Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Talking about… ethics.

Holy Shit!

"I’m talkin’ about friendship.  I’m talkin’ about character.  I’m talkin’ about--hell, Leo, I ain’t embarrassed to use the word--I’m talkin’ about… ethics.”

Trivia: name that film!!

One further hint: “Take your flunky and dangle.”

I bring up ethics because it occurs to me that my main objection, such as it is, to the Great Leader Board of Terrorism is an ethical one.

That is, I don’t participate in dead pools, and find them distasteful. To be on, much less profit from, the date of someone’s death, dances on the line between macabre and cruel. So with the DARPA Terrorism Futures Market. The good part about the aforementioned list of nutty predictions cited by Ross at Spiral Dive is that, if they come true, a thousand flowers of democracy bloom, puppies roll in daisy patches, and nobody gets blowed up.

But in the DARPA process, anonymous speculators would bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups. Winners would win based upon the deaths of people. Period. Say more air attacks happen, and such an event has been on the Big Board. Some people would collect winnings from a government-sponsored program because they were “lucky” enough to bet on the date of the next 09/11/01. Policy considerations aside, that is positively grotesque, no matter how predictive such a futures market may be.

For that reason, I’m very glad that DARPA has cancelled the program. Their brand of heady, amoral weirdness is better left out of the light of day.

Please note that I do find the general idea appealing, and the potential is fascinating. I’m rather excited to see what Ross can put together in the way of a sample system using less macabre predictions. But the government should not be in the business of sponsoring dead pools. 


Posted by Johno on 07/30/03 at 12:52 PM
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