Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Lets You Bid on Terrorism?
Elysdir writes "DARPA is creating an idea futures market, the Policy Analysis Market, to try to predict events in the Middle East. See Bloomberg article for more info." Read this article. I mean it. This is amazing.
Update: 07/29 14:45 GMT by J : The
NYT story
claims "The White House also altered the Web site so that the potential events ... that were visible earlier in the day ... could no longer be seen," but those example images are still being served:
Jordanian overthrow,
bidding on assassinations,
cool graphics... Update: 07/29 16:44 GMT by M : Looks like the publicity was too much.
Omigod! Predictive tool, my ass! How desperate have we gotten to keep our economies stable in times of despair? A way to instantly give people an economic boost when tragedy strikes? I thought the balanced budget was a lot to be sacrificing for a stable economy, with these refund checks, but now, we're staking our relations with the world? Like the article points out, ``How would you feel if you were the king of Jordan and learned that the U.S. Department of Defense was creating a futures market in whether you're going to be overthrown." I really, really hope this is a joke...
perhaps the /. paranoia bug has rubbed off me a bit too much, but what are the chances that your "bets" could be used against you in the war on terrorism?
you hit three or four correct terrorist acts and the next thing you know you're in an orange jumpsuit overlooking guantanamo bay.
Mike
This seems like a sleazier version of a 'dead pool'....
Would this have happened 30 years ago? I doubt it.
--
Please place all american-bashing statments under this comment. Thank You.
There are no commodities being purchased, and unlike the stock market there is (hopefully) no relation between the actions these countries are going to take and the investors "investing" in the liklihood of them occuring. However, right there is a huge flaw. It seems like a $1,000,000 investment in terrorists bombing isreal could potentially be a good enough reason for someone to bomb isreal.
Visualize the world of wine
I can't wait for a few middle east specialists to start skewing data to make their bets pay off.
"Woot! Car Bomb in Riyadh! That pays 100-1, guess I shouldn't have sat on that report about Saudi terrorists."
If al-quieda sign up will they get taken to court for insider trading?
Working for the (other) man
The idea of this ludicrous project, the fact that the pentagon is this desperate, or that horrible graphic on the front page.
saddamite> I'll see your 30,000$ Bush Contribution and raise you 2 Towers!!!
And you thought that the "short the dying guy" strategy on Hollywood Stock Exchange was a slightly sick game to play.
So this is what they mean when they talk about a "peace dividend". I never realised it was quite so literal.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Look at how unpredictably the stock markets behave already. When was the last time a major drop or surge in the NYSE or NASDAQ was accurately predicted by the majority of investors?
At best this kind of analysis helps you see trends over a long time period, but I don't see how that can help the pentagon except when they ask for more funding (See! Carbombings will increase by 50% over the next 5 years! Please give us money).
I just read this on the BBC. I guess they will automatically arrest the people who get the best predictions as the perpetrators!
Omnis amans amens
They're just looking to nab the people that post "There will be a Jihad and DEATH TO AMERICANS!!!".
The guy who made funny voices in Full-House will be hosting the reality tv show based on this.
Ny Times article (free reg, stop whining) says it's not just for the Middle East. In any event, while I support innovative ways of fighting terrorism (as opposed to wiretapping everyone and giving the president imperium, etc) the idea of making money off of death is exceptionally disturbing.
Says this is another idea from Admiral John Poindexter of, most recently, Total Information Awareness fame. Sounds like he might be a sick sick man.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Remember Jim Bell? Posted comments to the effect of setting up a system where you can bet on who will be assassinated. He got into deep trouble with the courts who tried to censor any mention of it. Here is some more information.
I think this is all a plot to make sure that the forthcoming film "Trading Places II" is a big box-office draw due to inclusion of lots of explosions, related to this new film being about bidding on military incident futures.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Capitalism is a disease that has made America very very sick.
The reason players and coaches can't bet on sports is because they're in a position to manipulate the system for their benefit. Since every person on earth is capable of such terrible deeds, why should anyone be allowed to wager on them? Doesn't this just promote the things they're (supposedly) trying to prevent? Or is it just capitalizing on an already existing market? (I forget the URL but there is already a site that allows betting on world events - it peaked during the Iraq conflict.)
Rock!
I wonder if everyone simply voted that someone would be assasinated, if some crazy man would say he was obliged to kill him?
I think it could get interesting...
``How would you feel if you were the king of Jordan and learned that the U.S. Department of Defense was creating a futures market in whether you're going to be overthrown,'' said Dorgan, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
I for one applaud this idea. Recent events have shown us that conventional intelligence agencies are out of their depth in the modern world; the CIA utterly failed on September 11th. When lives are at stake, bold thinking is needed. USD 3M is a tiny price to pay if the system enhances the military's ability to anticipate threats to American civilians.
Remember that the Pentagon will already be planning for the eventuality that the King of Jordan is overthrown; that's what militaries do when they're not actually fighting, they make plans. The only difference is that now the military is inviting opinions from third parties, some of whom may well have a better idea of what's going on.
Finally ... a combination of defense and capitalism. I personally think this is a great idea, and want to see more exploration in our country of exotic/non-conventional financial instruments used in very creative ways.
...
What they are doing here is taking the futures markets and orienting them around terrorism. Great idea! Anyone who remembers the mysterious short selling on airline stocks before 9/11 knows that some strange trades always occur in the name of greed.
Many people who respond to this article are going to say "well that's dumb, how can investors predict this stuff?" - they are missing the point. The point here is to allow all sorts of stupid trades, but to notice the weird ones - the ones which eerily mirror intelligence information. If DoD manages to pull off a half-decent TIA system, then this is a very useful component.
It's great that such ideas are being pursued by the government, rather than idle chatter among economists and academics. Somewhat of a shame that all of the ignorant/stupid people out there will shout loudly enough to get this thing shut down, though
Not to be a troll or anything, but I posted this story as soon as it appeared on fuckedcompany.com and it was rejected. Anyone know whats going on with the mods? Or was I just to slow...
Reminds me of the old joke about two efficient-market economists walking down the street. Economist one: "Look - there's a $50 bill on the sidewalk" Economist two: "Don't be stupid, if it was somebody would have picked it up already" I reckon that's about the predictive power of this initiative.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Visit Long Bets if you want to read about and place money on more interesting wagers. And you don't have to worry about Big Brother looking over your shoulder!
