CHAPTER 3 THE FRICTIONLESS PLANE FALLACY Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism by Joseph Heath

CHAPTER 3 THE FRICTIONLESS PLANE FALLACY Why more competition is not always betterRead more at location 1024

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Kelvin Lancaster and Richard Lipsey published a paper in the Review of Economic Studies with the unassuming title “The General Theory of Second Best”—and handed the left one of the most powerful arguments against laissez-faire capitalism ever developed. Never heard of it? Well, don’t feel bad—you’re not alone. It’s been “suppressed” by the economics profession.Read more at location 1026

Note: DUE NOMI CONTRO IL LAISSEZ FAIRE Edit

Note: SECOND BEST Edit

One of the most ideologically powerful theoretical results in modern economics is the so-called Invisible Hand Theorem—named after Adam Smith’s famous speculation—thatRead more at location 1039

Note: CONTRO LA MANO INVISIBILE Edit

What the Second Best Theorem shows is that even if this is true, it is irrelevant, because if even one of the conditions that are required for perfect efficiency is violated, anywhere in the economy, then all bets are off. There is no reason to think that a “second-best,” or almost perfectly competitive market, will be more efficient than a third-best, or fourth-best, or even totally uncompetitive market.Read more at location 1041

Note: TESI: L ESISTENZA DELLA MANO INVISIBILE È IRILEVANTE Edit

the authors went on to show that, in cases where one of the conditions required for perfect efficiency was violated, the only way to achieve as-close-as-possible-to-perfect efficiency would be to go out and violate a few more of the rules required for a perfectly competitive market.Read more at location 1046

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Using a jigsaw is a very inefficient way to cut down a tree, compared to using a chainsaw. But what about the outcome, cutting down the tree? It may be more or less desirable, but it cannot be efficient or inefficient, unless there is some other purpose that it is intended to serve,Read more at location 1053

Note: CONCETTO DI EFFICIENZA Edit

According to this sense of the term, an outcome in which it is impossible to improve one person’s level of satisfaction without decreasing someone else’s is called “efficient”Read more at location 1056

Note: L EFFICIENZA DEGLI ECONOMISTI Edit

“Pareto optimal”).Read more at location 1057

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The prisoner’s dilemma sketched out in the first chapter contains, in this respect, a paradigm instance of an inefficient outcome.Read more at location 1061

Note: PRIGIONIERO Edit

The “state of nature,” in this respect, is a condition of total inefficiency, caused by a complete failure of cooperation.Read more at location 1065

Note: STATO DI NATURA Edit

Suppose you are distributing candy to kids at a birthday party. Being inexperienced at this sort of thing, you do it all wrong: You divide it up evenly among them, forgetting that some of them are allergic to peanuts, some of them hate raisins, and some of them have weird food sensitivities you’ve never even heard of.Read more at location 1067

Note: CARAMELLE DI COMPLEANNO Edit

Of course, figuring out exactly who should get what would be a very complicated job. You might decide instead just to let the kids take care of it by themselves.Read more at location 1073

Note: LA RISORSA DELLO SCAMBIO Edit

So let them exchange.Read more at location 1075

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“Markets will clear,” as economists like to say. When there are no more beneficial trades that can occur, the outcome will be perfectly efficient.Read more at location 1076

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This little thumbnail sketch is pretty close to being a complete statement of the intuition underlying the Invisible Hand TheoremRead more at location 1079

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In order to get the ideal distribution of candy, perfectly adapted to everyone’s preferences, there is no need for any complicated exercise in planning.Read more at location 1081

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Furthermore, the people involved don’t need to be motivated by any concern for the common good.Read more at location 1083

Note: MOTIVAZIONI MORALI Edit

Suppose you are the manager of a supermarket, and you are trying to figure out a way to get as many customers through the checkouts in the shortest time possible. You don’t want some cashiers standing around idle while others have huge lineups. How to solve the problem? Do you need some sort of high-tech system to constantly scan the crowds, combined with an optimal queuing algorithm to assign waiting customers to lineups? Instead, why not just let the customers look for themselves and choose their own lines?Read more at location 1089

