Apophis & carpe diem & how to save the world with a billion keychains

There's a 0.0023% chance that asteroid Apophis will impact earth in 28 years. Who cares about a 1 in 45,000 chance? Believe it or not, it is useful information.

For example, you could use this information when negotiating a 30-year loan -- structure it so payments are more heavily weighted to the last two years! At what cost? Of course the world won't end, but if there's a chance... you can precisely calibrate your degree of carpe diem. You should be willing to pay up to $1 for every extra $45,000 (plus additional interest) that is deferred to the last two years. Many people spend $1 on a lottery ticket where you have a 1 in 689,065 chance of winning $10,000. And of course a big loan with a small chance you won't have to pay it back is the same as a lottery ticket -- in fact even better since a) this one pays upfront and b) the normal lottery ticket is overpriced by an order of magnitude.

Back to Apophis. Here's another, less selfish, example of how this information can be useful. We want to know how much money it makes sense for us (earth, one world united!) to spend defending against Apophis. The answer is 0.0023% times the present value of world GDP, cumulated from 2036 forward. Oops that's infinity... Wait not necessarily. If we assume GDP stops growing at some point (e.g. the point where all material needs of humanity would be easily met), and we assume a a discount rate strictly greater than zero, the present value of all future GDP is a finite number. So we should multiply that number by 0.0023% and invest it in a laser beam.

Laser beam schematic:



Take that, make it a billion times more powerful, with a nuclear battery, put it in a satellite with some stuff for aiming and we should be ok! Seriously though, we do have 28 years to work on the technology, so no biggie. But how do we create the political will to spend money on it now?

Societies seem to have a hard time making really long-term investments, whether they are democracies or whatever. But they all love lotteries! Let's revisit the deferment of debt idea. The borrower will be willing to pay a premium to take some debt and push it back past the 28th year. The lender is neutral since they get extra fees to compensate for the risk. Thus we have an efficient transaction between a rational borrower and a rational lender. OK and what has that got to do with asteroids? Recall this is essentially a lottery, one that's better than the usual ones, and we know people are willing to pay 10 times the rational price for lottery tickets. Therefore it should be possible to satisfy the lender with just 1/10th of the fee collected from the buyer! And the remaining 9/10th can be used to build a giant laser beam!!! Everyone's happy. In fact, since the beam also works to eliminate or reduce that very risk, the rational lender might even be willing to contribute part of their one tenth. And then everyone's even more happy. Let's call this the GAALBMF: global anti-asteroid laser beam mortgage fund.

Karma Tycoon

Due to a recent ahem... incident, I stumbled across some old press coverage for Karma Tycoon. Cool! Not just because it's a fun and educational game which anyone can play free (check out the the rave reviews), but because yours truly wrote the game server.

It was a one-off contract for Do Something. 9mmedia, developed the client-side and outsourced the server-side to me at IHN, back in 2006 when IHN needed some cash. It ended up being a pretty cool project... 9mmedia guys are great to work with. I highly recommend them.

The game was fun and interesting to design and implement (but not the schedule -- that was rough especially since I was also busy with some other stuff). We used red5 to interface between the java server and flash client. I was also able to use some components of Merkato too, which was nice.

Mars Landing

'Phoenix Mars Mission scheduled to land May 25, 2008, is the first in NASA's "Scout Program." Scouts are designed to be highly innovative and relatively low-cost complements to major missions being planned as part of the agency's Mars Exploration Program.'

Canary in a coal mine

pulse, naymz, doostang, fastpitch, ...

That is the list of new social networks I've received invitations to join just recently. Some are new, some are old websites recylcing themselves as social networks. Before that, there was ning, facebook, linkedin, geni.com, myspace, friendster, hi5... This is crazy. Have we reached the boo.com stage of facial neworking? (Oops. I just realized I wrote facial instead of social. That's hilarious).

Meanwhile, Blog Friends -- the one thing that I found most promising on Facebook (at least as an example of a feature that I could make use of, not necessarily a general killer app that would change the world) -- died an ominous death. Ominous for Facebook that is. But in it's last gasp, it inspired a useful cliche. The day it died, my status message: wondering if Blog Friends was like a canary in a coal mine.

