23 Comments

It would be great to see more updates from you. Not all of the links seem to work.

Karen

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Any of the Star Trek books read by James Doohan. He does (did - RIP) truly amazing voice acting. Seriously.

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They're biased in exactly the same way – to the degree to which their 'beliefs' differ from reality, where 'beliefs' may be (best) measured via the machine's or human's behavior.Take hyperbolic discounting – if you wrote a program that traded stocks and you noticed that it also behaved *as if* it had a hyperbolic discount function, wouldn't it be *useful* to describe it as also being biased?If it's a (relatively) simple machine with a (relatively) simple goal, you could also simply say "the machine is broken".

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Robin, do you think that a machine can be biased? or Is such a juxtaposition even meaningful?

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how about ontology?

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A lot of people here are down on democracy, but that doesn't mean they want to replace it with theology, haha.

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My Thought of The Month:

"Code is valuable, Debate is as free as hot airCode moves reality, Debate only moves your mouthCode changes the world, Debate only changes your page views"

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What things should I leave up to my subconscious, and what things should I handle consciously?

For example, I generally trust my instincts when I have to choose between signaling and countersignaling. Is this a mistake?

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The motivation is this intangible concept called goodwill and it's a veryprofitable and powerful one. People love buying from corporations that contribute to societal welfare. It gives them warm fuzzies. In thesomewhat socially enlightened era we live in we want to believe thebusinesses we deal with are not just self-interested, profit motivated,money hungry entities. We feel good buying from fair-trade coffee shops. Corporations can capitalize on goodwill just like any other feature a product can offer. I remember being told once that I was helping save a rain forrest in Africa because I bought some soap. That pulled at my heart strings, which was stronger than Body Shop's competitor's trying to sell me on low prices. It's a good thing overall, but I think it's important to be objective and realize that Ronald McDonald doesn't really care about your kids:)

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The standard solution was to privatize the commons so it's not a commons any more. The Econ Nobel just went to Elinor Ostrom, who argues that isn't necessary. I don't know if she's a "freemarketarian", but Peter Boettke is and lucky for him he published a book on the Bloomington School that Ostrom is part of shortly before the prize was announced.

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Does anyone know of any articles/books/links in which economists of a freemarketarian persuasion address the issue known as the "tragedy of the commons"?

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http://kofmel.blogspot.com/...

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If he doesn't write the book, keep following my blog, the "Anti-Democracy Agenda":

www.anti-democracy.com

Cheers

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Well, I don't think there's ever been an anonymous corporate donation. Maybe that's a clue.

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That makes sense. Medicine has a much longer tradition of "don't fix what ain't broke" than say computer science or even psychology (in which a focus on happiness and excellence is the latest trend). And for rational historical reasons too. Hmm. Thanks.

I wonder what else could be used to piggy back enhancement efforts. People do it themselves to get ahead in academic pursuits (everything from caffeine to ritalin to speed), athletics (steroids and supplements), and military applications.

I personally feel that a lot more could be gained by enhancing existing human structures before emulating them outright or augmenting them. But, that's a vastly uninformed opinion. I wonder where to get more information on the matter...

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"...most clothes and food are signaling?" I can only conclude that you spend far more time than I do associating with people who dress well and do a lot of eating out.

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