13 Comments

Posted today: "Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our decisions?"

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

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Sorry, computer froze before I could finish.Does anyone have advice on which of the publicly available software packages out there for creating a prediction market is best? I figure a lot of the other folks reading this site have looked into this and I want to tap into all of your expertise. For what it's worth, I have a decent computer programming background but a very weak web development background (I know C++, VisualBasic, SQL and Python but I've never set up more than a very basic website).

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I'm looking to start up a prediction market. I'm looking at the different free and/or open source templates available. In particular, I'd like to be able to design my own interface to aid in the pricing of contracts and have the software handle the trading underneath.

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There don't seem to be many posts on AI anymore...

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EU: Deutschland wieder DefizitsünderEuropa in der Rezession

Deutschland wird in der Wirtschaftskrise wieder zum Defizitsünder. Entgegen früherer Prognosen bricht Berlin schon im laufenden Jahr mit einer Neuverschuldung von 3,9 Prozent den Euro-Stabilitätspakt, wie die EU-Kommission am Montag in Brüssel vorhersagte.

Im kommenden Jahr drohen 5,9 Prozent Defizit vom Bruttoinlandsprodukt. Europa steckt mitten in der tiefsten Rezession seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Das Heer der Arbeitslosen wächst. Ein leichter Hoffnungsschimmer zeichnet sich für 2010 ab.

Bundesfinanzminister Peer Steinbrück sagte in Brüssel zum europäischen Arbeitsmarkt: «Das macht mir Sorge.» Es sei kein Trost, dass die Lage in Deutschland wegen der Reformen der vergangenen Jahre besser aussehe. Laut Kommission werden 2009 und 2010 insgesamt 8,5 Millionen Jobs in der EU verschwinden. Die Arbeitslosenquote soll im kommenden Jahr im Eurogebiet auf 11,5 Prozent steigen nach 9,9 Prozent im laufenden Jahr. Deutschland schneidet mit 10,4 Prozent (2010) und 8,6 Prozent (2009) etwas besser ab.

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Eliezer:More accurately I should say I'm readjusting my budget and setting money aside with this in mind. Gonna have to take on life insurance anyway; come July I'm attempting immortality using the more traditional method.

I do wish the head-freeze came with an organ-harvesting option. Gotta research organ donation further.

So I am serious about it but I have some qualms

1) Morality, if organ donation saves lives2) $, I'm strapped, and forced to choose, I'm more likely to invest in my genes than myself. Decent chance my daughter will have some of the traits I dig about myself and (fingers crossed) my wife's superior disposition.I want to see what my genes can do, launched from a sturdier pad.3) Greater cynicism than Robin (and maybe you) about future stability.

In sum, I'm not sure I reach the 5% threshold he's spoken of, or if 5% would justify it in my current circumstances.

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BTW Fenn: Why a savings account? To pay for life insurance, or are you trying to do it not using life insurance?

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Just picked the latest Australian 'Cosmos' and the issue was devoted to Singularity and featured an article by R.Hanson.

It does seem that everyone has their fetishes. To J.Hughes Libral Democracy is the answer to everything, to E.Yudkowsky Bayes is the answer to everythng and to R.Hanson it's free-market economics. No disrepect intended but I always found it .. er... rather unlikely. I don't think posthumans are going to pay much attention to free market economic notions, which are not even very successful at predictions in the human social sphere, less alone the robotic one. Economics really is the wrong lens for viewing this canvas.

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Old Geddes can't always be around to tell you all where you keep going wrong ;) Soon must I must vanish into the great beyond. My last missive is this: my opinion is that vewing reality as a game is an imperfect analogy but viewing reality as a work of art is the perfect analogy. Stick to this latter analogy and your aim will forever be true.

From an excert in the sports section of my local newspaper,talking about a great performance by the French rubgy team to beat NZ:

'...for (minutes) they were perfect. The play was a work of art, a pure aesthetic. The need for a goal and (optimization) had been transcended..The French team had moved beyond such things'(NZ Herald)

The highest level of reality is a language, a 'self-mapping', as Chris Langan (IQ 200) correctly surmised when I debated him on a mailing list long ago. And the core purpose behind the language is best expressed as art. Remember what I have said. Save you it will.

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Anyone care to write something about pandemics and exponential growth, the reported WHO/CDC numbers show just that.How many infected expected end of may for example. "Nick Bostrom attends meeting at The Royal Society to discuss new approaches to biological risk assessment" FHI, 19 February 2009.

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Robin: Okey-doke, I will save my receiptEliezer: Guess I meant "case" more than argument.

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'Tis not really my argument, I mostly just summarized a number of things that have already been said by some physicists. The only parts I made up on my own were thought-experiments like the Ebboreans, and extending the standard concept of identical particles to refute the philosophical notion of indexical identity apart from pattern identity. Even these may have appeared elsewhere for all I know. A better form of the question is "How convincing did you find the many-worlds arguments that Eliezer stated?", say.

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Fenn, when you are signed up, I'll make my answer into a blog post. :)

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I have just started a savings account to pay for cryonics. I will forgo my hour Hanson talk when I actually sign up for a 7 second, 1 or 2 character, answer to this query, if that is amenable. Emailed or here is fine.

1 to 10, how convincing did you find Eliezer's many worlds argument?

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