Note: UNA MANO INVISIBILE PIÙ MODESTA Edit

No one doubts that one voluntary exchange leads to an improvement in efficiency. But the Invisible Hand Theorem claims that when every economic transaction is organized as a voluntary exchange, then all of the available improvements in efficiency will be exhausted.Read more at location 1107

Note: IL BUSILLS Edit

there was an enormous gap between whatever platitudinous intuitions we may have about the benefits of exchange and the defense of a completely laissez-faire economy. This may help to explain why it took economists such a long time to come up with anything resembling a proof of Smith’s conjecture. Indeed, it was not until 1956 that Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu’s “general equilibrium” model showed how such a proof could be constructed.Read more at location 1118

Note: ARROW DIMOSTRA Edit

Arrow and Debreu had to adopt a rather dramatic series of idealizations. (For example, they assumed that everyone had perfect information about the goods they were about to purchase, that goods never had to be transported from one location to another, that everyone knew the prices that everyone was charging for everything, now and for the foreseeable future, and so on.)Read more at location 1123

Note: IPOTESI FORTI Edit

A debate immediately broke out among economists (and other interested parties) about whether the approximation was close enough to justify drawing any sort of “real world” conclusionsRead more at location 1129

Note: IL DIBATTITO Edit

Everyone assumed that if the assumptions of the model mapped onto the real world in some approximate way, then the results of the model could also be mapped back in much the same way. This was the error diagnosed by Lipsey and Lancaster.Read more at location 1131

Note: ACCETTIAMO COME REALISTICHE LE OPOTESI Edit

the extent to which the model approximates the real world with respect to competition says nothing at all about the extent to which it maps onto the world with respect to efficiency.Read more at location 1132

Note: IL PROBLEMA DELL EFFICIENZA Edit

Suppose you live somewhere in the Midwestern United States, and your dream vacation is to go to Hawaii for a week. You could also go to Las Vegas, but that would be about half as much fun. Unfortunately, you don’t have quite enough money to pay for a flight to Hawaii. On the other hand, you could drive to Las Vegas, which would cost much less. Now suppose a travel agent offers you the following deal: “You can’t afford to fly all the way to Hawaii, but I’m willing to sell you a ticket at a reduced fare that will get you 98% of the way. Granted, it doesn’t quite get you to your dream vacation. But isn’t getting 98% of your dream vacation better than settling for Las Vegas, which is worth only 50% as much?” This is obviously a crazy suggestion. Getting 98% of the way to Hawaii puts you somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.Read more at location 1135

Note: IMO: MAL COMPRESO IL TEOREMA DELLA MANO INVISIBILE. LE H. SODDISFANO 100 E LAS VEGAS 50. MA DOVE SONO I BENI (O I PACCHETTI DI BENI) DI 51 52 53… 98 99? EVIDENTEMENETE MANCANO I LORO MERCATI. MA IL TEOREMA DICE PROPRI QUELLO: DOVE C È INEFFICIENZA È XCHÈ MANCA UN MERCATO!!!!! Edit

Note: VACANZE ALLE HAWAII. BENE BELLA INDIVISIBILE Edit

The fallacy lies in thinking that getting something that is the closest approximation to the best is necessarily better than getting something rather different.Read more at location 1143

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(if the salad dressing you want isn’t available, maybe you’d be better off ordering the soup; if you don’t get the raise you want, maybe you should be working somewhere else).Read more at location 1144

Note: BENI INCOMPLETI Edit

Anyone can see that the idealizations introduced by Arrow and Debreu in their characterization of perfect competition are fairly extreme. In order for their theoretical results to have any direct bearing on the real world, there must be no economies of scale (which means no advantages to mass production), no possibility of influencing prices through one’s supply or demand decisions, no transaction costs (a category that includes everything from lawyer’s fees and accounting expenses to transportation costs and unpaid bills), no uncertainty about the future (or, in situations where there is uncertainty, an option to purchase insurance against any eventuality), and no information asymmetries (in particular, customers who know everything that the manufacturer knows about the products they are considering purchasing). And most important of all, there must be no “externalities,” which is to say, no uncompensated costs or benefits imposed upon others.8 What this means, in practice, is that there would have to be a “complete” set of property rights:Read more at location 1152

