WK Hellestal

This is where I'll be doing updates.

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Yeah. I'm on board with that Less Wrong guy's general focus.

The biggest game-changer out there -- bigger even than disasters like thermonuclear war or mass death from bird/swine/crocodile flu -- is if we can manage to create a machine that can design a better version of itself faster than we can. Could be a long way out. Could be a long long long way out. Cyber-baby could easily be the end of us, too, though it wouldn't look anything like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, or any of the sequels neither. It would just cannibalize us for parts in its never-ending mission to solve differential equations until the end of time. Not the ideal, to my view. If you wanna be all ra-ra and change the world and stuff, participating in this project, even in a roundabout way, is the way to do it.

Better politics? Economics? Social change? Development in poor countries? Cool, cool. Yet they are, in a way, secondary to the grand mission. We need political stability until they figure this tech out. We need a strong economy, maintaining our access to sufficient resources, until they figure this tech out. We need social change to lead happier lives until they figure this tech out. We need development in other places for all those previous reasons, and also so we have a pool of more people to help figure this tech out.

This one could go either way. It's not just creating the thing that's at issue. Just as important is getting it done in a way so that the cyber-baby's main function, the pre-programmed mathematical task it will forever be trying to solve, has at least something to do with our general happiness and well being. Otherwise all known life is extinguished by a machine that isn't even capable of enjoying its hard-coded task of solving math problems forever. That'd be kind of a bummer.

That's the big project in front of humanity. It includes even those of us who do not contribute directly to the silicon hardware or lines of code. One big goal here. One collective purpose, which should be shared by everyone, with various ways to serve.

The basic story is this.

( Click if you wish to know the basic story. Otherwise, don't. )

A previous anonymous commenter from these previous posts recommended that I look into Steve Keen's ideas in more depth. Although not an economist, he'd obviously given some of these issues of money and macro careful and deliberate thought. Unlike too many others out there (including some people who actually work in central banks), he was well aware of what the underlying issues are about. So when I have time, I'm going to accept his recommendation and go through Keen's book and his various YouTube lectures. When I have time. I've only watched one video so far, the oldest on the ProfSteveKeen YouTube page.

( Just one video, but so far Keen is off to a bad start. )

If you're having trouble motivating yourself (as I do in my personal life), you should maybe check out stickK.

The Big Idea: You can commit money to reprehensible organizations. You sign an online kontract with them (yes, that's apparently what the extra K stands for) in order to have more incentive to stick with your personal goal. Human beings respond to incentives. So they take your credit card number, keep it on file, and dole out the cash to people you hate if you fail. You can verify success yourself, or if you wish, you can designate another person to verify whether you're achieving your goals.

This is all based on research. People who have money/reputation on the line are more likely to be motivated than people who don't. Losing money, or being reliant on another to verify success of achieving our goals, can put a fire in our asses. The anti-choice group "Americans United for Life" is going to receive a donation from me if I fail to complete the first draft of my book by year's end.*

The whole thing is pretty negative, though, so I'm doing something else in addition. I have various smaller goals I'm trying to meet (like becoming, you know, literate in this country), and I don't generally donate as much as I should to charity. So I'm doing a sort of reverse-stickK. I'm going to give money away to good causes if I manage to achieve my goals. Right now, I'm thinking Oxfam America and Doctors Without Borders.

No charity for dying children in Africa unless I can be a little more organized in my personal life. If I succeed, I'll feel good for myself and good for others. If I fail, I won't donate and feel doubly bad. Let's say... one dollar a day for each organization, for every day that I'm successful. 730 dollars a year if I maintain my pace. Payment made monthly.**

( * )

Charles Evans, president of the Chicago branch of the US Federal Reserve, has endorsed NGDP level targeting. Huzzah!*

The regional Fed presidents rotate in and out of the FOMC. Evans isn't a member this year, he's just an alternate. There are ten members right now, with two empty seats on the Board of Governors -- who would have permanent spots on the FOMC if their positions were ever filled.

Obama's single biggest mistake in economic policy, and perhaps the biggest mistake of his entire presidency, was his failure to nominate good competent people for those empty seats before the 2010 elections. When he finally got off his duff and nominated a Nobel Prize winner for one of the positions, the Republicans in the Senate filibustered the nomination.

Via The Money Illusion.

*I don't actually agree completely with some of his most recent public statements, but he's still on the right path, so I'll take it as good news.

There's a word-count limit in the comments, so I'm starting a new post here.

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On April 27th, an anonymous commenter left a response to this post from April 4th.

I have to wonder if this is a foreign speaker of English, given the language difficulties.

I disagree with you, Keen metaphor perfectly fit DSGE models. To begin with, Ptolemy model is about the positon of the planets, and no, u coudn't use it to predict the position of Jupiter in 2012. The predictive capacity of ptolemy model depends on the assumption that planet orbits are repetitive patterns, since its not the case, the model loose accuracy as time goes on. The bottom line is that Ptolemy model doesn't explain the movement of the planets, it only "ape" real world observation without understanding it, and the only reason why it where predictive in the past is because planets orbits are almost repetive patterns. DSGE models are just irrelevant to describe real world economy because economy is never repetitive, so DSGE can only "ape" real world data from the past and doesn't tell you anything relevant about the future...

None of this is remotely relevant.

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A Princess of Mars, Andrew Stanton

This is a rollicking fun space adventure. Disney's marketing department should be tied to a rocket and shot into the sun. What a cock-up!

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Really great Barney Frank interview.

It's great. Really.