It is not April First, is it?
This dogmatic idea that the market is the best model for almost anything in western society is creeping into subjects where the economics laws don't apply. The other side of this is would it be insider trading violation to bet a few mil that Jordan would be overthrown and then spend a few mil backing Jordanian rebels to overthrow Jordan increasing your turn. Capitalism is good, free markets are good, but for a market in statistical data to work the participants need to be involved in the creation of the data have complete intelligence on what they are betting or trading on and have some control of their goods. The subject matters broached do not seem to give them a full free market and not being a fully free market the data will be flawed.
It is not April the first or have I slept through atumn and winter this is just crazy.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
by John Brunner, in "The Shockwave Rider", based heavily in Alvin Tofler's "Future Shock".
The principle is called Delphi Polling. It is based on the observed fact that the aggregate answers of a large number of people sufficiently knowlegeable to understand a question seem, empirically, to be more accurate than the anwers of any one expert. Even though the answers of any one non-expert may be wildly out, the errors cancel out to a good approximation of the correct answer. Futurologists have been using it for a while to predict trends, and it works better than tea leaves, crystal balls and just plain "informed opinion" i.e. guesses. The USN even tried it with flying a plane, and it worked there too.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
"Read this article. I mean it. This is amazing."
I had a spam that started that way once... You don't have a secret job as a 'bulk mailing marketer' by nighttime do you?! *peers closely*
Where they asked Hollywood for advice.
Those idiots think Sean Penn can play a cop, for Christ's sake.
Idiots.
The opposite of progress is congress
The market is astute, but not that astute.
Bash script for FP whores
Investment is less about commodities and more about managed risk. The thing that makes gambling stupid is that there is no management of risk on the part of the gambler: the house always takes in more money than it puts out, so in the long run you are guaranteed to lose. However, if you're clever with your investments (and futures), you can balance the probabilities so that you are guaranteed to make money. There's all kinds of mathematical theory on this subject.
As for the self-fulfilling prophecy, that is a problem. However, nobody is going to offer a million-dollar future on terrorists bombing Israel, since it happens so frequently.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Isn't this like the idea proposed by J. Brunner in The Shockwave Rider - some kind of oracle by the people ?
M.
P.S. Read the book - it is great.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Darpa is also researching the possiblity of retro fitting Camels with TOW Missile lauchers.
If you're a trader, what about paying someone to kill the king of Jordan to cash in on your bets? If the economic incentive is there, what's to prevent someone from doing it?
Or actually a bit more like Jim Bell's Assassination Politics, which is a scheme that allows murder for hire under the pretext of a lottery.
Holy Crap.
That's disgusting.
And, on a lighter note: Think of the money you can make taking exotic vacations and causing havok! Insider trading laws be damned, this could be a wonderfully abusable system.
God, I hope this is a joke.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
This is the most debased thing i have ever heard. For shame.
The 2004 elections could not come quick enough.
Whats the non-US slashdotter's take on this kind of crap? curious...
Our government is basically doing a large scale dead-pool of sorts, classy!
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
The man is clearly insane. Who is his graphic artist, by the way?
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Ok, our stock markets are filled with lies, greed, and wild speculation. Let's fix that before we apply the same model to something that could take us to war!
"The new approach is to set up, as it were, a `market' in two kinds of futures contracts -- one pays $1 if an attack takes place; the other pays $1 if there is no attack, DARPA said."
I mean, holy shit dude! Rich guys putting bets on whether we'll go to war, then working behind the scenes to make sure it happens, so they get some profit! Christ, every day, I don't understand why I still live here.
$8.95/mo web hosting
if new peace talks
prob(suicide attack within next day) = 1
prob(israel killing 1 hamas leader + 20 civilians within next two day) = 1
end peace talks
It's going on and on and on.. You just HAVE to reckon those people's stuborness!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
The reason why this is sick is because next time you read that some coward terrorist decided to blow himself up on a Tel Aviv bus, killing him/herself and 15 schoolchildren, a gambler somewhere will go make himself a cool $50 because he "bet" on this.
It is indeed a sick world when the response to a suicide bombing is "YES!"
by John Brunner mentioned something like this. The hero made huge amounts of money playing the 'market' because the government manipulated it to give the citizens the impression that things where the way the gov wanted them to be. If you haven't read it do so.
The idea behind how it's supposed to work is if you ask a buch of people a question about the past or present who do not know the answer the answers they give will none the less average out close to the truth and so supposedly it works going forward as well. I have no idea whether the first part of the proposition is true, nevermind the second part.
On the other hand 3 million dollars? This much entertainment for the price of a few hammers and toilet seats has to be worth it.
which features a few links to the online press.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
You's a stumpin' ass munfapucka
Easy money:
Bets:
Palistinian shot
House Bulldozed.
Israeli bus blew up.
Palistinian shot
House Bulldozed
Lets exploit cycles of violence for fun and profit!
They want the same people who made the dot com bubble decide what happens in the middle-east?
Just tell them about Wi-Fi startups in the middle east and they'll throw money at it...
But, really there seems to be nothing people are not prepared to gamble on these days. I watched a program recently about a company the other day who took bets on whether the stock market would go up or down, same with the housing index in the UK. Despite the disclaimers this sort of gambling is tailored to those with high level insider knowledge.
I want you all to know though then you may feel free to 'invest' as much as you want on a middle eastern state declaring me to be a messianic figure and bringing peace to the region as the first step of my journey to world domination
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Isn't that a little like Greenspan running a pool betting on when and by how much the interest rates will change?
This idea is a total ripoff of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. I even heard the CNN report cite "predicting box office" as a similar model.
The stupidest part of this is not the idea itself (though the idea is pretty stupid). It's that the government is trying to do it themselves instead of floating the idea for a dotcom. Heck, my guess is after this press conference, a couple of undergrads get a working version up in two months and for free!
It would be great to rig this thing somehow so I'm the predicted supreme overlord of the Earth by the year 2010.
The campaign buttons will read:
Bet for me in 2010.
Upon becoming the supreme ruler of the Earth, I promise to give out much land to all who bet for me.
