- Howcome ? well since the coastline is ziggy zaggy the measurement you come up with depends on how tight you stretch the the metaphorical measuring string over the cressalations .. let it follow the outline of every stone or you could even let it slack around the outline of each molecule and end up with a huge measurement.

- that was a subpart of a part in which he explained how they learned that taking a few reference points and sticking a fractal pattern between them produces very realistic coastlines at all levels of zoom with more accuracy than the old mathematical way.

hang on a mo they don't use any mathematical formula for filling in the gaps they just use a fractal which looks right. Is he saying you could do the same with forecasting ?

- 1. Forecasting helps us be more efficient.

- That itself was a subpart of his main talk about "guessing lines" i.e. forecasting in general. Just as for coastlines mathematical calculations turn out to less accurate than sticking in fractals, then mathematical forecasting is not as good as we think it is. .. complex models are often worse than simple.
- Acknowledges that seemingly human guessing is often a reliable evolutionary developed forecasting system.
- But often it's crap, but still beneficial - good example of Red Indian bone forecasting for choosing where to hunt - cos it's random they don't destroy the ecosystem, nor are the buffalo able to develop any evasive tactics.

- arm raising exercise to show humans can easily generate predictions based on analysis of past patterns

- Indeed, forecasting and prediction are central to the scientific method. Theory - forecast - test - refine - test again etc.

- 'The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.'

- However expensive complex forecasting is usually crap and simple models are often better

- You come up with better solutions by testing them, but in government/business people don't allow time for testing they hurry to pick an off the shelf guru solution.

- The rules for successful forecasters include, 'ideally, predict the past', 'make lots of predictions', 'predict a figure or a date, but never both', 'shout about your successes', 'leave town if your failures catch up with you'.

- Before we used to come up with single precise number predictions, today Probabilistic forecasts are more common and better understood : 'fan chart' of possibilities like BoE uses.

- Instead of using one model we run different ones side by side.

- He talked about media speculation feeding back into reality.

- He concludes by saying we are getting better using fan of probabilities etc.

- Of course, true winners ignore all forecasts. 'Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.
- They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it.'

- My slightly fuller notes , original text is on the Gresham website :

- So that where dreaming comes in at night : the brain plays at making movies over the same neural network sending different actions over the same pathways therefore weakening the days burning in. It doesn't completely remove the old pathways, but just leaves them a little less firmly etched in. Also during dreaming there is a certain chemical state similar to writing in light pencil rather than pen, so the memories of our dreams are extremely light.

- This is where the bit about schizophrenia comes in, with these people the flag " dream time finished" never comes up so when they wake up the movie making process in the brain continues and becomes mixed with a reality sent in through the senses.

- In senility this flag gets stuck the other way so yesterday's memory of reality gets put down in pencil instead of pen.

- This memory loss drug also seems to come into effect when we have sex. Presumably if you had great sex once and had a perfect memory, you could enjoy it again by just playing back the memory.. therefore there would be no reason to have real sex again. So our brain wipes most of the experience memory, leaving us with a vaguer memory of pleasure, so the only way to get back the full feelIng is to have sex again and keep propagating the species.

- Can I have my Nobel Prize now ? ha ha !

- Update Feb 2009
- Dream Brainpower is astounding - As engineer I look at a painting and think "I could never do that, it's too complicated. There must be tens of thousands of computations and steps in making a painting", Yet my brain makes dozens of dreams with sophisticated plots and intricate details every night.

- Observation 1. - Illogical jumps like Hollywood movies - Dreams often jump from one plot to another, so they don't make sense as a whole. Hollywood movies often seem the same to me, so I find it irritating that they don't make sense, but maybe they are deliberately copying the system of dreams.

- Observation 2. - Annoying repetitions - Sometimes my dreams go on and on about the same thing as if stuck in a groove, I find this very irritating.

- Observation 3. - On and On - With my dreams being so intense,going and on and the repetitive loops they actually make me very tired that's why I have to sleep 9 hours.
- They say old people need to sleep less and younger people to sleep more. I would argue that it's mostly that it's related to the amount of new information and that for some people living in the same place same routine there is very little new information.

- Update March 2009
- Theory of Memory - the memory just remembers every single microsecond of your life - I just realised I can remember old sleeping dreams. In fact I can remember many many old dreams. My memory must be huge. I propose a new theory that far from using any kind of compression system of writing over old data- the brain doesn't store like a computer the memory just remembers every single microsecond of your life. And that if I hear a song a 2nd time the old memory does get modified or deleted, you actually have 2 memories, then even if you think about about the song this thinking itself gets laid down as a new memory.

- Somehow your brain has more memory power than your town library and maybe the Library of Congress.

- If we imagine the central system as a CPU one microsecond it's thinking about the sound, the next few microsecond it's processing some blocks in the top righthand corner of your vision etc And at the side is a moing papertape which gets stamped with whatever is passing through the CPU at that time. There might be 2 parallel or multiple CPUs.

- So it's a huge huge memory system therefore the memory retrieval system sucks, cos all the misremembering and all the errors are in there too. So it gives the illusion of forgetting ..we don't forget we just confused sorting out all of the different memories.

- Maybe you might want to consider one of the second hand models which have been returned by other customers are so are available for quicker delivery.

- The drunken-slob model - Sit's around all day watching football on TV and drinking "don't call me an alcoholic, I just have 1 or 2 drinks everyday."
- The dirty old man model - Looks like your Grandad, but thinks his artificial hair makes him look like a moviestar - thinks being with a younger girl will help get him back the energy of his youth. He also steals your underwear and tries to look up your friends skirts
- The "oh did I forget to tell you I was already married." model ..need we say more.
- The Narcissuss model - he uses more make-up than you

- If however you would like to stay with your original choice of the perfect boyfriend model then you might have to wait some time longer.

- In the meantime you might want to steal one of your friends boyfriends, but be warned many look like PBs on the outside, but turn out one of the 4 types above.

- We would also like to apologise for the defective and faulty models we have supplied in the past. ..sorry .. please wait patiently.