Hypothesis, S PLIT C ONTRACTION cannot be solved in time 2 o (ℓ 2 )⋅ n O (1), where ℓ is the vertex cover number of the input graph. We also verify that this lower bound is essentially tight. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first tight lower bound of the form 2 o (ℓ 2 )⋅ n O (1) for problems parameterized by the vertex cover number of the input graph. In particular, our approach to obtain this lower bound borrows the notion of harmonious coloring from Graph Theory, and might be of independent interest.

Using simulation to teach patient-centered ultrasound-guided FNA skills.

Using simulation to teach patient-centered ultrasound-guided FNA skills.

A Comparison of Keynes’s General Theory Model of IS – LM in Chapter 21 and the 1934 Draft Copy of the General Theory: Keynes Made a Major Conceptual Improvement

Keynes made major improvements in manner in which he presented his IS-LM model in General Theory in February 1936 when compared to 1934 Draft copy of June–July Keynes’s improvements were with respect to specification of Consumption function, marginal propensity to consume, and investment multiplier and removing variable, W, which stood for impact of the state of News, which actually measured change in weight of argument (evidence). Keynes correctly substituted “expectation(confidence)” in 1934 draft, instead of using “the state of news”. This was still not correct as Keynes is still incorporating and mixing up expectational and actual variables in same set of equations. Keynes got it correct in General Theory when he defined uncertainty as an inverse function of weight of argument and confidence as a negative function of uncertainty, which makes confidence a positive function of weight of argument, in General Theory. The reader should note that Keynes never defined weight of argument, V(a/h)=w, until page 315 in chapter 26 of A Treatise on Probability. Keynes‘s comments to his students about role of mathematical equations in macroeconomics has been severely and badly misinterpreted to mean that no formal mathematical analysis of macroeconomics was possible. Keynes was always aware of fact that no mathematical model alone was capable of representing macro economy in its entirety. He spent pages 300-303 of General Theory listing types of important analysis that were not considered or taken into account in IS-LM model itself. However, IS-LM model,while being presented on pp.298-299 of General Theory as being “…valuable in introducing order and method into our enquiry., however, presents a deceptive simplicity, if we forget that three elements (a), (b) and (c) are themselves partly dependent on complicating factors (2), (3), (4) and (5) which we have not yet considered…” (Keynes,1936,p.298). All of macroeconomic history needs to be rewritten in order to incorporate Keynes’s use of an explicit IS-LM model in chapter 21 of General Theory.