a few links

[spoonless]

Is the Efficient Market Hypothesis equivalent to P=NP? Bizarre (and probably wrong) but intriguing idea:
http://arxiv1.library.cornell.edu/abs/1002.2284

Nice visual representation of 2011 budget breakdown:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html

The Dalai Lama on Technological Change:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CgZ2qkRSpo

I have a ticket to see the Dalai Lama speak in person 2 months from now in Indiana. I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say. In the above link, he sounds a lot like a transhumanist when he says he thinks one day humans should be improved by becoming part machine and "that would be good". Out of context I can't tell what exactly he means by that. But it's an interesting comment.

Comments

[firmament.livejournal.com]

What do you think about the economists arguing that the global financial crisis falsifies the EMH (or, perhaps more broadly, strongly implies that it is wrong-headed).

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on which version of the Efficient Market Hypothesis you're talking about. This EMH <-> P=NP paper deals specifically with the weak EMH. And not everyone even agrees on what the right definition for weak, semi-strong, and strong version of it are.

I don't have strong opinions on the EMH, realizing that it is a complicated subject and I'm not an economist. However, I tend to lean towards agreeing with this essay, which indicates that some form of the weak EMH probably holds but stronger forms do not:


http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/01/02/refuted-economic-doctrines-1-the-efficient-markets-hypothesis/


According to this, it's the semi-strong version that will have to be rejected after the financial crisis (and may have been widely accepted before it). While the weak form still holds up to a lot of empirical data.

So the claim in this P=NP paper is far bolder, and upon reading it I find a lot of the reasoning seems skethcy... it's an interesting analogy, but I just don't think I buy the idea that you have to search the entire possible exponential pattern space in order to identify patterns. I think both people and computers have more efficient ways of pattern recognition, whereas the case he's thinking about is a worst-case scenario which would almost never be relevant in practice. At least that's my take on it; could be wrong.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

This book looks like it will be excellent:

http://zombiecon.wikidot.com/start

[firmament.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw some early chapters of this when he was posting it on Crooked Timber. In general, I wish I had a better grasp of econ.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

me too

I did several interviews with Goldman Sachs and other financial firms last year, which gave me a good excuse to learn about some of this stuff, like the Capital Asset Pricing Model. But there is still a lot of the picture missing that I don't understand. Then again, I get that impression that economics is just one of those subjects that still nobody really understands.