Who wants control over a former country?
Bueller? Bueller?
there is a similar idea already running online:
http://www.tradesports.com
you can buy/sell futures for most current events- for example, you can buy saddam futures based on when/if you think saddam will be captured, or you can bet on what kobe bryant will be charged with. this is a real site where you can make lose money- crazy stuff.
This is an interesting idea, and it should stay that way.
I'd be afraid that if I were to bet on a longshot terrorist strike and it paid off for me, that the FBI might come knocking on my door (with a battering ram).
This creates an incentive for terrorism by insane individuals.
Remember the case where someone tried to manipulate the stock market by putting cyanide in Tylenol?
I might not have the facts exactly right, but the idea is the same. The potential exists for someone to use this to make money, by finding a way to encourage the terrorist acts to come true.
This is Futures trading. And just like most other non-equity based trading (Bonds, Convertibles, Options) you are simply buying a contract or some sort, not the actual equity (stock), so yes, this is an "investment" but then again, the entire market is gambling really, isn't it?
But of course the implications of something like this are just insane. Because someone put 1MM into a WMD going off in Isreal doesn't mean someone is going to do it. Someone will invest 1MM into this because they are going to do it themselves in the future. Market manipulation. Just like they did pre-9/11.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Holy shit, is Philip K Dick writing American foreign policy form the grave? A paranoid guy is set up in an artificial 1950's town and fed hallucinogens while trying to solve crossword puzzles that are actually complex tables used to predict future actions of foreign governments?
Rumsfeld: How is it going?
Expert: Not very good.
Rumsfeld: What do you mean, "not very good"??
Expert: Well... The market experts all seem to think attacking Iran is a bad idea, that staying in Iraq is a bad idea, and the probability that G.W. Bush will lose the 2004 election has reached 94.7%
Rumsfeld: All Right! They have told us exactly what the surrender cheese-eqting monkeys don't want us to do! Therefore, let's do it!! Iran, here we come -- let's blast some mullah back to Kingdom come!
Expert: But uh, sir...
Rumsfeld: Great work, Johnson! Keep an eye on those Frenchies and Arabs for us, and you'll get that nice little raise we talked about! Ah, who needs the CIA when you can have contrarian web sites to point the way at the best interests of the USA?!
[Donald Rumsfeld leaves the room with his entourage]
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
So will people who do too well be brought in for questioning?
when did real become a verb? (i know, no one is more boring than a grammar cop)
The Iowa Electronic Markets operated by the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business has been n operaton since 1988. It has offered real-money futures contracts for U.S. and other political markets including"Control of Congress" as well as the Democratic & Republican Presidential nominee and the popular vote share, Senate seats, Russian and French Presidential contests, etc.
Speculation can be strictly distinguished from gambling.
The speculator makes a bet on the outcome of a risky event which would exist in the absence of speculators, such as bad weather and natural disasters.
The gambler, finding nothing satisfactory for betting, sets up a slotted wheel, makes six-sided dice, designs cards which are identical from the back but different from the front, and then bets on what happens when these devices are randomized.
Speculation shifts existing risk. Gambling adds to the universal total of risk.
The Pentagon site is speculative.
Nobody could take this idea seriously...
Did they ever trace the origin of the suspicious option trades on airline stocks before september 11 ?
I could use my tranquilizer now please.
So if the US rewards someone for saying they will kill a Middle Eastern leader and then going through with it, it's intelligence gathering...yet if someone in North Korea made the same system for killing a US leader, it would be seen as rewarding terrorists.
I think I woke up in Bizzaroland this morning.
The plan is a bloody brilliant way to get free analists working for the CIA, NSA, DIA, etc. The analists try and make it rich like on the stock market, and in turn the government gets a probably very reliable meter on the current state of affairs over there.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
You really have to start wondering just how incredibly incompetent military intelligence must be if they think that financial analysts of all people are better at predicting political events!
I mean, jesus christ, we're talking about farking market analysts here! What is their problem? Couldn't find a good astrologer? Out of tea-leaves?
There was a similar idea presented by a civilian American -- and mentioned on slashdot -- not too long ago.
The idea was for an assasination betting scheme. Folks could anonymously fund payoffs for currently living people. 'Gamblers' would pay some reasonably large fee to bet that a particular person would die in, say, a 24 hour period. If the person did die, than the gambler would take all payoffs that had been anonymously funded.
Of course, the only way that the odds would be in the gamblers favor is if the gambler knew the person had some abnormaly high chances of dying -- like, say, the gambler knew he was going to assasinate the person.
I wasn't able to find a mirror of the proposal, which had worked out all of the details (preserving anonyminity, payouts, etc.).
To put it in context, let's say I wanted President Joe Smith of Fooland dead. I could contribute $100 to the fund. If lots of others also wanted him dead, the payout could reach millions of dollars... enough for a 'gambler' (aka hitman) to pay $25,000 to bet that Joe Smith would die on January 32, 2006. If the hitman pulls the job off, he gets the payout. Why would I pay $100? How many Americans would put up $100 for Saddam's head? I'd bet many.
Of course, this wasn't limited to world leaders. Corporate types, athletes, religious leaders -- anybody.
Can anybody find a link to the proposal?
* Obviously, I've made up people, places, and dates to preserve the idea that this is an example, not real.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I realize that the datapoint they are looking for isn't even the greed-induced transactions, as traders will probably be smart enough to realize the thing was created by DARPA (and thus any weird transactions can get you thrown in jail). In addition, you have to sign up through these guys, which would immediately eliminate any strange characters.
This means that there is a datapoint in this system which they find useful for plugging into the TIA system. And it isn't the weird trades, or the mass logic. There is another datapoint. Volume? Probability based on oversold/undersold futures contracts? Something really boring. To the general public, it isn't as sexy as assassination politics; to the guys at DARPA, it is gold.
The $6.4 Trillion Dollar Question: What IS it?
This is a way for the government to tap the expertise of people who do analysis of the middle east and other areas of the world. It is essentially opening the field to experts who, while they might not have insider information, might have a good "gut instinct" for what's going on.
The Pentagon believes that knowing the probabilities that these people assign to different events will help them predict the likelyhood of those events (if I am reading this correctly)--there is something to be said for that.
