Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Maria Winslow <maria.winslow AT windows-linux.com>]

On Tuesday 29 July 2003 12:04 pm, Jason Laughlin wrote:

> Has nobody ever heard the term "deadpool" (http://www.stiffs.com/) or
> even "fucked company" (http://www.fuckedcompany.com)?
>
...
>
> Intel (the analysis of information, not the chipmaker) has always been
> an exercise in probability, not predetermination.  I believe it's
> already common wisdom that open markets and decentralized distributed
> groups will always be more successful than governments at picking
> winners and losers based on available information.  It's impossible for
> all the intel analysts in government to have their fingers on the pulse
> of every place in the world, so let the distributed political deadpool
> sort it out.

The difference here is that with f*d company there is actual intelligence 
that 
can organize itself into meaningful analysis. For example, several people at 
a company can witness various events that taken together point to a doomed 
company. So the small pieces of intelligence all add up to something useful. 

But the article (the one I read, at least) seemed to imply that the terrorism 
prediction market would be public. The number given was 10,000 participants 
by the end of the year. If it were to be public, the problem is that the 
public has almost zero intelligence on terrorism activities. So there's 
nothing that can be organized into a meaningful analysis. In this case, it 
can be nothing but a gambling vehicle with the potential side effect of mass 
hysteria. 

If this new "market" is intended for official government intelligence workers 
only, then why does it have a financial model? Isn't the collection and 
analysis of intelligence their job anyway, and so a non-financial distributed 
predictive organizational entity would be more appropriate?

>
> Since more information is almost always better, and you can't keep your
> ear to the ground everywhere, I'd say this is a wonderful tool to alert
> officials in targeted countries when to increase security and for how
> long.  It's simply too honest for our rose-colored world. :-)
>
> Jason
>

The usefulness of a freely traded market depends entirely on the type of 
information it is capable of collecting and analyzing. If this market were 
indeed public, it's true "market knowledge" would probably be what locations, 
people, and events that the public has the political will to protect. I doubt 
it would be useful for predicting terrorist attacks.

Maria