"We consider the age-old problem of allocating items among different agents in a way that is efficient and fair. Two papers, by Dolev et al. and Ghodsi et al., have recently studied this problem in the context of computer systems. Both papers had similar models for agent preferences, but advocated different notions of fairness. We formalize both fairness notions in economic terms, extending them to apply to a larger family of utilities. Noting that in settings with such utilities efficiency is easily achieved in multiple ways, we study notions of fairness as criteria for choosing between different efficient allocations. Our technical results are algorithms for finding fair allocations corresponding to two fairness notions: Regarding the notion suggested by Ghodsi et al., we present a polynomial-time algorithm that computes an allocation for a general class of fairness notions, in which their notion is included. For the other, suggested by Dolev et al., we show that a competitive market equilibrium achieves the desired notion of fairness, thereby obtaining a polynomial-time algorithm that computes such a fair allocation and solving the main open problem raised by Dolev et al."

"Libertarians will blanch at lumping their revered Vons—Mises and Hayek—in with the nutters and the shills. But between them, Von Hayek and Von Mises never seem to have held a single academic appointment that didn't involve a corporate sponsor. Even the renowned law and economics movement at the University of Chicago was, in its inception, heavily subsidized by business interests. ("Radical movements in capitalist societies," as Milton Friedman patiently explained, "have typically been supported by a few wealthy individuals.") Within academia, the philosophy of free markets in extremis was rarely embraced freely—i.e., by someone not on the dole of a wealthy benefactor. It cannot be stressed enough: In the decades after the war, a kind of levee separated polite discourse from free-market economics. The attitude is well-captured by John Maynard Keynes, whose scribble in the margins of his copy of The Road to Serfdom reads: "An extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam.""

"…I’ve invited readers to comment and offer suggestions to improve the translation. My goal is to communicate Plato in English the way readers of his would have interpreted his Greek, aiming to capture his range of styles (colloquial conversation on the street, philosophical debate, rhetorical displays, poetic analysis, and so on) in a contemporary idiom. The nature of the project requires a wide readership for its success, so I hope you will pass this along."

"But here's the wonderful revelation. If you're a well-adjusted person, once you've discarded the unhealthy fictitious relationship with a phantasm, you can look around and notice all those other people who are likewise alone, and you'll realize that we're all alone together. And that means you aren't alone at all — you're among friends. That's the next step in human progress, is getting away from the notion of minions living under a trail boss, and onwards to working as a cooperative community, with no gods and no masters, only autonomous agents free to think and act."

"At the end of the day, the most pressing problems of modern life require an accurate description of the real world so that the inevitable tradeoffs can be managed for the common good. Fundamentalism interferes with this enterprise and needs to be recognized for what it is. Fortunately, we can go beyond epithets and prove that a given belief system counts as fundamentalist by calling attention to the absence of tradeoffs. Market fundamentalism can be as plain as the nose on your face when you know what to look for."

"The real problem with the DIKW pyramid is that it's a pyramid. The image that knowledge (much less wisdom) results from applying finer-grained filters at each level, paints the wrong picture. That view is natural to the Information Age which has been all about filtering noise, reducing the flow to what is clean, clear and manageable. Knowledge is more creative, messier, harder won, and far more discontinuous. "

"Which neatly illustrates one major reason why, at the end of the day, I write this blog. Sitting down to keyboard with cigar and libation in hand does wonders to clarify not only my own thoughts on any particular subject, but also whether it rises to the level of something I might find interesting from another pen. If not, back to the woodpile it goes, where I can scavenge it for useful material later or consign it to the fireplace for fuel. The false starts, dead ends, and inchoate beginnings embodied in my unpublished oeuvre represent the very essence of active thought. Too bad I'll never let you see them in all their messy glory. If you did, you just might begin to believe that I don't really know what I'm talking about.<2>

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must get back to chasing those tops. I'll get back to you if I catch one that's interesting."

"“Knowledge only has value if it is emerges into actions, decisions and behaviours – that much is
generally conceded.”

“How will you know you are making it correctly?” “I’ll have to spend a couple of months feeding my family wah kueh, until I get the taste right” she replied. This story, in miniature, is how we actually normally acquire knowledge."

"The current global financial crisis, visibly catalyzed by the rapid drop in securitized mortgage valuations in the summer 2007, has entailed a dramatic decrease in the availability of credit, wealth destruction linked to stock market valuations, the failure of banks and insurance companies, numerous other bankruptcies, the growth of governmental intervention, a deep and protracted recession, and a general rise in the uncertainty of Capitalistic institutions. It is in unsettled times such as these that hegemonic and taken-for-granted ideas and institutions may be challenged, and new alternatives cultivated. In the context of the early 21st century, it is the hegemonic ideals of markets, market-based solutions, and the ideology of neoliberalism that is on trial."