As another poster pointed out, this is a kind of gambling. What the Pentagon is interested in, however, is not making money off of it: they want to know the probabilities that people are going to assign.
Will it be useful? Who knows. It has the potential to be and they think it is worth the cost of running such a service, I say let them. I'll be as interested in anyone in seeing how closely these predictions matrch reality.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I can see it now.. anyone who gets the right dates for too many things related to a common idea (good accuracy predicting terrorist attacks for example) and they send someone over to your house to "talk"..
I predict that Saddam will not be taken alive because the Jew States of America doesn't want him captured alive.
I would be willing to bet this is another form of intelligence for the gov.
They will be an indicator when something is about to happen. Somebody, somewhere will know something and make money off of it, thus tipping off the goverment.
Madness!
With media consolidation and trading of event outcomes what will happen to CNN and Fox News prospects for financial growth via "market manipulation". What would an "Enron event" look like with this system in place? I like a good analogy (just look at my handle) but this one better stay inside the Pentagon with the cast of Dr Strangelove.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
is it a hoax well the admin contact to the domain is not@available.org .... available.org is registered to a guy in ireland.... you mean its just cheap publicity for a dodgy betting idea.... surely not!
"Best Defense" sucked balls.
f*ckedcompany.com is out, f*ckedcountry.com is in? (And this might not be moral, and it might be a ridiculous idea for a government-funded project, but someone, somewhere, will start a free one for the amusement of themselves and their friends.)
It wasn't me, it was the one-armed
the heads of state refering to a trusted advisor, who reads the chicken entrails?
It worked for centuries and this is clearly a technological development of that, so I'm sure it will work nearly as well.
KFG
The news here is that the DoD things this will provide useful intelligence. My boss's old company, TradeSports, has been providing a trading environment for this kind of stuff for years. You can get a futures contract on _anything_.
--
lds
This is actually a pretty good idea which is never going to work.
Gamblers are usually better predictors of future events (remember the last couple US Presidential elections where sites were set up to allow gambling on the outcome?). They have a risk in the outcome and therefore are better educated about the issues and events.
After saying that, this will never work because the idea is so outlandish and the public opinion will cush it. Nice to see some innovative thinking, though.
"The Pentagon requested $3 million for the project in its fiscal 2004 budget. The Senate said no; the House said yes."
So, does anyone have a link to the bill or appropriation number, as well as who in the House voted for this sick, debased bill?
Also, this looks like a money sink. I mean, there are too many ways to "win" bets...the "house" surely will be paying out a lot of easy money (on the Palestinian/Israel situation, for example) to the point where the bookie/government would almost have to go broke. Then what? More taxpayer funding to pay off the "winners"?
What a great way to fund future terrorism! All you have to do is load your bets on a target, then go blow it up! Talk about your self-fulfilling prophesies!
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
From the BBC article: This is under the control of retired Admiral John Poindexter who has been involved in another controversy recently in a plan for a sweeping electronic intelligence operation. So if you thought you smelled a rat, or just fruits and nuts, this is probably why!
This could put Ashcroft in a pickle.
People who participate actually stand to make money, it isn't just a "fantasy" game for international affairs experts. So if this is allowed, why can't I gamble with a sports book on the internet? The DOJ has been cracking down on this in the last few years.
We shouldn't be surprised by the hypocrisy, though, governments have allowed all kinds of gambling that benefit them ( lotteries, regulated casinos ) while at the same time banning gambling outlets they have no control over.
You're free to talk, if you don't mind a visit from the pigs. I Think you need to rework the definition of freedom.
tradesports.com has had a section for trading political events for some time now.
The events they have listed now are not as untasteful as DARPA's creation, but they did have quite a selection during and before the war with Iraq.
Hell, you can trade weather too...
Seems to me that there's a perfect opportunity here for some insider trading. Say a terrorist organization comes up with a dummy corporation that can play the Pentagon's Policy Analysis Market.
They can then base bets based on their own activities. Obviously they'd have to keep a low profile, and couldn't be too good, but 'better than average' could still be a moneymaker.
Imagine the Pentagon having to add the Policy Analysis Market to the list of Terrorist Organization because they funded some.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
why ask congress for $3,000,000 to create a special website to predict the future, ./ poll and know everything!
when they could just use read the
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Nice quote - I'll borrow that. The funny thing is that the yanks wonder why the muslims hate them when they support the Isreali occupation of Palestine through billions of dollars in military aid every year.
Will there be odds books and publications?
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
They ought to try this with North Korea, since the Bush administration apparently has no idea what to do about that problem.
filed for a patent on the buissnes method "commit terrorist acts and be paid by the bookmaker"?
Otherwise I will do it.
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
I am now offically embarassed by the actions of my country.
I wasn't totally behind Gulf War II as my opinion is that if it's UN sanctions, then it needs to be a UN call. OTOH, I am totally willing to acknowledge that there is probably a lot about this I don't know and, therefore, chose to try and keep an open mind.
This however, is basically a country-wide "office-pool" on tragedy. At absolute best, its a ham-handed attempt at data-mining the population and even that is ethically "iffy" in my opinion.
Have we really sunk that low? Damn, I can't even watch prime time TV anymore because lately its all "reality game shows" where people are encouraged to screw each other over for fun and profit. This move by DARPA makes all that look like episodes of "Father Knows Best".
Sorry for the rant, it's just my initial reaction to this article. Maybe there is something about this I'm not understanding....I sure the hell hope so.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Right now, everyone and their dog is spouting off about what will or will not happen. So a lot of general information, facts and basic analysis is flowing fairly freely. A lot of otherwise good analyst who do not happen to have personal access to basic facts/history/information can get it by searching or reading forums. When analysis becomes valuable enough to merit money, then that "free" information will dry up. Noone will want to give other people any advantage. The end result is a decrease in the flow if general information.
This same problem was described before when the idea of Bounties for Spammers was introduced. It was suggested that Anti-spammer info would suddenly dry up because anti-spamers would hoard it in search of their own prize rather than share.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Oh, the humanity!