Why that analogy? See what Blog Friends themselves said: "... we have been at the mercy of Facebook's frequent modifications of their Platform specifications, and that has also been another disabling factor for us." So I remain firmly in the camp of Facebook skeptics -- at best, it's the next AOL (which is still huge).

I remain however a huge fan of Geni.com. That one that should be good for generations.. literally.

Overall, I hope social networking becomes something that's not quite a separate app, and not just a feature, but a service/capability as ubiquitous, useful and unobtrusive as ... email! (Hey check that out: 3 "U"s! Now I sound like a cheesy business book). Somebody should create standard api and ... yeah! Something called Open Social... That would be pretty promising!

Of course, I've been wrong before on this kind of stuff.

Predictions, elections, polls, fractals, reflixivity & the kitchen sink

People argue about whether prediction markets do a better job of forecasting elections than polls, or it's an illusion due to timing.

Initially, I am inclined to believe this is one area where the market works better. This follows from their most basic properties. Let's assume both are mostly mediocre. That is many polls and prediction markets available, but just no good in general.

Now consider polls. If there was fewer of them, and they were well communicated, we could count on the fact that expert from all sides would scrutinize them and that they would thus be held to the highest standards. Or of course if you average a lot of polls, you should get a more accurate poll of polls, as errors cancel out. In both cases, centralization increases accuracy of polls. Conversely, when looking at any one poll alone chances are, the one you're looking at is a bad/biased one.

For markets on the other hand, even if you are looking at one market alone, if it was biased, all it would take is one person who has seen the other markets to arbitrage the bias away, in effect linking the two markets and making them two views of one more accurate underlying market. Two polls cannot get organically linked and become more accurate than each by itself. You have to add them up yourself. But two markets can! Thus any one market you stumble upon is more likely to be accurate than a poll you stumble across.

This argument seems particularly apt for the US presidential elections, since there's so much slicing and dicing... The polls are all complicated what-if scenarios. So anyway, according to Intrade, which I've written about before, here are the current probabilities for the next US President (taking bid prices, to get lower bounds):

• Obama: 55.6%
• McCain: 37.6%
• Clinton: 6.6%

And the Iowa Electronic Markets seem to agree. Thus, the above, in my humble opinion, is as close as you're gonna get to a prediction out there today.

But is it any good?

Getting back to the philosophical argument again... polls are trying to measure current feelings, i.e. they assume there's an underlying "true" preference of the public, and that they are an objective mechanism to reveal it, within a certain Gaussian error. But it could of course be that the error is much larger than we think possible, because the models are completely wrong. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of Black Swan, that I mentioned here a couple of posts ago, has argued, a lot of mistakes are due to imposing Gaussian models on a reality that has fractal or power-law or heavy-tailed scaling. For polls, if you think there is a true current preference, then I guess the error should be Gaussian (in other words, using Taleb's lingo, the preference is "in mediocristan"). But looking at it over time, as you must for a prediction, maybe a single poll of a few thousand people, even if it's not representing a wider reality, can have a fractal effect, replicating it's belief patterns at larger scales, through media. If that' s the case, most polls will be meaningless, some will be virally important. And prediction markets won't work well either. True the participants size can scale so maybe they can make fractal bets, but no matter how many expert bets the market brings in, it won't improve the information about a black swan type event which is what a fractally scaling popularity would be.

Some people, like George Soros in his recent book (that I just picked up this weekend) argue that, when it comes to human/social phenomena, the underlying reality doesn't exist separately, it is entangled with human attempts to understand it, and manipulate it (he calls it reflexivity). So taking his ideas to polls, are they measuring something that fundamentally may not actually exist? Probably, there's no objective public opinion that exists independently, waiting to be measured. But it exists reflexively (this is my interpretation/application of Soros idea here so sorry if it's wrong). The polls, even if totally arbitrary to start with, by being communicated, may induce the reality they purport to measure. People listen to the news, and the polls, and their future actions are affected in some way, may then come to act in the way that is suggested to them by the polls for people like them. It may or may not be controlled in concentrated way, but if we apply this theory, then polls are as much instruments of action as measurements, in robotic terms, as much actuators as sensors.

Drexler redux: nanotech

Blog: noun, abbrev. Etymology: Web log.

