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trocheeSomehow, the Pentagon decided it would be a good idea to encourage "investors" to put money down on the odds of a terrorist attack. Luckily
This seems like an extreme example of the Bush administration's privatize-the-fire-department market insanity. What kind of sick logic leads you to think that the market would be a better predictor of terrorist attacks than, say, the FBI?
What's really disturbing about this is that Google News lists a number of stories on this subject. Well, that's not disturbing. What's disturbing is the several articles (the New York Times, Slate, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Fortune Magazine) that claim it was a really good idea after all.
Yow. Did the Enron energy crisis teach us nothing? I'd just be waiting for someone to corner the market on terrorism, just to drive up the price.
As an aside: NO the author of the Fortune piece is NOT me. I wish he would use his middle initial or something.
Also, an additional note: Reuters (see second paragraph from the end) seems to disagree with Yahoo! (see 11th paragraph) about whether it's Total Information Awareness or Terrorism Information Awareness. I first encountered this term as the former, but the latter does seem like a smooth recovery from the Orwellian horror of the former.
This seems like an extreme example of the Bush administration's privatize-the-fire-department market insanity. What kind of sick logic leads you to think that the market would be a better predictor of terrorist attacks than, say, the FBI?
What's really disturbing about this is that Google News lists a number of stories on this subject. Well, that's not disturbing. What's disturbing is the several articles (the New York Times, Slate, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Fortune Magazine) that claim it was a really good idea after all.
Yow. Did the Enron energy crisis teach us nothing? I'd just be waiting for someone to corner the market on terrorism, just to drive up the price.
As an aside: NO the author of the Fortune piece is NOT me. I wish he would use his middle initial or something.
Also, an additional note: Reuters (see second paragraph from the end) seems to disagree with Yahoo! (see 11th paragraph) about whether it's Total Information Awareness or Terrorism Information Awareness. I first encountered this term as the former, but the latter does seem like a smooth recovery from the Orwellian horror of the former.
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Withdrawn
While the idea of using a market stems from the usual market fundamentalism that pervades so many institutions, the idea that automatic aggregate processes/complex random systems can achieve better short-term success in approximating solutions is not new nor totally unfounded. The entire field of artificial life is based on variations of this theme, and it often stands up well compared to more direct methods (both statistical and deterministic). It is still an interesting, if macabre, experiment to see if a complex random system (such as a market) can outperform a direct search (ie by the FBI) or at least supplement it in predicting the possibility of attack.
Of course, there are numerous flaws with this experiment, in particular flaws in the market model, given that they were aiming to run this experiment under realistic conditions. Most of the abstract and technically correct basis for market optimization breaks down under non-ideal conditions (no perfect knowledge, no perfect "rationality", etc...).
In any case, diversions like these obscure the point of how and why terrorism exists in the first place. Ooops! Did I say that? I guess I must be a root-cause moral relativist or something. ;)
Re: Withdrawn
Date: 2003-07-31 06:30 pm (UTC)I think alternate ways of looking at data are great -- but I think the market model was chosen not for its predictive power but for political overtones. It says to the world "We are aiming at a society where monetary value determines everything... even the future."
Artificial agents that collaborate in a "market" to identify previously invisible trends might be a good idea -- but then you can hard-code your assumptions. Market manipulation (why I mentioned Enron) is outside of those assumptions, and yet it happens -- it's a scary thought to imagine what might happen with a market-manipulator of a terrorism market.
Amen, brother. A stitch in time saves nine. Why don't we ask those questions? Maybe if we-the-first-world encouraged democracy (instead of Realpolitik puppetry) and shared the fabulous wealth we control (rather than hoarding it and doling it out in little dollops along with guns), we wouldn't inspire (dare I say it?) understandable outrage from have-not world citizens.
If the outrage wasn't there, it couldn't be perverted into soul-killing violence like September 11th, and the Departments of State and Defense would have to dig deeper to come up with a cover story for bombing Iraqi children.