Nick Bostrom wrote:
>I think the idea is very interesting
>and definitely worth exploring further.
Thanks!
>One point that I would be interested in seeing discussed in the paper is
>whether this system of decision-making is often used in corporations, and if
>it isn't, what is the reason? Is it the case that nobody has thought of
>doing things this way before (which would be surprising, given that there
>are so many companies around involved in fierce competition, and a lot of
>people trying to think of better forms of management)?
Management is a technology, and technology improves. So I think the answer
is both that people haven't thought of doing this, and that it just recently
got a lot cheaper to do this.
>A corporation would seem to provide a nice prototype
>test-bed for this approach,
Yes.
>would it be possible for Robin to get a patent on it?)
Too late - the ideas have been published for more than a year.
>On a smaller point: Robin says (p. 29) that one should not require markets
>to agree on a proposal for too long a period before it can be officially
>approved, because "Otherwise speculators early in the period may worry that
>speculators later in the period will know substantially more, and bias their
>estimates thereby." It's not clear to me why this would be a problem, or
>what the bias referred to would be.
This was intended to be a non-technical paper, and I don't know of a way
to explain it that isn't technical, beyond what I already said.
Robin Hanson rhanson@gmu.edu http://hanson.gmu.edu
Asst. Prof. Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-2326 FAX: 703-993-2323
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