Long Game

A Purdue University researcher has used "econophysics" to show that under ideal circumstances free markets promote fair salaries for workers and do not support CEO compensation practices common today.

In the new work, the researcher has determined that fairness is integral to a normally functioning free market economy. Findings are detailed in a research paper that appeared in June in the online journal Entropy and is available at http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/12/6/1514/

Rational ignorance occurs when the cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the potential benefit that the knowledge would provide.

Much of the empirical support for the idea of rational ignorance was drawn from studies of voter apathy, which reached particularly strong conclusions in the 1950s.[2] However, apathy appeared to decline sharply in the 1960s as concern about issues such as the Vietnam War mounted , and political polarization increased [3]. This suggests that voters' interest in political information increases with the importance of political choices. Additionally, rational ignorance is scrutinized for its broadening effect on the decisions that individuals make in different matters. The investment of time and energy on the specified subject has ramifications on other decision areas. Individuals sometimes forget to take this into account when unconsciously assessing the investment cost versus payout. The external benefits are therefore not adequately taken into account.

If she had a clear, rational case against Libertarianism, wouldn’t she have presented such a case and left it at that? But she does no such thing. Instead, her arguments appear drenched in malice and petty resentment.

Now if Libertarianism really is as bad as Rand would have us believe, why did Rand have to resort to name calling and illogical guilt-by-association arguments? I have several conjectures on this score, as listed below.

This is a shame, because during the second half of the 20th century and continuing through the past decade, professional thinking about the future has grown from a niche field dominated by military strategists and predictioneers into a diverse global practice.

The Institute for the Future’s work is heavily influenced by disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and philosophy. By looking at the convergence of social and technological forces that shape our communities, we help individuals and organizations make better, more informed decisions about the future. 

The way the media has reported on the issue falls into three groups: That the Cold War is back, That, given that the Cold War is over, the point of such outmoded intelligence operations is questionable, And that the Russian spy ring was spending its time aimlessly nosing around in think tanks and open meetings in an archaic and incompetent effort.

Of course, none of those media are dead, and neither is blogging. Instead, what's happened is that they've been succeeded by new forms that share some of their characteristics, and these new forms have peeled away all the stories that suit them best.

When all we had was the stage, every performance was a play. When we got films, a great lot of these stories moved to the screen, where they'd always belonged (they'd been squeezed onto a stage because there was no alternative). When TV came along, those stories that were better suited to the small screen were peeled away from the cinema and relocated to the telly. When YouTube came along, it liberated all those stories that wanted to be 3-8 minutes long, not a 22-minute sitcom or a 48-minute drama. And so on.

For me, the great attraction of all this is that preparing material for public consumption forces me to clarify it in my own mind. I don't really know it until I write it. Thus the more media I have at my disposal, the more ways there are for me to work out my own ideas.

Russia is generally freer now than it was under communism, but its spy-chiefs are, if anything, even more entrenched. No longer is it the government that is running the spies. The spies are running the government.

The effect, less commonly observed, is that post-communist Russia has emerged, not as a police state, but as a secret-police state—something of a novelty in international relations, and with its own characteristics.

It has many branches, but a prominent one and perhaps the earliest, suggests that we irrationally discard information that is in conflict with our preconceived ideas.

The “rational” (i.e. Bayesian) reaction is to weigh your prior belief in the alternatives.

I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called "World War II".Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.

So it's pretty standard "shining amazing good guys who can do no wrong" versus "evil legions of darkness bent on torture and genocide" stuff, totally ignoring the nuances and realities of politics.

...and then, in the entire rest of the show, over five or six different big wars, they never use the superweapon again. Seriously. They have this whole thing about a war in Vietnam that lasts decades and kills tens of thousands of people, and they never wonder if maybe they should consider using the frickin' unstoppable mystical superweapon that they won the last war with. At this point, you're starting to wonder if any of the show's writers have even watched the episodes the other writers made.

To the amazement of many from my generation, who grew up in real fear of "Soylent Green"-type scenarios of over-population, our primary demographic challenge going forward is to maintain a decent worker-to-retiree ratio as national populations age at an unprecedented speed

As Joel Kotkin argues in his recent book, "The Next Hundred Million," America "should emerge by mid-century as the most affluent, culturally rich, and successful nation in human history" as we increase in size to 400 million citizens by 2050.

Kotkin sees America's heartland as our most profound demographic asset going forward, noting that this vast and agriculturally rich "flyover country" can easily absorb another 100 million citizens and still leave us, in demographic terms, six times less dense than Germany.

Royster couldn't understand why his friends and family had this semi-miraculous ability to instantly discern who was speaking. It was befuddling until finally, Royster hit upon the only possible explanation.

"I'm often at a loss and have to fake it," Royster says about his phone calls with his mom. "Just continue to say, 'Well, that's nice,' until [she] eventually hits on something about the house or one of my brothers, and that will clue me in that this strange woman who has called me is, in fact, the one that gave birth to me."

As the 41st Republican in an institution that requires 60 out of 100 votes to pass legislation, he’s had the power to stop, or at least massively slow down, everything from health care to financial reform. But Brown actually looms much larger than even this calculus would suggest. In his concerns, priorities, and, maybe most important, his confusion about the economy, Brown has come to represent the average voter in 2010. If Democrats are going to be successful this November, they’ll have to figure out a way to seize the territory that Brown currently holds.

A recent Globe poll illustrates the point nicely, crowning Brown the most popular politician in his overwhelmingly Democratic state. According to the poll, Brown’s favorable/unfavorable split is 55-18, versus 52-37 for Kerry and 54-41 for Barack Obama. Brown accomplishes this feat on the strength of his appeal to independents (55-11) and a surprisingly robust showing among Democrats (41-32). Given that Democratic candidates are highly unlikely to win many Republican votes this fall, they’ll have to limit their defections among Democrats and carry independents in order to hold Congress. Judged against Brown’s performance in Massachusetts, they are currently failing at this task.

“The Price of Altruism” is about far more than Price himself. It covers the entire 150-year history of scientists’ researching, debating and bickering about a theoretical problem that lies at the core of behavioral biology, sociobiology and evolutionary psychology: Why is it that organisms sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others?

Haldane was one of the architects of the now familiar “gene’s-eye view” of evolution. Looked at from the gene’s perspective, altruism seems a little less perplexing. When an organism sacrifices its life to save a relative, it helps perpetuate the genes they share.

Two airplanes met on a tarmac in Vienna on Friday morning to swap the 10 Russians who pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy in the United States for four men accused by Moscow of spying for the West. Ten spies for four—is that a fair trade for the U.S.?

This week, the FBI arrested 11 alleged Russian spies living in New Jersey. How did they catch them? By digging through their photos.

A Russian scientist who was part of a swap for 10 Russian spies caught in the United States is now in England, his brother told CNN Sunday.