Note: IL MODELLO DI ARROW Edit

The neighbor can produce foul odors, make loud noises, or install hideous lawn ornaments without infringing upon our property rights, because we have no property rights in the air that we breathe, in our acoustic environment, or in the view out the front window.Read more at location 1168

Note: ESTERNALITÀ Edit

This is the world of perfect capitalism. As anyone can see, it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the real world. Not a problem, say the defenders of laissez-faire—there’s nothing wrong with using idealizations in the development of scientific theories.Read more at location 1178

Note: IDEALIZZZIONI E SCIENZA Edit

It’s not just that the ideal Newtonian model is “close enough” to the real world to generate useful predictions. It’s that the more closely the real world resembles the ideal world of Newtonian mechanics, the more closely our observations will satisfy the predictions of the ideal model.Read more at location 1192

Note: NEWTON Edit

The point of developing models—simplified representations of some aspect of the real world—is to disaggregate things, so that instead of talking about everything all the time, one can isolate and discuss just some of the forces that are contributing to a particular observed phenomenon. This is often referred to as the “frictionless plane”Read more at location 1198

Note: ASSENZA DI ATTRITO Edit

Galileo ignored friction entirely, which meant that his model did not directly correspond to any actual experimental observations. Nevertheless, it provided an analysis that was close enough for all practical purposes,Read more at location 1202

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Thus there is nothing wrong in principle with using idealizations like the “frictionless plane”Read more at location 1204

Note: IDEALIZZAZIONE Edit

Milton Friedman (father of the infamous “Chicago School”) appealed to the analogy of geometry in defending the assumption that everyone faces a fixed (or exogenously determined) set of prices under perfect competition: Of course, competition is an ideal type, like a Euclidean line or point. No one has ever seen a Euclidean line—which has zero width and depth—yet we all find it useful to regard many a Euclidean volume—such as a surveyor’s string—as a Euclidean line. Similarly, there is no such thing as “pure” competition. Every producer has some effect, however tiny, on the price of the product he purchases. The important issue for understanding and for policy is whether this effect is significant or can properly be neglected, as the surveyor can neglect the thickness of what he calls the “line.”Read more at location 1205

Note: IRREALISMO DELLE IPOTESI Edit

A caccia del populista

Ci sono state parecchie dittature dai proclami demagogici ma di solito l'elemento naturale in cui ama nuotare il populista è quello democratico. In fondo il dittatore puo’ ricorrere alle maniere forti per imporre il suo volere, il politico democratico deve invece convincere, e gli argomenti “di pancia” sono una scorciatoia allettante per una missione del genere.

Ora, basterebbe un sondaggino per capire che l'elettore medio tende ad essere un “nazista in pectore” , e che se lo si lasci fare avrai politiche molto più “socialiste” e molto più “nazionalistiche” di quelle che ci ammorbano oggi, il che è tutto dire.

In cerca di immunizzarsi da questo nefando influsso le democrazie moderne adottano delle difese collaudate: per esempio, danno più peso alle “lobby”, oppure ai “tecnici”, oppure a quei meccanismi che filtrano e diluiscono l'opinione popolare fino al quasi annullamento. Quando questi meccanisti saltano, i voleri genuini dell’elettorato investono tutto quel che trovano sulla loro strada e ci ritroviamo ben presto con i Beppe Grillo, i Donald Trump e i Bernie Sanders ad un passo dalla stanza dei bottoni.

È difficile definire chi sia il populista, in generale potremmo pensarlo come una persona intellettualmente pigra che desidera ardentemente dire la sua (anzi gridarla ai quattro venti).  Ma è una definizione fumosa.

Bisognerebbe poi distinguere tra un populismo di destra e uno di sinistra. Senza dire che a volte – in casi estremi - un po’ di populismo giova: ci aiuta a constatare che “il re è nudo", per esempio, un’operazione che riesce sempre terribilmente difficile all’analista sofisticato, per quanto sia indipendente dal potere.

