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douglasn89

Russia mystery threatens to consume Washington - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Washington has become a hall of mirrors, where it's impossible to distinguish between rumor and fact as conspiracy theories and partisan paroxysms rage -- all arising from an alleged Russian spy plot to sway last year's election that is now clouding the new administration.
  • Often, President Trump himself reignites the drama — apparently to his detriment — as with his sensational claim Saturday that his predecessor Barack Obama tapped his phones.
  • The White House spokesman Sean Spicer insists that there is "no there, there" in the Russia intrigue.But the conduct of the President himself often undercuts that message. Some observers have noted that while there may be nothing nefarious going on, the President often acts in a way that suggests there is.
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  • The credibility of the President's statements on the issue is also eroding."Russia is a ruse, I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does," Trump said during his news conference on February 16.But since then, details have emerged of repeated meetings between Trump aides and Russian officials, casting doubt on the president's words.
  • A second reason why questions about Russia will linger is because what some observers see as Trump's odd fixation with Moscow raises constant questions about his motives.
  • The President's unique personality also appears at times to be exacerbating the sense of crisis being fostered in Washington.In theory, he could flush away questions about whether undeclared links with Russia are influencing his attitude to Moscow by releasing his tax returns.His refusal to do so gives oxygen to claims that he has some secret business or creditor relationships with Russia that compromise him.
  • Democrats have a clear political incentive to prolong a situation which is helping to unify them, to slow Trump's agenda by bogging the White House down with investigations and to present the President in a scary light.
douglasn89

The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence - 0 views

hbr.org/...nomics-of-machine-intelligence

shared by douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • The year 1995 was heralded as the beginning of the “New Economy.” Digital communication was set to upend markets and change everything. But economists by and large didn’t buy into the hype.
  • Today we are seeing similar hype about machine intelligence. But once again, as economists, we believe some simple rules apply. Technological revolutions tend to involve some important activity becoming cheap, like the cost of communication or finding information. Machine intelligence is, in its essence, a prediction technology, so the economic shift will center around a drop in the cost of prediction.
  • The first effect of machine intelligence will be to lower the cost of goods and services that rely on prediction. This matters because prediction is an input to a host of activities including transportation, agriculture, healthcare, energy manufacturing, and retail.
    • douglasn89
      douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17
       
      This emphasis on prediction ties into the previous discussion and reading we had which included the idea that humans by nature are poor predictors, so because of that, they have begun to design machines to predict.
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  • As machine intelligence lowers the cost of prediction, we will begin to use it as an input for things for which we never previously did. As a historical example, consider semiconductors, an area of technological advance that caused a significant drop in the cost of a different input: arithmetic. With semiconductors we could calculate cheaply, so activities for which arithmetic was a key input, such as data analysis and accounting, became much cheaper.
  • As machine intelligence improves, the value of human prediction skills will decrease because machine prediction will provide a cheaper and better substitute for human prediction, just as machines did for arithmetic.
  • Using the language of economics, judgment is a complement to prediction and therefore when the cost of prediction falls demand for judgment rises. We’ll want more human judgment.
  • But it yields two key implications: 1) an expanded role of prediction as an input to more goods and services, and 2) a change in the value of other inputs, driven by the extent to which they are complements to or substitutes for prediction. These changes are coming.
    • douglasn89
      douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17
       
      This article agrees with the readings from Unit 5 Lesson 6 in its prediction of changes.
douglasn89

Champs or chumps?: China and currency manipulation | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...ice-yuan-up-not-down-china-and

shared by douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • They do not include, for example, the domestic purchasing power of a currency.
    • douglasn89
      douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17
       
      In Economics, a lot of values are taken for granted and/or ignored.
  • This illustrates one of the method’s flaws: in terms of the goods and services that it can actually buy, the Swiss franc is in fact among the world’s most overvalued currencies.
    • douglasn89
      douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17
       
      Countries can raise or lower their currency value from an international standpoint without much changes within the country itself.
  • As for China itself, it has been fighting to prop up the yuan in the face of capital outflows, and its score is in fact negative
    • douglasn89
      douglasn89 on 06 Mar 17
       
      This reminds us of the fact that in Economics, a lot of ideas that may seem to be logical can actually be counterintuitive.
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  • As for China itself, it has been fighting to prop up the yuan in the face of capital outflows, and its score is in fact negative
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