Here's DARPA's FutureMAP website which explains a little more about the idea than the article did. Note that this is a follow-up to a previous, similar program.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Maybe someone at the Pentagon is trying to learn from this? Remember, greed makes people do stupid things. If some low-level operative knew of an impending attack, s/he might be tempted to make a quick buck on this "futures market".
Theoretically, it seems like an interesting idea (aside from the various moral/political aspects).
The question is: why the Pentagon? Couldn't they have just used a shell company to do this, and accessed the realtime data?
As I recall, Al-qaida made quite a bit of cash from investing in insurance companies prior to 9-11. Maybe they are trying to trap terrorists with their own greed.
Tactics aside though - it's pretty sick. Nothing surprises me anymore though.
Check out artificialmarkets.com for some published research on using markets to make predictions. One concrete system, The Foresight Exchange lets you play this game with the possibility of scientific discoveries -- and claims that its futures values roughly correlate with the probability of the events happening. Of course, this is not for real money, but it's an interesting idea.
Forgive me if this has been posted. I'm catching this discussion at the end of its cycle.
What's to stop a large terrorist group (or even a national government) from using this "market" to make money? Let's use a simple example. North Korea has some of its people register on the board, and they place wagers that North Korea will indeed attack Country X with a nuke. A couple weeks later, North Korea attacks with a nuke. Result--people win big, and it goes into the government coffers. Or a bunch of Palestinian sympathizers in the US wager that Sharon will be assasinated, and when he is killed they funnel their winnings right back to the hands of the terrorists.
The article is short on details as to how the Pentagon plans on stopping this, but it's really quite worrisome.
You just nailed one of a major benefits of this system.
.
At the very least, this system would provide statisticians with a massive, currently relevant pool of opinions on the likelihood of any particular kind of terrorist attack occurring. The statisticians may not find anything, but honestly, for the price of running a single secure website, they're gathering an insane amount of valuable data.
That's at the very least. If it does just what it is intended to, and no more. At best . .
At best, it is a honeypot. If something major is in the works, like 9/11, what are the odds that someone, somewhere along the line wouldn't have placed some serious bets? Maybe not the terrorist himself, but what about his family? The people he stayed with in the US? Not everyone involved is going to be a Q'ran-thumping martyr. This scheme plays the self-interest of individual terrorists against the greater secrecy of terrorist proceedings, and it has the potential to be extremely revealing in that respect, simply as a massive, relatively cheap method of adding to ordinary intelligence information.
I mean, honestly, I know it sucks that they might tap your phone because of a $1,000 bet, but if you were just some guy exercising free speech, and proclaimed to the world that you would bet anyone $1,000 that there would be a major biological attack in Israel within the next week, and it got bandied about in a newspaper, your phone would be fuckin' tapped. Nothing happens, they intrude your life a little, and realize you're a crank or a nut or just a weirdo, and they leave you alone. It sucks, but at least this is something you can avoid and expect -- I mean, you do know who is running this thing, right?
We (the people) do not have intelligence agencies that can spy on anyone/anything in the world.
They might lie often, but they also know alot.
# Don't complain about lack of options. We're running out of countries. Those are the breaks.
# Feel free to suggest coup ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past history first.
# This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic campaign managers, firebombs. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
This is a Very interesting Idea. I can see a different of number of factors here some positive some definatly not.
In the positives, it applies the basic principles of capitalism bad+bad=good (greed + competition = availability/variety/low cost) to information gathering, allowing the "unseen hand" to operate in the realm of predictive politics - greed + competition = More accurate picture of reality. This would engage many who would otherwise not be contributing to the process either due to politics, lack of incentive (profit), or not being asked normally. Break the bunker mentality of espionage agencies. Also might be a great way to promote wealth creation for folks who's chances are slim right now (junior proffessor, grad students, ect focusing on a worthwile but unprofitable area of study). Might also be an very good and impartial judge of the court of popular opinion. Might even lessen the affect of assorted lobbies.
On the Negative side...
Depending on how high the entrance bar is, it might be a way for certain administrations to know which way their corporate masters want them to go, or a "rule of the survey" sort of "dark democracy" where government can be guided by raw numbers unallowed by ethics or morals, a state raw capitalism can go down (sweatshops, slave labor, FUD, monopolies ect.)
The other scary aspect is that even with all the safeguards and oversights already in place we constantly have companies and individuals conspiring to manipulate the economic markets and this is "just" money. What happens when economics and world politics are even more closely linked? (some theorys of history will tell you there is no difference already, but this makes it pretty overt.) Gives a whole new meaning to "they made a killing in the market."
The part about betting vs investing I could care less about. That is presuming there is something inherently wrong in gambling. That aspect is of no consequence compared to the results (positive or negative) Your local bookie is probably one of the best statiticians in your town, never mind the ones in Vegas, NSA or organized crime.
Overall while the predictive aspect is very intriguing, the possibility of it becoming directive of world politics for those who can afford to sway the market (via whatever means) may tip the balance towards menacing.
The chorus from the killer track "Domination" on the album "Uncivilization" by Brooklyn's finest hardcore act:
--
Forgotten fathers and long lost brothers
Who fought for freedom
Through piles of lies
It was for our rights
Our ancestors died
War brings profit
And profit breeds greed
For those who died in vain Godspeed
And to those who re-write the constitution
Fuck off and die motherfuckers
It's our revolution!
--
The whole album speaks volumes about our times.
Get it, open the windows, crank up the volume and blow up your neighbourhood.
Down for Life and peace out motherfuckers.
This DARPA action simply confirms the continuing fallacy that those unseen equilibrium forces which determine market prices are somehow magical, and said magic can be usefully transferred into other realms that naturally inhibit predictive behaviour. My opinion is that its laughable and too far into the crap realm to be useful for anything other than employing Pentagon analysts. Instituionalized soothsaying.
For this exact idea in a recent scifi book, check out:
Earthweb
Author: Marc Stiegler
ISBN 0-671-57809
Instead of the middle east, you have a giant deadly Bezerker-type critter... but the concept is the same.
It's not unlike Slashdot moderation.
Consequences ensue.
The "R" in DARPA is for Research.
From the article: "They have this notion about the predictive capabilities of intelligence,'' he said. ``We think it's absurd; we think when you look at what happened in 9/11. You ought to go on the basis of real evidence from the real world. They have these ideas about markets and predictive capabilities which are more of fantasy land"
It may be fantasy land but DARPA is supposed to research ADVANCED defense related topics. I think this is a good idea and worth investigating. It doesn't mean it should be deployed.
