dmgottlieb's comments

"Tell us your life's dreams so we can use them to sell aspirational lifestyle ads!"

Or is that not the model?

Also your favicon display's Osama Bin Laden's initials.

PS this looks cool

This was an interesting story and sounds like a good program. Are there other "non-traditional programming internships" out there (i.e., entry-level training positions for people who are not 18 but also not already programmers)?

Yes, this is at least superficially like Newcomb's problem. Your argument roughly corresponds to an argument for the "one-box" move in that game. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_problem]

I don't really like that argument. Even granting that you should consider the possibility that you are a simulation running in the box (you might believe that this is all but certain), I'm not sure you have reason to let the AI out. Consider:

Case 1: You are a simulation running in the box.

Then your decision whether or not to release the AI has no impact, and whether or not you (and copies) will be tortured is out of your hands.

Case 2: You are the "real" you, outside the box.

Reduces to the same scenario but without remarks after "the AI adds. . . ." This may still not be trivial, but I suspect a cost-benefit calculation might show that unboxing the AI would have consequences worse than the torture of a million boxed copies. (If not, is the box even relevant? -- simply creating the AI unleashes so much evil on the world that it doesn't matter whether you unbox it.)

(Is there a refinement of the scenario where you can be a simulation but still believe your choice has an impact on your punishment? Probably. For example each copy could get 500 years of torture for its own choice, plus 500 years if the real you does not unbox the AI. This refinement would force us to deal more directly with the AI's threat.)

What a strange thing to say. It is irrelevant from the myopic point of view of a patient receiving care, at the moment they are receiving the care. It is far from irrelevant as a matter of social policy, because society has to pay the cost even if a particular individual gets off free. Cf. negative externality [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative].

But the money is just as wasted no matter who pays it.

Let's distinguish two possible theories:

1) The underlying companies of the BSA (incl. AAPL and MSFT) were not really in favor of SOPA to begin with, and the public attention has lead them to correct the initial BSA position.

2) The underlying companies of the BSA were in favor of SOPA, which is why BSA supported SOPA. But in the face of public backlash they are backpedaling, because it is not valuable to support a bill that will lose regardless.

The second seems much more likely.

The paper in the link includes an instrumental variable model to look at exogenously caused birth spacing (caused by miscarriages). So if the model does what the abstract says it does, then that pins down the direction of causation to some extent.

Of course to be really sure you'd need to take a closer look and probably do more research.

Well, it was a rapidly published cash-in effort. The book industry puts out tons of titles that have no enduring value but are keyed into a very specific marketing opportunity. You don't get paid when someone finishes a book, after all -- all they have to do is buy it.

When there's a big cultural and news event, it's a huge marketing opportunity, and timeliness trumps other considerations. Because we live in a very fast and competitive media environment, this dynamic plays a very big role.

No. Catastrophic failure does not somehow naturally lead to reform and success. Look at all the catastrophic failures out there that are not in the middle of dazzling recoveries.

In fact success is a rare and fragile confluence of many conditions that is hard to find.