Sound and Fury

Futarchy: vote values but bet beliefs. A new system of government that would fix all the problems with our current democracies. Or maybe not.

First, what is wrong with democracy? According to the above link, “Democracies fail largely by not aggregating available information.” And what is the best way to aggregate available information? “Betting markets are our best known institution for aggregating information.” It is based on the idea that things like the Hollywood Stock Exchange or Foresight Exchange are at least as good as an expert’s opinion. So we should use betting markets to assess the expected benefits of various policy decisions.

I think that both these claims are not unproblematic, but I am willing to grant them for now. Because futarchy has bigger problems than that. Let’s imagine that we have a futarchy government going on and imagine a scenario. The policy decision in question is whether or not to ban smoking in public places. The experts might say that this is a good idea for various reasons: cut down on passive smoking, perhaps encourage more people to quit thus decrease the burden on the health services and so on. But we don’t care about them. What does our betting market tell us? It will tell us, first, that there is no benefit at all. But on closer inspection it will tell us that the tobacco industry has a lot more money and a lot more vested interest in seeing this proposition fail than anyone else. Powerful industries with a lot of money and a lot invested in the outcome of a given policy decision will be able to manipulate the market to acheive the decision they want.

I haven’t read the PDF linked on that page but I intend to and then comment some more, in greater detail. But my first impression is that it’s a crazy idea. I do, however, like the idea of voting on values rather than on whatever area of policy happens to be contentious at the time of the election.

In a lighter note, well done Ronnie and Ali for two maximum breaks within a day or so of each other!

I’m all for terminology. It often makes discussion easier if you can call upon a specialised vocabulary. But it can also make your point utterly impenetrable. Here are two examples from a paper I read today that make me think there is too much terminology in biology.

“biological species” may be paraphyletic assemblages of populations united only by a plesiomorphy.

Using synapomorphy as evidence of monophyly requires that the polarity of character be determined.

Um. Yes? Anyway, the paper these gems are taken from is wrong. So it’s not really important.

(The paper is Mishler and Donoghue (1982) Species Concepts: A Case for Pluralism in Systematic Zoology)

I have now officially applied for my PhD at LSE. That’s rather exciting. I’m sure my research proposal thing could have been better, but I need to concentrate on getting my essays finished and the application had been a distraction. So that’s a weight off my mind. My essays are going well too. And I got my iPod working properly. AND I managed to get a birthday present for the ladyfriend. All in all, one super successful day. But it’s now twenty to six and already I can’t be arsed doing any more work. Sigh. I’ve run out of relevant stuff to read for the part of the essay I’ve been working on today and I don’t want to start the next thing now. (That’s a lie. There is another article I should read. But it’s crap…) I really should work more…

In other news, it’s a shame to see Mark Selby out of the Masters already… Other big names out in the first round: Graeme Dott, Steve Davis, Stephen Lee, Matthew Stevens. I wish I could watch more of the snooker this year. But I don’t have a TV. I wonder if I can catch the highlights on BBC’s iPlayer thingy… I have been using that quite a bit recently. I wonder if I should be using it. I mean, I couldn’t see anything in the conditions about it only being available to people with TV licenses…

In the philosophy of mind, the “alien intuition” is the idea that one should be open to the possibility that there might be aliens with beliefs and feelings and whatnot who are vastly different from us. It is a useful tool to stop you becoming too human-centric in discussions about the mind-body problem.

I am writing an essay on whether robots can do science and I asked myself “Can aliens do science?” Much like the alien intuition in philosophy of mind, the answer seems to be “yes. There might be aliens who do something we would recognise as science.” I thought this was an interesting counterpoint to the failings in current robot scientists.

It is also another interesting analogue between philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. Another thing I have been thinking of is the similarity between questions in philosophical discussions of A.I. and my own questions about the robot scientist. Can robots think? Can robots do science?

I wonder how far you could push this parallel. Is there a spectrum of things ranging from “Emphatically science!” through to “Not science.”?

Well. It’s just a thought I had that I thought I’d write down. Basically I’m procrastinating lots because I’m not hugely interested in the stuff I’m currently reading. Le sigh.