Preso atto di tutte queste difficoltà, piuttosto che avventurarsi nelle definizioni preferisco allora riportare dodici contrassegni che individuano bene il populista-tipo: sono idee facili da gridare ma destituite di un solido fondamento. Qui mi limito alle materie economiche, ce n’è a sufficienza per capire quando incontrerete il vostro nemico, magari anche dentro di voi:

1. Il populista di destra ha il mito dello spontaneismo: spesso pensa al mercato come a qualcosa di naturale in grado di nascere spontaneamente purché si liberi la società da qualsiasi interferenza esterna. In effetti, è molto più probabile che a nascere in questo modo  sia una società composta clanica in grado di offrire “protezioni mafiose”.
2. Il populista di sinistra pensa che ogni cosa abbia il suo “giusto prezzo” che prescinde da domanda e offerta. Il mercato è “giusto” se riflette il “giusto prezzo” che lui sembra conoscere in anticipo. L’acqua (essenziale) che costa pochissimo e i diamanti (inutili) che sono tanto cari non sembrano scalfire le sue certezze.
3. Il populista di destra pensa sempre in termini di “bastone e carota”. Per lui gli incentivi sono tutto sia nella vita che nell’educazione. Naturale vederlo sconvolto dall’apprendere che spesso quando si pagano i donatori di sangue di sangue se ne raccoglie meno.
4. Il populista di sinistra pensa che far soldi sia riprovevole. Vede le malefiche multinazionali come guidate da gente psicopatica ossessionata dal profitto.
5. Il populista di destra pensa alla competizione come alla soluzione di tutti i mali. Non riesce a concepire che possa esistere anche una sterile competizione tra invidiosi che ci stressa senza costrutto.
6. Per il populista di sinistra la società capitalista è sempre sull’orlo del collasso. Prima il marxismo, ora certo ambientalismo, secondo lui l’apocalisse è prossima. Intanto il mondo è sempre più ricco ma lui fa finta di non vedere: guarda avanti, ai limiti dello sviluppo, una frasetta di cui si è innamorato da quando era giovane.
7. Per il populista di destra le tasse sono un furto a prescindere, e lo stato un ladro. Peccato che lo stato non sia una persona cosicché diventa difficile scoprire chi siano i veri ladri. In genere lui pensa ai politici ma non di rado, se “segui i soldi” scopri che il ladro è anche lui, lui che riceve uno stipendio statale o commesse governative, oppure agevolazioni sul ticket sanitario.
8. Per il populista di sinistra la “giusta paga” rispecchia lo sforzo del lavoratore. Non concepisce che la paga rifletta invece la facilità con cui un lavoratore puo’ essere rimpiazzato: il salario va’ proporzionato alle gocce di sudore… succeda poi quel che deve succedere: la giustizia innanzitutto.
9. Per il populista di destra dobbiamo “tutelare i nostri gioielli”, per esempio, in campo aeronautico,  la compagnia di bandiera. Siamo italiani e dobbiamo avere una compagnia italiana, punto. Sembra che per lui ad essere italiani siano solo coloro che lavorano presso la compagnia di bandiera. Tutti coloro invece che usano gli aerei e che a causa di queste “protezioni” devono spendere di più, loro no, loro non sono italiani.
10. Per il populista di sinistra è indispensabile distribuire la ricchezza. Salvo poi meravigliarsi che si investe poco. Ma va? l’idea che i poveri non siano semplicemente coloro che hanno poco denaro ma anche coloro che fanno un utilizzo a dir poco sconsiderato del denaro in loro possesso non sembra sfiorarlo mai.
11. Il populista di destra è ossessionato dal merito e dalla responsabilità personale. Se solo sapesse quanto conta la fortuna nelle nostre vite sarebbe di sicuro un po’ meno populista.
12. Il populismo di sinistra ci marcia sull’invidia sociale e cerca di nascondere questo vizietto con la foglia di fico dell’eguaglianza. In realtà è spesso un imprenditore politico che sfrutta il risentimento tra le classi fingendosi difensore degli ultimi. Fateci caso: quando un personaggio ben intenzionato come Papa Francesco denuncia le ingiustizie dell’economia contemporanea, non riscuote il plauso dei poveri - che con l’ “economia contemporanea” sono usciti a milioni dalla povertà - bensì quello della classe media dei paesi ricchi, una classe dai redditi stagnanti e dalla frustrazione diffusa, anche a causa dell’inattesa competizione dei paesi poveri che proprio l’economia contemporanea ha reso possibile.