A year ago, I logged a note to revisit Hanson & Drexler. One day, I was at The Strand, actually remembered and ended up picking up K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation (I now see there's a new edition that's even available as an e-book, but I didn't know that at the time, and just got the original edition). Incidentally, that event proves this blog is serving it's purpose! If it wasn't for this blog, my faint connection to that book might have gradually faded into the past. I also picked up Black Swan, which I ended up really enjoying but I digress...

Engines of Creation is pretty cool. First surprise: It is perhaps the seminal work in Nanotechnology. In fact, Drexler coined the term. I didn't know that. I found Drexler interesting because of a paper he wrote with Bernardo Huberman on agent/market-based computing systems. But it turns out he is the Godfather of nanotechnology. Wow indeed. Second observation: considering it's a book about future technology published in 1986, just the fact that I was able to read most of it says a lot. Usually non-fiction books about future technology don't age well: either they were right and so what they contain is now obvious, or they were wrong and are now useless, except for a few predictions that live on as comedy. But not this one. It is still absolutely readable. It does waste a bit too many words on appeasing fears of doomsday scenarios, and has a bit too much juvenile moralization. Just a bit. But the 2/3rds or so that I did read closely was fascinating stuff which hasn't aged a bit. It's great, the first time I got some clue about how nanotechnology might work.

Indeed, I had always had a hard time bridging the gap between the fictional nanotech that I found so brilliant in Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and anything I knew about science or technology. Not surprising since it's sci-fi, you might say, but my point is that "nanotech" exists in real science yet I don't see no microscopic helicopters and infinite-dimensional interactive books being talked about in the newspaper. What you hear about is relatively mundane "nanotech" ideas. Relatively of course, because by normal standards, even "boring" nanotech's promises are huge ... Microscopic "hard disks", or carbon nanotubes that conduct electricity much better than wires, or can support structures that are impossible with steel like space elevators!

But the Drexler vision is much bigger than better construction materials. He imagines actual nano-machines that build stuff, actual mechanical assembly of atoms and molecules. If you accept that premise, it leads to gigantic consequences, essentially limitless food, energy, all our material needs becoming ... immaterial, so to speak. This is a big idea. And it turns out Mr Drexler has made it the work of his life.

Which brings us to the question... So how come his book is not obsolete? After twenty years f being the breakthrough birth of a new field, why are those ideas still not well known to the general public, when the buzzword they created seems to now mean something much less. Well it turns out Wired magazine has answered this question in a 2004 article on K. Eric Drexler entitled "The Incredible Shrinking Man". You can read the details in the article, but in short there's a great ideological divide in nanotech, and it looks like the "incrementalists" who focus on new nano-materials and so on won the research politics battles over Drexler who wants to build nano-machines.

Now I feel for Drexler in a different way. Not just as a fascinating guy who I should follow-up on but as a human story too. Could he be like Edwin Armstrong, who invented FM radio and many other great things, but lost all the crucial battles in his life? Or is it going to be a classic story of early brilliance, fall from grace, long struggle, and ultimate righteous triumph... Hmm I think that's classic but I can't think of any examples right now. Anyway here's a possible triumphant ending: nanobots win the prize for removing carbon from the atmosphere. Imagine a little machine made of a few atoms of X that uses solar power to move around and grab CO2 from the air, and then attaches the C to some part of itself, releases the O2, and then falls to earth as XC dust. It could even be called something cool, like photosynthesis.. haha. Who knows, if X is right, that XC might even be a source of fuel! So in the end, our hero stops global warming and saves the world! Good night kids.

Golgool -- Custom Ethiopian Search Engine

Golgool is my quick little exercise in creating a Google custom search engine. Check it out at www.semret.org/golgool.

For example, a search for [seeds export] on golgool yields more interesting results than a search for [ethiopian seeds export] on google.com.

Volunteers welcome! Send email to the address at the bottom of the Golgool pages and I'll send you an invitation to contribute (so you can add sites, search refinements, etc.)

How can carbon-offsets work?

What do Norway and the New Jersey Nets have in common? They are among the myriad entities declaring that they are or will be carbon neutral. That's is great but it reminds of one thing that has been bothering me for a while now. In a lot of these cases, they rely on "carbon offsets". And to me, well I have an issue with carbon-offsets -- they can't work. Here's a rant expanded from an email exchange I had back in November 2007.

