Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Caveat Emptor

Beware, essentially. A recent article in the ACM Communications, inadvertently, lays out the motivation behind Truth Engineering. We'll have to take advantage of that. Why?

It ought to become 'be aware' which is what is essential to life (sensors, feedbacks, etc.).
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The article is under controlled access; see Fedaerated's comment and the editorial review.

The article deals with why 'lemons' can be a problem with markets. Now, why are markets important? Essentially, with the newer age's progress (supposed -- to be discussed), the wisdom of crowds, and markets, are how we know the truth?

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Is that not silly? To carry it further, the article, by Princeton people, was serious in describing how we cannot know many things. Such as the future. Well, risk handling looks at that. Or, such as, whether your buddy is trustworthy. Here, folks, the military paradigm has the advantage. And, it's related to group dynamics, partly. We ought to run some of the banking, similarly, under a bare bones (truthful) mechanism, thereby removing fat cats, et al.

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Now, to the matter, we'll get back to lemons. We all hope that we're not dealing with such, but how do we know? Usually, family is a fall-back thing but not always. The military carries that forward, with the band of brothers. We can talk about all sorts of ways that humans have dealt with hypocrisy and deceit.

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But, then come mathematics, which is the realm, usually, of the egg-heads, and its companion, computation. Early reactions, by the public, was that the computer knows all (hence, one of the attractions of Watson), even though there was the adage of garbage-in, garbage-out. You see, GIGO still assumed that 'logic' was right. See? Yet, we know chips fail, etc.

Ever think that the mathematics, itself, can be suspect? Evidently, Hawking does not, from what I can see. But, we'll save that for another time.

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The referenced article laid out a rationale for describing how a buyer could be duped even with transparency and rational decisions. How? Complexity, in certain cases, prevents determining sleight of hand on the part of the seller.

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Consider, folks, that this could even be unconscious on the part of the seller, though, in most cases, it's just the human trait to try 'to screw' someone.

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These are computationally hard problems, but intuition can help. That is, the very thing that was thrown out by the egg-head mathematicians is the essential thing needed for truth assessment. Yes, indeed. Somehow, we've all been led to honor, worship, a particular brand of mathematics, probably due to its success in conquering the world. At the same time, has not the mess (oops on oops) grown to be worse?

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Not proposing easy answers, as these are difficult issues. However, a new type of elitism has emerged with the mathematic/computation-ally expressed worlds (first, second, cyber, ...) that can be chilling to observe and downright ominous in its possible consequences. Some have ranted about this.

Unfortunately, the whole mechanism of out-housing (doing in the doers) is based upon this paradigm that exploits and spits out. Yet, as demonstrated by those who have ascended, there are heights to attain; however, and I say again, however, it will, in the end, turn out to be within the egalitarian scope loved so much by some of the boomers, in their youth.

And, crucial to the theme will be those things for which truth engineering was meant to offer a means for knowing, controlling, and ensuring sustainability across the board.

Remarks:

10/19/2013 -- Changes are pending.

09/21/2011 -- On Wealth and the CEO MVP.

05/28/2011 -- We'll see 'avatars' galore.

Modified: 10/19/2013

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