Thursday, 31 July, 2003

Addendum to the Market of the Future By the end of the day this whole thing appeared to have gone belly-up. It didn't seem to have struck any one from Paul Wolfowitz testifying to Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the Slashdot crew as being particularly well thought out. Some key points that shook out: this project, Future Map, was part of Adm. Poindexter's Office of [total] Information Awareness. Despite OIA's being defunded by congress, this project was slated to get $8 mil. before being outed by Senators Dorgan and Wyden. As some commentary on Slashdot pointed out the OIA may be opting to pretend to die only to reanimate in parts on the other side of the door. Someone else in the Slashdot thread linked to a New Yorker article from March on Information Markets. Salient points covered, are echoed in the comments on Darpa's page, plus they have that dartboard(?) graphic. Apparently these information or decision markets are being used increasing because they actually form a powerful predictive tool - the power of aggregating ignorance to sufficient numbers. Heck data-mining the weblogging world could have done that for them. Still these markets seem to out-perform a number of other tradition techniques. significantly that of expert opinion. The article - which refers to DARPA's future map also refers to numerous examples from current business use. It is perceived as being successful, whether that is the same as rigorous and controlled testing is another matter. Though the article reports the Iowa Electronics Market being more accurate than traditionally conducted opinion polls - one statistical method against another - 75% of the time. All this is beside the point. One of the distinctions made in ethics classes (sometimes available as electives at many colleges and universities) is between decisions with and without a significant ethical component. A decision to lie cheat or steal has one. A decision to pour cheerios or wheaties into your cereal bowl probably does not. Despite what the Wheaties people have been telling you. A market on sorghum grain prices is a fine prospect for a futures market. So is an information market on which summer movie is going to be blockier and bustier than the rest. One that takes bets on men dying - being killed -- blown apart, is not. The idea of deliberate mortal violence, mass murder being commodisized for profit, by the Pentagon for their ancillary profit, to involve the US Government is hard to comprehend. I understand such markets already exist in the private sector: there is a future open currently on Admiral Poindexters continued employment by the DoD. Taking the unremovable issues of Schadenfreude, the real issues of, let me call it Heisenberg uncertainty - to mark the problems inherent in an open gaming system where the game keeper has announced the intention of using the information obtained to change the outcomes predicted. Add to these, the problems of keeping the market from being deliberately manipulated by interested parties when it is all governments can do to keep ordinary stock markets from imploding under the weight of their own insistent orientation to fraud. There is a fetid air of juvenal moral unseemliness to this Gee Whiz idea, which leaves the real question being: why couldn't they see this. Even Craig Kilborn is mocking this - and that should tell you something. 10:01:31 AM    comment [];

© Copyright 2003 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 8/01/03; 02:15:10.