First of it's not that I'm not green -- far from it, I even joined Greenpeace way back! Second, it's not that I don't believe in markets -- far from it! So now let's back up for a second and consider the common "green market mechanisms". As far as I know (which is not much but hey, who else is around?), there are four types of incentive-based mechanisms being suggested in the world with the goal of reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere due to human activity. Do they work? And what's wrong with carbon-offsets in particular?

My favorite is the carbon removal X-prize. A prize is a very efficient way of funding R&D. Basically you put up a $25M prize, and it might lead to 10 teams spending $24,999,999 each in parallel, and then one or more of them would actually solve it, while creating many useful partial solutions and spin-offs along the way! So from society's point of view, you get up to $249,999,999 worth of R&D using just $25M to stimulate it. But it's a long shot approach, excellent return, but high risk. Clearly, the world needs incremental approaches as well to balance our species-survival portfolio.

The popular incremental approach is cap & trade. That seems to work.. Sounds like the incentives are right on. Those who can figure out ways to reduce emissions get rewarded, and those who can't, pay for it. Both sides work incrementally thus, without any huge disruptions to society, we get gradual improvements. The only problem is that the cap levels are kind of arbitrary and could be changed by fickle and/or corrupt politics which might distort the incentives. Still given some consistency across time and space, the incentives should work as expected because both the reward and the penalty happen at more or less the same time.

If you really think about it, carbon tax is a simpler better version. It has the advantages of cap and trade with fewer costs, and it can work more widely since it wouldn't only apply to specific industries. The only downside is that its' tough to get people to support anything with the word "tax" in it. (So the difference in cost between "carbon tax" and "cap & trade" is simply the cost of weak leadership in democracy.

But really maybe there's a magic solution? One with no new taxes! Yay! No caps or limits! Yay! A win-win solution! Maybe... carbon offsets. Are they too good to be true? Yes. Here's the problem as I see it: If I want to build a carbon-belching factory or travel on a carbon-spewing jet plane, and then offset it by paying someone to plant a forest of trees, what will prevent the trees from being cut down in the future? When that tree will be cut down or die -- after 5 years or 20 years or 500 -- really changes the value of the offset and whether it truly cancels out my plane trip or my factory.

And here securing the tree is not just another implementation detail. It's a central, fundamental flaw of the market. Because the incentives are not there. If I'm the polluter and you're the off-setter, once I pay for the right to pollute, I will happily pollute and I don't care anymore about whether you truly keep the tree alive, I've already gotten the credit for it. You the seller can take my money and still cut the tree. This is not like normal uncertainty/risk about the value of a product or service. In a normal market, the buyer wants to get the stuff they bought, which is what keeps the seller from cheating. But in the carbon offset, the buyer has no incentive to care once they got the credit, and the seller, once they are paid for planting, has a huge incentive to just chop the tree and use the wood.

Of course people cheat in all markets. But enforcement, regulations etc. can only work if the vast majority of buyers and sellers have the basic incentives to make it work, and the law only has to deal with a small minority of cheaters. For example in stock markets or commodity markets, the buyers and sellers police each other because if one cheats the other loses. In the carbon-offset market, they can both cheat and not tell anyone. SO enforcement is going to be prohibitively expensive. Basically you have to set up a well-meaning intermediary like a fund that receives the money from the offset buyers and pays out the planters over the lifetime of the tree... That's a huge problem.

My guess is the offset market is of purely psychological value... It's very much like Catholic "indulgences" that you could buy from the church to cancel out your sins in exchange for some money. Clearly a very profitable scheme. If you're the church, it's just free money. It's better than free money: they give you money and they thank you and you increase your power over them! Which begs the question... Who is the church of carbon-offsets?

4-legged terminator

Researchers discover gene that blocks HIV

Isn't this kind of a big deal?

Researchers discover gene that blocks HIV.
Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus.
[...]
"We are currently trying to figure out why this gene does not work in people infected with HIV and if there is a way to turn this gene on in those individuals," he added. "We hope that our research will lead to the design of new drugs, or vaccines that can halt the person-to-person transmission of HIV and the spread of the virus in the body, thereby blocking the onset of AIDS."


I remember around ten years ago, researchers had found a way to prevent the HIV from attaching itself to and attacking white blood cells by making another organism that would go and attach itself to the same geometric spot (or something like that). That sounded really promising. I wonder whatever happened to that....