Per approfondire ciascuno di questi 12 punti:   Joseph Heath, Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism

Una teoria di genere per mettere d'accordo tutti

Sarebbe bello disporre di una teoria sulla violenza di genere in grado di mettere d’accordo lo psicologo, l’evoluzionista, la femminista, l’ “equalizzatore”, il “virilista”, nonché chiunque si faccia un bell’esame di coscienza.

Mi permetto di proporre questa (scusate se non vado oltre le due righe):

Mentre le donne hanno una comunicazione allusiva e una violenza diretta, gli uomini hanno una violenza allusiva e una comunicazione diretta.

Avere una comunicazione allusiva significa dire una cosa per intenderne un’altra, magari usando un certo tono.

Avere una comunicazione diretta significa dire una cosa per intendere esattamente  cio’ che si dice.

La violenza diretta esprime un odio specifico e un disprezzo verso la persona a cui è rivolta.

La violenza allusiva esprime, più che un odio verso il soggetto colpito, una preoccupazione per la propria immagine pubblica.

Facciamo un esempio concreto per illustrare meglio la teoria.

Pensiamo al caso di una coppia ini crisi. Ebbene, in base alla teoria possiamo dire che se i dissapori di coppia sono destinati a sfociare in una rottura crescono le possibilità di una violenza maschile (poiché la rottura è un evento “pubblico”). Al contrario, le possibilità di una violenza femminile sono indipendenti da una rottura: in queste materie per la donna conta solo la sostanza, ovvero la crisi di coppia.

Una teoria come quella proposta ha il pregio di essere compatibile con molte posizione che, essendo molto diffuse, appaiono verosimili.

1. Uomini e donne hanno comportamenti differenti (Marte e Venere). Lo psicologo tradizionale lo afferma ripetutamente.
2. Sia gli uomini che le donne esprimono forme di aggressività, non ci sono “agnellini”. L’ “equalizzatore” che ad ogni “femminicidio” contrappone un “maschicidio” sarà contento.
3. L’aggressività maschile è più sensibile agli stereotipi rispetto a quella femminile. Il lamento delle femministe non è nella sostanza del tutto ingiustificato.
4. L’uomo è più virile della donna: è più assertivo e più sensibile alla dimensione comunitaria. I teorici della virilità ce lo dicono ogni giorno. 
5. L’uomo è ossessionato dalla cultura, la donna dalle relazioni personali. E’ una predica che lo psicologo evoluzionista fa ogni giorno.
6. La violenza maschile verso la donna è compatibile con un sentimento d’amore, per quanto degradato. L’introspezione lo conferma.

Forse il punto interessante è l’ultimo. Forse nessuno odia veramente e fino in fondo il proprio partner, anche per questo la violenza estrema è un po’ più diffusa tra i maschi: nel loro caso, per passare all’azione, l’odio conta molto meno.