I just looked at my calendar and was suprised it wasn't april fools day. Whats going on? Some sort of hoax?
Victory is gained, not in knowing your opponents next move, but in preempting them.
I haven't seen such unbridled enthusiasm for markets like this since... well... the dotcom bubble.
The pain!
What?
Read The Tylenol Murders, and go down to motive. In fact a google search turns up nothing close to your assertion and all articles say that the cases in both 1982 and 1986 are unsolved.
Please site your evidence.
It's their logo. Set in Microgramma/Eurostyle, it is just not serious enough to look like a cheesy movie organization à la Men In Black. But this is real life! That's what's scary!!!
Treat the rest of the world with respect and terrorism will disappear.
Simple? Yes. Terribly simple. Annoyingly simple.
But true.
The principle is also demonstrated in pari-mutuel betting at the race track too.
The crowd bets on favorite jockeys, rumours, lucky numbers, advance info, Racing Form, etc. All this gets throw into the pari-mutuel wash and in _every_ racetrack in NorthAm the crowd picks winners at a 30% rate.
This is better performance that any individual handicapper can achieve, no matter how expert...
How ridiculous is this? Study after study shows that so called "stock pickers" never do any better than random chance on the stock market. Do you think this is going to be any better? Do you think anyone is capable of making predictions better than chance in this situation? I think not. What amazes me the most is that even though what DARPA is doing flies directly in the face of all the research, they are still investing money in this project rather than spending it in developing statistical models and regression equations which have been shown (by research) over and over again to have more predictive power than humans.
This has to be a hoax; checked out the server info for policyanalysismarket.org and it lists iPowerWeb as the netblock owner. They host an interesting list of sites: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/hosted?netname=ATTEN S-008161-001625,12.129.224.0,12.129.224.255
:)
Especially suspicious is http://www.ducttapeandbalingwire.com/
Flame me if you want. But isn't it strange that the US was decrying the Iraqies "inhuman actions" for "bringing out our dead" to show on TV, and then hauling out the dead sons of the enemy.
Remember after Sept. 11th there were reports that the terrorist probably made money betting against the airline industry, and how aweful that was of them (it really was disgusting, don't get me wrong), and now the Pentagon is acting even worse.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
Aren't you just so glad that Poindexter is in charge of the department that comes up with such useful ideas?
LE
Actually I would like to see a checkbox on a 1040 form (just as there is one for presidential election campaign funds) for Terrorism funding.
I would like to see voting for tax dollars spent anyway. This would tell how truly popular/provisional government programs are:
Give a multiple choice at the end of each state and federal 1040:
I would like my first 10% of taxes paid to go towards the ________ fund
I would like my second 10% to go towards the _________ fund
and so on.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This could work as an anonymous bounty pool.
Think about it, you're a terrorist or just someone who's heard about some terrorist act. Sure, you could walk to the closest US embassy and tell the CIA representative what you know. But this option has many drawbacks. You don't know how the CIA guy will reward you; and if someone sees you entering the US embassy, you're history.
Now with this system, you just connect to the net, bet $100 on "suicide bomber blows Knesset" (for instance); and anonymously reap your 10 or 100 thousands.
But since the purpose of this program is to prevent terrorist attacks, they have an issue here. What happens if your bet on "suicide bomber blows Knesset" warns Israeli security and enables them to prevent the attack? Do you still win? If so, what defines the ocurrence of the attack that you predicted? Who decides? If not, the system won't work since betting on some event will reduce its probability.
But the main issue is anonimity. You need to be sure that you can place your bets and collect your cash anonymously. Nobody wants his house to be targeted by a tomahawk missile. And who will trust the Pentagon's terms and conditions?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
FYI, the BBC has a story on this as well, which can be found here.
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Pentagon lets terrorism bid on YOU!!!
We like you. We really do. And we realise it's not your fault you have a government that is more insane than a whole barrow-load of Margaret Thatchers.
Please. Do yourselves a favour. Get rid of them. Vote for the opposition in such great numbers they can't possibly have Bush reappointed without causing a second American Revolution.
The world is watching and waiting...
"Information wants to be paid"
This is a very clever way to stop people getting bored by media reports on terrorism. Bush needs to keep the hype alive.
The book Blind Man's Bluff also gives a detailed account of how the lost submarine USS Scorpion was located. All the experts could only narrow it down to a 20 mile radius. With no other options, they resorted to taking real money bets from other submarine commanders on the probabilities of different scenarios. Result? The submarine was found within a couple hundred yards from where they guessed.
Can you imagine some Navy officer going to his superiors at the Navy and explaining that we're going to try and find a submarine by having a betting pool on it? It sounds completely insane, and personally I can't believe anyone had the balls to suggest it. But it works. When people have a skin in the game, they tend to give their best, most honest appraisal. If it was up to me, I would require intelligence analyst types to participate in this kind of thing.
"... The plan is a bloody brilliant way to get free analists working for the CIA, NSA, DIA ..."
Yhep - they need all the help they can get.
Don't make your problems my problems!
all these years terrorist organisations have been haveing trouble geting funds now all they have to do is place a bet on blowing something up and if they mannage it the US goverment will pay them loadsa money
so finaly the terrorists can make a liveing from killing people what a fucking wonderfull idea and what does the american goverment make out of this a load information that could have come from terrorists or could have come from some nutter in a basement they dont know its unreliable combinded with the fact that the futures market often effects the products there tradeing on any ways which is where any of there acutracy comes from
at best this idea horificaly disrispectfull to the people that are brutaly murdured when these events happen at worst its funding those events
who the hell is runing america these days it can't be bush he couldn't run a bath so who the hell is pulling bush's strings?
Roses are Red Violates are Blue im not very good a poetry but i have many other redeming qualitys
Tell me, does the US truly want terrorism to be erradicated now that it can be a way to stir the economy? What if it turns out that this makes good money, are they going to encourage people to go kill innocent by-standers just so that economy in the US stays good?
TROLL!?!?!? Did the addled-minded FUCK who marked this a troll bother and checking the whois on the domain?
