Comments on: Re-skinning Reality

By: David Cheney

David Cheney — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:29:43 +0000

@simonbostock: “How much are you prepared to pay to totally avoid uncouthness and philistines?”

Well put re “spam”… I'll simply reiterate that filtering the sea (or is it cloud) for information relevant to one's current need goes *far* beyond removing only uncouth philistines *grins*

By: David Cheney

David Cheney — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:22:48 +0000

Aw, you're speaking figuratively, right?

Were every successful spam message a ray of hope, global morale would get lots better just by removing one's filters.

I propose that “increasingly powerful and impregnable filters [portend...] isolated groups that think they have nothing in common” assumes that groups en-mass will prefer isolationism in “bias-confirming pablum” rather than reasonably objective, diverse, and/or inclusive information. I bet that “bias confirmation” has been around, perhaps was even rampant, far before modern communications. Putting one's head in the sand is not sustainable – sooner or later reality will kick ass.

By: Tim Maly

Tim Maly — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:19:23 +0000

Quite right about the the narrative of markets. Somewhere that I'm not going to bother googling for, there's a bunch of research that shows that people given ONLY the numbers instead of the analysis (generally narrative) of various outlets did better than the people with both numbers and analysis.

Also, “balkanization engines” I like this term of art.

By: Hell Is Other People

Hell Is Other People — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:59:01 +0000

[...] Charlie Brooker for the Guardian on a grim potential for augmented reality: ” Years ago, I had an idea for a futuristic pair of goggles that visually transformed homeless people into lovable animated cartoon characters. Instead of being confronted by the conscience-pricking sight of an abandoned heroin addict shivering themselves to sleep in a shop doorway, the rich city-dweller wearing the goggles would see Daffy Duck snoozing dreamily in a hammock. London would be transformed into something out of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. “ A bit dire perhaps (and the Futurismic article I’m essentially ripping off here posts the counterargument, spammers and activists will be active, and likely quite successful, at destroying whatever bias filt…. [...]

By: simonbostock

simonbostock — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:44:32 +0000

We seem to have more tools available to discuss points and states than vectors and flux. Is 'flux' even the word that I'm looking for here?

When it comes to change and motion, we have a pretty good record at describing journeys. But lack the tools to talk about change without a narrative. (Possibly due to the tyranny of the verb 'to be' - Long Live E-Prime?!)

Markets do this better. Flux imbues the mechanisms of Price Discovery with impermanence and a sense of evolution. Asking the question, "How much are you prepared to pay to totally avoid uncouthness and philistines?" will probably provide a better sense of the future potential of balkanisation engines than asking "Just how powerful will our balkanisation engines get?"

Probably. Most economics courses have managed to turn the beauty of the Supply/Demand curve into a simple calculation. And you can try as hard as you like, but you'll still struggle to find financial news that doesn't try to tell the story of the markets.

Another way to get a sense of things is through fables and stories. In the current version, spammers are a disease. What happens to the story if we recast them as predators?