Parsing the Turing Test by Robert Epstein

Highlights (Most recently updated first)
Parsing the Turing Test by Robert Epstein, Gary Roberts, Grace Beber
You have 55 highlighted passages
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Foreword    • Delete this highlight
Note: PREGA!@@@@@@@@@@@ Edit
Introduction    • Delete this highlight
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This book is about what will probably be humankind's most impressive - and perhaps final - achievement: the creation of an entity whose intelligence equals or exceeds our own.    • Delete this highlight
Note: DI CHE SI PARLA Edit
I had the odd experience of being able to interact over a teletype with one of the first conversational computer programs - Joseph Weizenbaum's "ELIZA" - I would have conjectured that truly intelligent machines were just around the corner. I was wrong. In fact, by some measures, conversational computer programs have made relatively little progress since ELIZA. But they are coming nonetheless,   • Delete this highlight
Note: QUANDO Edit
Building a Nest for the Coming World Mind    • Delete this highlight
Note: TITOLO Edit
I have come to think of the Internet as the Inter-nest - a home we are inadvertently building, like mindless worker ants, for the intelligence that will succeed us.   • Delete this highlight
Note: INTERNET COME NIDO DELL IA Edit
It is really a vast, flexible, highly redundant, virtually indestructible nest for machine intelligence.   • Delete this highlight
Note: FUNZIONI NN INT. DI INTERNET Edit
We do seem to be laying the groundwork for a Massive Computational Entity (MCE),   • Delete this highlight
Note: MCE Edit
Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil (see Chapter 27) argues in his recent book, The Singularity Is Near, that an MI will appear by the late 2020s. This may happen because we prove to be incredibly talented programmers who discover a set of rules that underlie intelligence (unlikely), or because we prove to be clumsy programmers who simply figure out how to create machines that learn and evolve as humans do (very possible), or even because we prove to be poor programmers who create hardware so powerful that it can easily and perfectly scan and emulate human brain functions (inevitable).   • Delete this highlight
Note: KURZWEIL Edit
Turing's Vision    • Delete this highlight
Note: TITOLO. TURING Edit
the brilliant English mathematician and computer pioneer Alan M. Turing. During World War II, Turing directed a secret group that developed computing equipment powerful enough to break the code the Germans used for military communications.   • Delete this highlight
Note: TURING VA ALLA GUERRA Edit
As icing on the cake, in 1950 he published an article called "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" in which he speculated that by the year 2000, it would be possible to program a computer so that an "average interrogator will not have more than 70 percent chance" of distinguishing the computer from a person "after five minutes of questioning"   • Delete this highlight
Note: L ARTICOLO SEMINALE Edit
Early conversational programs, relying on what most Al professionals would now consider to be simplistic algorithms and trickery, could engage average people in conversation for a few minutes by the late 1960s. By the 1990s - again, some would say using trickery - programs existed that could occasionally maintain the illusion of intelligence for 15 min or so, at least when conversing on specialized topics. Programs today can do slightly better, but have we gotten past "illusion" to real intelligence, and is that even possible?    • Delete this highlight
Note: LA REALTÀ Edit
when we can no longer distinguish a computer from a person in conversation over a long period of time - that is, based simply on an exchange of pure text that excluded visual and auditory information (which he rightfully considered to be irrelevant to the central question of thinking ability) - we would have to consider the possibility that computers themselves were now "thinking".    • Delete this highlight
Note: DEFINIZIONE DI PENSIERO Edit
The programming challenges have proved to be so difficult in creating such a machine that I think it is now safe to say that when a positive result is finally achieved, the entity passing the test may not be thinking the way humans do.   • Delete this highlight
Note: IL PC NN PENSA COME UN UOMO Edit
If a pure rule-governed approach finally pays off (unlikely, as I said earlier), or if intelligence eventually arises in a machine designed to learn and self-program, the resulting entity will certainly be unlike humans in fundamental ways.   • Delete this highlight
Note: LA MENTE NN PENSA CON LE REGOLE Edit
If, on the other hand, success is ultimately achieved only through brute force - that is, by close emulation of human brain processes - perhaps we will have no choice but to accept intelligent machines as true thinking brethren.   • Delete this highlight
Note: EMULATORI Edit
no matter how a positive outcome is achieved, the debate about the significance of the Turing Test will end the moment a skeptic finds himself or herself engaging in that debate with a computer.   • Delete this highlight
Note: FINE DEL DIBATTITO SULL INTELLIGENZA Edit
refuse to continue the debate "on principle"   • Delete this highlight
Note: X PRINCIPIO Edit
computers will have truly achieved human-like intelligence.   • Delete this highlight
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Convergence of Multiple Technologies    • Delete this highlight
Note: TITOLO Edit
unlimited computer memory; randomness in responding that will suggest "free will"; programs that will be self-modifying; programs that will learn in human fashion; programs that will initiate behavior, compose poetry, and "surprise" us; and programs that will have telepathic abilities equivalent to those that may exist in humans.   • Delete this highlight
Note: GLI AVANZAMENTI POSSIBILI Edit
Consider just a few recent achievements:    • Delete this highlight
Note: INNOVAZIONI Edit
pattern-recognition area, a camera-equipped computer program developed by Javier Movellan and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego   • Delete this highlight
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In the language area, Morten Christiansen of Cornell University, with an international team of colleagues, has developed neural network software   • Delete this highlight
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More than 80 conversational programs (chatterbots) now operate 24 h a day online, and at least 20 of them are serious Al programming projects.   • Delete this highlight
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Ted Berger and colleagues at the University of Southern California have developed electronic chips that can successfully interact with neurons in real time   • Delete this highlight
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Craig Henriquez and Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University have shown that macaque monkeys can learn to control mechanical arms and hands based on signals their brains are sending to implanted electrodes.   • Delete this highlight
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computer program that could draw, and hundreds of programs are now able to compose original music   • Delete this highlight
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John Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute, with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University, recently used computer-assisted brain scanning technology to predict simple human actions with 70% accuracy.    • Delete this highlight
Note: ECCETERA Edit
Meanwhile, researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs are after comparatively smaller game: intelligent phone-answering systems and search algorithms, robot helpers and companions, and methods for repairing injured or defective human brains.    • Delete this highlight
Note: EPURE QUALCOSA CI FA DISPERARE Edit
Philosophical and Methodological Issues    • Delete this highlight
Note: TITOLO Edit
Chapter 27, by Ray Kurzweil and Mitchell Kapor, documents in detail an actual cash wager between these two individuals, regarding whether a program will pass the test by the year 2029.   • Delete this highlight
Note: SCOMMESSE Edit
Chapter 28, by noted science fiction writer Charles Platt (The Silicon Man), describes the "Gnirut Test", conducted by intelligent machines in the year 2030 to determine, once and for all, whether "the human brain is capable of achieving machine intelligence".   • Delete this highlight
Note: GNIRUT TEST Edit
Most, but not all, of the contributors to this volume believe as I do that extremely intelligent computers, with cognitive powers that far surpass our own, will appear fairly soon - probably within the next 25 years.   • Delete this highlight
Note: LA PREVISIONE Edit
Contents    • Delete this highlight
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Chapter   • Delete this highlight
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Abstract The first large-scale implementation of the Turing Test was set in motion in 1985, with the first contest taking place in 1991. US$100,000 in prize money was offered   • Delete this highlight
Note: PRIMI TEST Edit
distinguishing a person from a computer when only brief conversations are permitted can be challenging.   • Delete this highlight
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however, the highest-ranked computer program was misclassified as a human by five of the ten judges, and two other programs were also sometimes misclassified.   • Delete this highlight
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Beni artistici

