barbie17

Ah, clever! Thank you.

Dosn't email clients such as gmail automatically block images though? How do you track it?

Seconded. Wouldn't the results of the prediction market be calculated into the current value of the DOW? I mean, sure, there could be distress selling right now, but even assuming that people are somewhat rational...

They should be grateful that the Amazon Kindle, a complement good to ebooks is so popular. How many books were purchased because of the Amazon Kindle? How many books will be bought because of the extra usefulness of the audio feature? Instead, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Not only that, but they are also obstructing the advancement of technology and innovation by reducing their usefulness. First Google Books and now this. What a bunch of ungrateful bastards - hardly better than the RIAA.

Now that it's known, it will be arbitraged away. The guy who discovered this should have kept it a secret ;).

Where's the incentive for me to work my butt off and risk getting fired all for my Big Dumb Corporation?

No, I don't think we are talking about the same kind of complexity here. Complexity Theory is exactly the opposite of real world pragmatism. It is about the asymptotic behaviors of algorithms and the resources need to solve certain class of problems such as Traveling Salesman or Min-Set-Cover.

Why those three types and not others?

I would argue that for most entrepreneurs studying machine learning has greater marginal utility than studying complexity theory, but to each his/her own I guess.

I would change the look and feel of the site a little. It looks like those spammy domain squatters. I would tweak the font a little, at least.

How about if you allow them to import their postings from Craigslist and other places? Craigslist wouldn't like it but when you are small they probably wouldn't even notice. Just do it from multiple IP addresses or something.

This is a good point, but I would expect (the more evolved) human beings in the future to be closer to being fitness maximizers.

Morality is an evolved adaptation. The ultimate purpose of morality is to maximize your own utility. There is no reason why any human being would care about a bunch of crystalline insect-like aliens. Practically, human empathy circuits would never span to such alien aliens considering how easy it is to turn it off for other humans whom we consider to be an out-group. From a game theoretical perspective there is no utility gained from sacrificing humans so that some crystal bugs conform to our social values. The correct move from a game theoretic perspective is to ally with the Babyeaters since they are friendly and could be of use in trade.

This is going to sound like an ad hominem attack, but it seems to me that a majority of the singularity/futurist crowd are more concerned with impressing others with shows of intelligence than any other goal. They sound more like a bunch of male apes strutting around vying for alpha status, perhaps not surprising given that they are almost all male. A comment very much like mine (about the pointlessness of feeling compassion for crystal bugs) was posted on the overcoming bias blog but it received no replies/rebuttals. Rather the comments over there simply accepted the premises of the story without question. I have a great deal of respect for Elizer but his followers are frighteningly cult like.

Why is the doubly linked list circular?

Since it appeared before "Little Brother", maybe Doctorow was inspired by this extension instead of the other way around ;).