barbie17

Ah, clever! Thank you.

Dosn't email clients such as gmail automatically block images though? How do you track it?

Seconded. Wouldn't the results of the prediction market be calculated into the current value of the DOW? I mean, sure, there could be distress selling right now, but even assuming that people are somewhat rational...

They should be grateful that the Amazon Kindle, a complement good to ebooks is so popular. How many books were purchased because of the Amazon Kindle? How many books will be bought because of the extra usefulness of the audio feature? Instead, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Not only that, but they are also obstructing the advancement of technology and innovation by reducing their usefulness. First Google Books and now this. What a bunch of ungrateful bastards - hardly better than the RIAA.

Now that it's known, it will be arbitraged away. The guy who discovered this should have kept it a secret ;).

Where's the incentive for me to work my butt off and risk getting fired all for my Big Dumb Corporation?

No, I don't think we are talking about the same kind of complexity here. Complexity Theory is exactly the opposite of real world pragmatism. It is about the asymptotic behaviors of algorithms and the resources need to solve certain class of problems such as Traveling Salesman or Min-Set-Cover.

Why those three types and not others?

I would argue that for most entrepreneurs studying machine learning has greater marginal utility than studying complexity theory, but to each his/her own I guess.

I would change the look and feel of the site a little. It looks like those spammy domain squatters. I would tweak the font a little, at least.

How about if you allow them to import their postings from Craigslist and other places? Craigslist wouldn't like it but when you are small they probably wouldn't even notice. Just do it from multiple IP addresses or something.

This is a good point, but I would expect (the more evolved) human beings in the future to be closer to being fitness maximizers.

Morality is an evolved adaptation. The ultimate purpose of morality is to maximize your own utility. There is no reason why any human being would care about a bunch of crystalline insect-like aliens. Practically, human empathy circuits would never span to such alien aliens considering how easy it is to turn it off for other humans whom we consider to be an out-group. From a game theoretical perspective there is no utility gained from sacrificing humans so that some crystal bugs conform to our social values. The correct move from a game theoretic perspective is to ally with the Babyeaters since they are friendly and could be of use in trade.

This is going to sound like an ad hominem attack, but it seems to me that a majority of the singularity/futurist crowd are more concerned with impressing others with shows of intelligence than any other goal. They sound more like a bunch of male apes strutting around vying for alpha status, perhaps not surprising given that they are almost all male. A comment very much like mine (about the pointlessness of feeling compassion for crystal bugs) was posted on the overcoming bias blog but it received no replies/rebuttals. Rather the comments over there simply accepted the premises of the story without question. I have a great deal of respect for Elizer but his followers are frighteningly cult like.

Why is the doubly linked list circular?

Since it appeared before "Little Brother", maybe Doctorow was inspired by this extension instead of the other way around ;).

Is what Jeff Atwood doing even legal?!?! You can't just "quote" 80% of someone's work and then publish it as your own! In the article I counted only 6 sentences that Jess Atwood wrote himself. Can I just, say, "quote" a best seller, add a few words of commentary and then publish it? I think not.

We are not even close to there yet. If that does become a problem, if min-wage causes 30%+ of the workforce to be unemployed, the government will lower it. They are stupid, but not that stupid. Besides, housing prices are also shaped by supply and demand. If unemployment becomes very high, housing prices will drop. Essentially what you are talking about is short-run price inflexibility.

Um, according to standard economic theory in the long-run equilibrium the unemployment rate is the rate of frictional unemployment and that is more-or-less of a constant. What we have is cyclical unemployment, which is temporary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment_types

Look, someone who doesn't have a job will lower his/her price until he/she gets a job. If you are really on the verge of starvation you will become willing to work for $1, and someone will probably become willing to hire you for that little. Just like any other market, price will fluctuate and equilibrate supply and demand, clearing the market. It's just that in the short run there is price inflexibility, so the market temporarily goes out of whack. In the long-run wage is only determined by worker productivity (which is function of amount of capital and technology level), and anyone who wants a job can have one, though it may not be as high paying as she wants.

This is perhaps one of the most astonishingly vacuous article I have ever read in my entire life. What was is about, exactly? A funny function name? Not to mention that 70% of it is quotes from other people. Pure link bait.

Something like this already exists: TopCoder. They are pretty well known and have a good reputation, so they will be hard to compete against. With that said, however, there are a lot of things that can be improved: (like what you hinted at) you can have each company submit their own problem and make it more open, etc. If you are going to run with this idea, good luck!

You should check out Macroeconomics by Mankiw. It's very short and sweet. You really shouldn't judge economics by a few articles aimed at lay audiences just as you wouldn't try to learn about quantum mechanics from the NYTimes. Economics is filled with clever little insights that makes you go "Ahh!".

I'll take the time to explain some of your complaints:

"spending causes prosperity": well, obviously if you don't spend any of your money obviously you don't have prosperity. If you borrow money to spend economics assume that you are rational and that it is because you prefer having a good time now to later. This seems more like a value judgment though, which most economics tend to avoid.

"conflation of trade deficits with indebtedness": well, if country A wants to consume something produced by country B, it can only do so in three ways: 1) give B something A produced, 2) give B a chunk of A (e.g., real estate) or 3) borrow from B. Since most countries don't like 2), trade deficits are settled using 3)

Most economics will say that a higher savings rate will be beneficial in the long run but if people suddenly saved more because of government policy there will a aggregate demand shock and the economy will go into a recession since the price level cannot easily adjust in the short run. (When people save more they have less money to spend and thus all prices become "too high" for them.)

Check out the book for more information. You will find that while economics may have flaws, it is internally self-consistent. It just doesn't take into account that most people are not rational :(.

"Hint: consider what would happen in a real economy with hard currency by allowing the price of baby-sitting to fluctuate..."

You are confusing two different types of analysis. If you had taken a (more rigorous) macroeconomics course you would have learned that there are two types of analysis: long-run and short-run. In the short-run prices are inflexible due to unions, preexisting contracts, menu costs, etc. In the long-run prices can fluctuate and recessions are impossible (we don't worry about some recession that happened in 120 A.D. for example). Keynesian economics only deals with the short run, and only in the short run can the economy be trapped in a temporary disequilibrium. Even though the economy should eventually recover on its own in the long run it can cause a lot of pain in the process, which is why Keynesian economics advocates government intervention.

"I've long had a hobby interest in economics... The inmates are running the asylum."

Maybe a hobbyist shouldn't be suggesting that Nobel prize winners be put in an asylum ;).