Against Historic Preservation - Marginal REVOLUTION: "



Perché aboòlire la normativa:

• First, it’s often the case that buildings of little historical worth are preserved by rules and regulations that are used as a pretext to slow competitors, maintain monopoly rents, and keep neighborhoods in a kind of aesthetic stasis that benefits a small number of people at the expense of many others. 
•  Second, a confident nation builds so that future people may look back and marvel at their ancestors ingenuity and aesthetic vision. A nation in decline looks to the past in a vain attempt to “preserve” what was once great. Preservation is what you do to dead butterflies.
  Ironically, if today’s rules for historical preservation had been in place in the past the buildings that some now want to preserve would never have been built at all. The opportunity cost of preservation is future greatness. 
•  Third, repealing historic preservation laws does not mean ending historic preservation. There is a very simple way that truly great buildings can be preserved–they can be bought or their preservation rights paid for. The problem with historic preservation laws is not the goal but the methods. Historic preservation laws attempt to foist the cost of preservation on those who want to build (very much including builders of infrastructure such as the government). Attempting to foist costs on others, however, almost inevitably leads to a system full of lawyers, lobbying and rent seeking–and that leads to high transaction costs and delay. Richard Epstein advocated a compensation system for takings because takings violat ethics and constitutional law. But perhaps an even bigger virtue of a compensation system is that it’s quick. A building worth preserving is worth paying to preserve. A compensation system unites builders and those who want to preserve and thus allows for quick decisions about what will be preserved and what will not."

Creative destruction requires some destruction.