I watched Dog Soldiers this evening. The line “There is no spoon” cracked me up. I only bought the film because it was dirt cheap and I happened to know that they filmed quite a lot of it in Luxembourg. As was An American Werewolf in Paris. I think it’s because they have real werewolves up near Esch that are cheaper to hire than all the crazy effects they’d need to put a human in a wolf suit. Ginger Snaps wasn’t filmed in Luxembourg. But then… did you see that werewolf effect? That’s what happens when you don’t go for the real thing. But yeah. Werewolves, Vampires, Trolls, Goblins… Luxembourg has real life magical folk-lore creatures for hire. They only didn’t film Lord of the Rings there because the cast didn’t actually all fit in the country at the same time.

Anyway, I digress. Dog Soldiers was diverting enough. Seeing Kevin McKidd talking all Scottish was a bit weird, since I’d normally associate him with Lucius Vorenus from that Rome show on BBC a while ago.

Hmm. The above paragraphs make it look like I’m some kind of werewolf film expert. I’m not. I’ve only seen Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers. Well, I’ve seen the sequels to Ginger Snaps, I think. But I might have been asleep and/or drunk at the time. Anyway. They didn’t make a big impression on me. But I haven’t actually seen An American Werewolf in Paris. I just know it was filmed near where someone I know used to live.

IMDb tells me that they’re making a sequel to Dog Soldiers. Good gravy, I bet it’s going to be terrible. Oh well. On the subject of terrible films: don’t watch Ginger Snaps. I don’t know why I ever agreed to it. It’s awful.

Here are a few oddities I have been thinking about in the past month.

When you are in a maze, if you stick to the left wall, always turning left when you are able, then you will eventually reach the end. Apparently. How would one go about proving something like this? What sort of mathematical resources could one make use of? Graph theory perhaps? I’ve no idea what that is, really, but it sounds like the sort of discipline which might help in these circumstances. Are there maze constructions where this strategy will not work?

Why do pound and euro coins come in 1,2,5,10,20,50,1,2 denominations while U.s. dollars and, I assume, other dollars come in 1,2(?),5,10,25,1 denominations? What sort of measures of efficiency or whatever can one put on a set of coin denominations? Obviously number of different denominations should be kept low. Fewer types of coins means less confusion. But on the other hand, being able to make any amount with the fewest number of coins would be a bonus. As would being able to have a larger number of values possible with some subset of a given collection of spare change, I suppose. Since these criteria are all essentially numerical, working out the measures of efficiency for various denomination sets would be childs’ play. For someone who knew a darn sight more about combinatorics than I do. Perhaps we can set bounds on the different weightings of the criteria the UK and US mints had in mind when deciding which coins to use. Wouldn’t that be fun?

If you have a circle with a continuous variable assigned over its circumference (a variable I shall call temperature) then there will be two points, directly opposite each other (ie endpoints of the same diameter) that have the same value. For any continuous variable. That’s pretty cool, no? It implies that on Earth there are always two points that are isothermic and antipodal. Here’s the proof for the circle. Now define a function of the variable which subtracts the value of one point from that of the point opposite it. This will be continuous over the circle. If you start at point A and have A’ opposite it, f(A) = A-A’. Now consider following the function as it travels round the circle. Eventually it gets to A’. f(A’) = A’-A = -(A-A’) = -f(A). So, by the intermediate value theorem, at some point between A and A’, the function f had value 0. For some X, f(X) = 0. Which means X=X’. (Perhaps I could be criticised for conflating the point and the value of the variable at the point, but whatever. The result still follows when you introduce all that crazy notation…)

This result, and its corollary (that there are always a pair of isothermic antipodes) got me thinking. Can you say more about the sphere case? Obviously, every great circle has a pair of points like this. So there are infinitely many of them. Cool. But can you prove anything about where they are placed? I can’t think how. Because the pair of points have to share a temperature, but the set of pairs don’t. So can you show any other cool stuff about continuous variables on a sphere? Like how there’s always somewhere where there is no wind on earth. Because of something to do with vector fields and stationary points, I think. (Because you can’t comb a sphere. But you can comb a doughnut…)

Well, that’s what’s been rattling aroung my brain recently.