THIS IS A HOAX, YOU STUPID FUCK!
Fuck, if you people don't want to believe me and just carry on making assholes of yourselves, that's fine with me.
Imagine the outrage...
I'll buy $5 on the IRA (doubtless funded by Noo Yoikers) bombing a hotel in London
I'll buy $10 on Al-Qaeda blowing up the Golden Gate bridge
You just don't get it, do you...--
This sig is inoffensive.
Can you imagine the ruthless Chinese betting syndicates with this:
Smallpox attack on Israel.......................100:1
"We'll bet a couple of hundred million dollars on that and then send a vial of smallpox and a small monetary contribution to our friends in Palestine..."
And they wouldn't think twice about it either.
What are they thinking?
It would be far more effective to set a Death cash reward based on public donation
Say people donate for a reward on killing Saddam Hussein, when it reach an interesting amount, enough people start looking after him to cash the prize
I place 10$ on president Bush !
Only in America
All trades and especially exchange based one need a paper trail these days. A market participant must register. If the participant is a broker, i.e., accepting trades on behalf of someone else, they need to 'know' that person. If someone bets a large amount on Saddam not being caught for six months, you can be sure that the paper trail will be followed.
See my journal, I write things there
Though a real market in these kind of things seems terribly sick and wrong to me, a "fantasy market" for world politics might be fun for a lot of people who follow global events closely, just as "fantasy sports" attract a lot of people who follow players' stats. Of course, I wouldn't depend on any of the predictions of such a market if I were part of the administration, CIA, DoD, or whatever, but I don't think the market model works too well for this anyway.
as someone mentioned earlier, it's quite obviously a hoax.
.gov or .mil, but definitely not .org. just because there is a DARPA logo on the page doesn't mean they have anything to do with it. Just because some online "news service" has a report on it doesn't make it true.
1) check out the whois response
2) keep in mind that any and all government sponsered/related sites would most likely be using a government extension.
*awaits the flood of "you are a moron" posts that are likely to follow*
Give everyone who registers $1M "egobucks" to trade. From that point on, your balance is an objective, comparable measure of your value as a pundit.
Using real money pollutes the results. It raises questions about whether the market is causing the results that it is predicting, and allows the market to be moved by those with goals other than making money.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
They are cowards. If Ghandi or Martin Luther King or the original Martin Luther or any of the worlds most brilliant revolutionaries had simply "Blown themselves up" before they could achieve anything, well they wouldn't have achieved anything! They also wouldn't be around any longer to confront the situations and circumstances that they consider so "evil".
Instead of sticking around and fighting it out like a HERO to the bitter end they take the COWARDS way out, suicide. The only difference is that modern day suicide bombers have improved public relations machines.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
IIRC, anyway. You ask a group of experts "What is the probability of X" and, in effect, average their answers. Answers which are usually no better than informed guesses. Turns out to be surprisingly effective.
Best Slashdot Co
* Make terrorist attack
* Profit!!!
Finaly the killer reason for terrorism.
Osama should start making all kinds of investments that run contrary to his terrorist plans. Like if he plans on blowing up the White House, then he invests a lot in the White House not getting blown up. Then the whole motive thing goes out the window in court.
Interesting.
See my journal, I write things there
Next, they'll want to hire Andrew Carlssin as a consultant!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This would an open market. Therefore, you get more than just legitimate experts, you get everybody who wants to participate. Given the rather transparant nature of this data-mining effort, there is a very real possibility that this data could be obfuscated or otherwise manipulated by a coordinated effort. Its always easier to destroy than to create and borking this data pool would be a destructive act.
I'm sure DARPA has experts by the boatload. Furthermore, there are more secure/reliable ways to gather this information in my opinion.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I know that someone who considers this "patriotic" is going to mod this down as flamebait but it has to be said: the double standards portrayed by the US are what makes it so unpopular beyond its borders. What double standards you say? Well, let me give you a few examples:
1. When France or Russia want to use their UN Security Council veto then it's treasonous. When the US uses its veto then it's OK.
The number of UN resolutions that the US has vetoed over Israel alone is astonishing. In most cases, the US was the only country standing in the way of a unanymous resolution and it was only its veto that scuppered each vote.
2. When the US interferes in Iraq it's OK, when anyone else does the it's not.
Get this quote:
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."
Want to know who said that and when? Well it was Paul Wofiwitz, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, only last week. Now either he's been hiding in a cave with Osama for the last nine months or he's the one American dumber than Dubya because, as far as the internal affairs of Iraq are concerned, the US is a foreigner too!
3. When an Arab TV stations shows pictures of dead US and British troops it's disgusting. When pictures of Saddam Hussein's two sons are plastered all over the world's press, then it's perfectly fine.
If you want to trot out the line that the people of Iraq needed proof then please explain to me why the same reason/excuse can't be used by others seeking to provide proof of US/UK casualties.
4. Whatever the opponents of the war say is just a pack of lies, whatever the US/UK says is 100 percent honest.
Gee, where do I start with this one? The 45 minute threat assessment? The nuclear materials from Niger? The "saving" of Private Jessica Lynch? The evidence of WMD stockpiles that has suddenly become evidence of WMD programmes?
Since when was having a plan to make something the same as actually having it? Is that how it works? Because if it does then I'm a billionaire - hey, I've got a programme to become a billionaire and it's the same thing right?
This latest DoD gaffe is another example of hypocrisy - if a Muslim nation was to start making predictions about attacks on key US targets how well do you think that sort of "risk analysis" would be taken stateside?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It's amazing how the majority of /. readers miss the point of this system.
Futures-type markets are remarkably good at predicting future trends because they are essentially the consenses of thousands of people, who are confident enough in their outlook to put money on it. Because of this, the Pentagon launched this research project to see if they could harness that power in predicting terror. The point is not to make people rich off of terror attacks or assassinations, the point is to try to know where to focus your efforts in preventing such an attack.
Now as to whether it will work, who knows? If the investors know that the goal is the prevention of the events, therefore no payoff, will they put up the money? How will individual investors know the likeliness of various scenarios if they don't have access to top-secret intelligence, so therefore how accurate can they really be? It remains to be seen.