Abstracts of the Workshop Philosophy & Engineering (2007)

Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering, 2008

"Thunderbirds says that science is awesome because you get to fly in space and live on a high-tech island full of booze. Beat that for incentive."

"Where we are now, and we already know that we are there, is in a much more permeable and fluid society and a much more permeable cultural environment where the difference between producers and consumers is much more blurred. Where this category of users has become absolutely central to everything we do. So when we talk about newspapers, we have to think about the users who communicate with a commercial organization like TPM, the users who basically get together and make their own new party presses, like DailyKos or Townhall, like the users who make up YouTube, like the users who make up Wikipedia. Suddenly you have radically decentralized practical capacity to act. And what do people do? They act."

"An important addition to the growing international dialogue about the commons can be found in the new anthology, Genes, Bytes and Emissions: To Whom Does the World Belong? (discussed in this previous blog post). Recently released in German, the essays in this book are now available online in English.

The book was edited by Silke Helfrich and published by the Heinrich Boell Foundation; Helfrich is the former director of the Foundation’s Mexico City office, which hosted a major conference, Citizenship and Commons, in December 2006. The collection, whose title in English is To Whom Does the World Belong? offers a thoughtful and provocative array of viewpoints on the commons. (The links below connect to pdf files of the essays.)"

"Ironically, Popper’s original critique of empirical foundationalism thus paved the way for a new theoretical foundationalism. Either you are grounded in theory, or you have no grounds at all for claiming to be a competent participant. The new foundationalism here reveals its elitist and technocratic face as well as its impractical nature at once. It burdens researchers and professionals with the impossible role of having to “explain,” by virtue of their advantage of theoretical and methodological expertise, to all others what in a concrete situation would be a correct understanding of “the problem” and what might be done about it. At the same time, it largely immunizes these “explanations” against the critical efforts of concerned citizens. If they do not agree with the experts’ monologically presented findings and conclusions, it is their problem, as it were; for the reason can only be that they are insufficiently informed or […] unable to understand the reasoning of the experts."

A number of very nice theses and whitepapers.

"Most inventors are unsuccessful, and most patents never get used. Countries that are full of inventive genius don't necessarily have booming economies. Spreading innovations is a haphazard process dependent on luck, or culture, or fickle government support... it's not a golden road to wealth and power. Innovating is an easy process compared to "un-inventing" huge installed technologies. Asbestos got yanked out of American schools, but asbestos bricks are all over the "poor world.""

"Religion was also the main issue in the events leading up to Murray's break with the Randians: although Murray was an agnostic, his wife, JoAnn, was (and is) a Presbyterian. Apprised of this, Rand grilled Joey on the reasons for her religious faith and suggested that she read a pamphlet put out by the Randians that "disproved" the existence of God.

When Joey refused to recant her heresy, Murray was told that he had better find himself a more "rational" mate. That was enough for Murray. The break was finalized by his formal "trial" held by the Randian Senior Collective, which Murray declined to attend."

"The thing that finally condemns the entire "baseball" idea, however is this: even with all these improvements, the game is no fun at all.

We tried baseball, and it didn't work."

Can I get a physical copy of this?

If you want to buy me a present, buy me this. The whole set.

every one a keeper

"Also, I approach the issue from the direction of looking at the nature of rationality - superstition being perhaps the most infamous example of what is seen as humans failing to be rational. Given such an approach, superstition is of interest as it shows something of how human reasoning works by showing how it fails to work. In particular, it is of interest to me as I think that rationality, not just human rationality but any rationality at all, must be understood to be inherently limited or, to use Herbert Simon’s term, bounded. In that context, the study of superstition becomes the study of the bounds of reason."

"One of the most compelling ideas now beginning to be discussed is the need to shift from a market-based society to a commons-based society. In America today, the ideal of “The Market” has become an out-of-control engine reshaping nearly every aspect of life from education to the environment to our private lives. The commons—all the things we all own together that are not for sale to the highest bidder—has been lost in this process, impoverishing us all to a larger or smaller degree. Many things fall within that definition of the commons– air, water, health of the land, the internet, public health, scientific knowledge, cultural traditions, even languages. For the most part, commons do not have price tags. Imagine them for a moment as properties in which each of us holds an equal share of stock."

"This long essay, to be published in parts, tries to make sense of the libero-genic hope and potential of computer and communications technology in a framework that also makes sense of the dangers. I return to a an essay from the adolescence of liberalism - Benjamin Constant's 1816 "The liberty of ancients compared with that of moderns" - to argue that the liberating hyper-individualism of the web is also the source of its greatest dangers. It is now more urgent than ever for us to reclaim our ability to decide all together on our common futures: we need to exercise our collective freedom to preserve our modern liberty."

"Tabletop gamers want different things, different kinds of fun, out of their games. However, it’s often tricky to discuss that, when a lot of the common terms add up to “munchkin” and “actor”, and other categories that oversimplify what people actually want out of their play. So, if your group wants to have a discussion without that clutter, and get a solid grip on what each person at the table wants from play, here are some less-simple, less-snarky terms."

"I am mainly interested in how scientific method could possibly lead us to true generalizations about Nature; generalizations that extend infinitely beyond our current, finite perspective. Standard philosophy of science sidesteps this question by asking, instead, about the meanings of "justification" and "rationality" a different matter entirely. I put the former question front and center, so that methodological normativity must be traced back to truth-finding efficacy, rather than to sociological generalizations about scientific practice. In this respect, my approach to epistemology closely parallels work in theoretical computer science and the foundations of mathematics, in which the central question is existence of a reliable procedure for finding the right answer to a question. The shift in emphasis results in a fresh, new perspective on a number of standard issues in epistemology and the philosophy of science, such as:..."

"The most long-standing suspicion about kindness is that it is just narcissism in disguise. We are kind because it makes us feel good about ourselves: kindly people are self-approbation junkies. Encountering this argument in the 1730s, the philosopher Francis Hutcheson dispatched it briskly: "If this is self-love, be it so ... Nothing can be better than this self-love, nothing more generous.""

"Whatever position we arrive at concerning the possible truth or falsity of a given economic hypothesis, it is plain that this cannot be understood as literal descriptive truth. Economic hypotheses are not offered as full and detailed representations of the underlying economic reality. For a hypothesis unavoidably involves abstraction, in at least two ways."

"Citing Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander as an example, "art photography" was a practice valuing the artist's command over the medium, whereas for "conceptual photography" (e.g. Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons...) the emphasis was not on one's mastery over the tool, but rather the tool as a means to express an idea. In applying this contrast to artists working with computers today, Moody astutely observes a similar ethos between conceptual photography and "artist's with computers." In my opinion, one weakness to the post is Moody's stark polarization between his constructed categories, stating, "New media suggests a respect for hardware & software and belief in their newness, something artists with computers don't care about. New media involves a finicky devotion to programming and process, whereas artists with computers are bulls in the Apple Shop.""

"XP argues that for emergent design to work, you need to keep the code as simple as possible – no unnecessary complexity – and to refactor as you learn. It is also important, XP says, to program in pairs and to frequently switch who sits with whom, so that everyone on the team has spent time with each part of the system. Then everyone must be present in all meetings and work in an office space that encourages communication."

"people living for revenge get to walk slow-motion in front of more explosions that heartless plutocrats do"

"... At the slap of the apple against his palm, the student was enlightened. Or at least he shut up for awhile."

"But you, sir, are no painter. And while you hack away at your terminal, or ride your homemade Segway, we painters and musicians are going to be right over here with all the wine, hash, and hot chicks."

"Most of your massed-produced honey is made by just mashing bees up indiscriminately, and later forcing the bee-y goo through successively finer filters."

"It reminds you of something you've never seen before." Film showing at Michigan Theater 18 & 19 March 2008

"[W]e were determined not to let a passion for unassailable little truths draw in the horizon and crowd the sky down on us."

"I have for all my mature life been impressed by people's tenacity, and in no specific more than discussion, whether in electronic forums or newspapers' letters to the editor..."

"...[G]iven any rule, however ‘fundamental’ or ‘necessary’ for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite."

via: boingboing

"Logic stays true, wherever you may go,
So logic never tells you where you live."

"It was only when you went on to explain to me that it is only now, through Ayn Rand, that philosophy has started to be "taken seriously as a science" and is no longer "useless," that I really began to regret this missed opportunity to engage in discussio

"The decline of public intellectuals correlates with the rise of Richard Posner."

"This experience, I fear, maps the domain of belief onto the social domains of authority, of command, of law."

Good summary

"When the basic problem is your ignorance, clever strategies for bypassing your ignorance lead to shooting yourself in the foot"

I spent last week corresponding with Marinetti's New Man. He lives, now, amongst us. He cannot be bothered to read this essay, because he is, alas, damned to be himself.

I wish Google bothered to punctuate. We're scanning another copy, and will send it through Distributed Proofreaders soon, but in the meantime read the page scans from Google if you like....

via Cosma Shalizi, who for whatever reason fails still to have a del.icio.us account, AFAIK

via: Danny Yee

"The idea that the correct functional, the correct structural and the best possible aesthetic solutions are one and the same thing must, I am afraid, be abandoned..."

Quick, pointed typographic Spider Jerusalem rant video

Very positive review of Sam Bowles's <i>Microeconomics</i>. Which I also thought was peachy.

George muses about the Prime Directive of Retrospectives. I note that neither Retrospectives nor any of the principles of the PD are social norms in academia, even though professional development is the point there. How might that improve in future?

Joshua Bell makes a passable busker.