But again, this is only a RESEARCH project, to see if such a system is feasible, it isn't like we're betting the future of terror prevention on this.
By reading this sig, you agree to the terms of my sig license.
Killing people the USA/Europe/Israel doesn't like isn't terrorism, apparently.
So, no, it will not encourage terrorism in any way.
Thankyou for your time.
The problem is, what I would want to happen is not often what I expect will happen. Give me a real way to influence policy makers instead, and I'll be much more happy.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Usually, the markets are used by central bankers to help disclose the information so rate changes aren't a real surprise.
If Greenspan tried to do a little by himself, that would be another matter.
See my journal, I write things there
greed/fear based georgewellian fuddite felons.
gambulling? in favor of the highly beneficial oil for babies program? yuk.
lookout bullow.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.
You're solving the problem of where marginal ethics equals marginal politics - it's where greed is optimized. It's just standard micro theory.
BEAM ME UP!
that won's on the house.
the odds are against these fauxking foul currs lasting out the weak.
From the article: "Since markets provide incentives for good judgment and self-selection, the market will effectively aggregate information among knowledgeable participants"
How on earth is this possible. Investors with knowledge about tech companies still managed to fuel the 'tech bubble' that we are still recovering from!
So what happens if everyone buys "shares" of some terrorist attack, then the DoD sees this and manages to stop the attack? Does everyone lose their money?
For any given attack, there are going to be a lot of people who know about it beforehand. Some of those people are going to be stupid enough to try to profit on it.
When the futures fluctuate dramatically due to the new 'interest,' everyone at the pentagon knows that something is going to happen. The SEC uses it to catch insider trading, the NCAA uses it to catch game fixing. Q: Why can't the government use futures to catch terrorists?
A: Great idea, bad diplomacy. Hello! This is the US government we're talking about! We don't care how the rest of the world feels anymore.
Remember, greed makes people do stupid things.
Exactly. Which is why this is such an idiotic idea. Markets are based on incentives. When you provide incentives (such as lower prices or higher wages), you get more of what you incentivize.
What does THIS market incentivize?
Think about it.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
It's much more than a cynical forum for betting on catastrophes. As I understand it, the idea is to create a network of people who are thinking and making predictions about world events, with an incentive for correct predictions. It's like building a distributed human computer. Unfortunately, markets generate a lot of noise, and they obscure information. Usually, any good information generated by a market can only be recognized as such in retrospect.
I find this akin to Hari Seldon's theory of psychohistory. A statistical measure of future trends in human behavior. This could be a vary primitive form of that science, or a key device in its theory. A very efficient way to model large, turbulent systems is to use a statistical representation of the system.
.COM IPOs and SCO stock would not be rising. A few years ago, the IRA would have had even stakes with the Middle East. You would have lost your shirt with a speculation on the Shamrock Isles. Of course, longterm speculators are still camping in the desert.
The problem is contaminating the with the notion of money. Bias such as a monetary gain will skew the results of this framework and make the statistics unreliable. If this were a purley academic persuit, I would jump at the chance to participate. I would love to work on a project like this.
Consider: How many times have you had a discussion with a group of people and either one person came up with an odd ball idea or as a group you decided on some conscensus on an idea. Say that idea was a speculation on a future innovation or maybe it was just a guess on the next person to kick off in a death pool (I think those are creepy.) That would be with maybe 10 people. Consider 1,000,000 people doing the same thing. But how for them to all communicate and what about the lone oddball idea that may never make it above the din? Give them a market in which to speculate.
A market is like a conglomeration of thoughts and ideas. It takes on a life of its own when people speak of the market. While individual investing schemes may seem choatic, the overall market has a general trend. In the 90s, a surge to tech stocks and telecom. Now, a trend away from those to more stable options. Here is the most important part. While the stock market is money driven, this prediction market would have to be idea driven. Make a good speculation and you have the satisfaction of supporting the system, getting it right and helping the DOD. A bad speculation only means you are still supporting the system.
Making this nebulous, allocating speculation points instead of dollars, removes the problems I have seen people sight so far. It is no longer betting, you cannot have terrorist insider trading and people on the inside will not sit on inside information (CIA) to turn a quick buck. Why is this like Psycho History? Its a statistical conglomeration of speculation on the future. If you think it will not work, you need to review how much the Stock Market has grown since its inception. Growth translates to correct predictions in the Stock Market. Its alteast worth a try.
Of course its not perfect. Otherwise, nobody would have fallen for inflated
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Sen. Wyden's contributors seem dominated by Pacific Northwest securities firms. The main possibility for conflict of interest here is that such firms have access to market data from the Pacific Rim, including Muslim countries and China via Hong Kong, that might be devalued by accurate forecasting via a publically accessible intelligence market.
Seastead this.
Be Paranoid, be -vary- paranoid (or NOT! have plans)
I am glad they finally listened to one of my friends'
ideas from a couple years ago. So, I am not worried,
when my friends go to Guantanamo, I go to Canada,
wait for the invasion, then head to France, before
being forced in to hiding in the Tibet border region
until the end of the war.
I have my travel/vacation agent already working out
the cost from here to Tibet. The return trip I was
told was not possible to plan, because there was no
confidence which currency would be available and/or
predictable for prices and my travel agent did not
expect to be anywhere around for business.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I once saw an episode of COPS where they sent out contest-winning announcements to people they'd been trying to arrest for awhile, but never seemed to get able to get their hands on. The people gladly showed up to claim their prize where they were promptly arrested.
... shares were repurchased at a drastically lower price ... and terrorists probably gained financially from information they had about the upcoming events.
... waiting for the terrorists to come claim their prize.
Post 9/11 there was a lot of evidence indicating that there had been a great deal of activity short-selling holdings in the airline industry. 9/11 happened
Translate that to this futures market. The very nature of this market can serve as an indicator for future terror events. Every major investments will serve as a lead for investigators to track where the money is coming from to see if there are terrorist ties. The feds may be allowing the average Joe to gamble on terrorism, but they're also opening the door
> Either way, we win with this "Insider Trading". It's not like there will be less security than before because of this.
You have it backwards. The insiders aren't the investors who are also terrorists, they're the military people who are also controlling the futures market. Suppose a threat gets bought up as more likely, then the military uses that information to prevent the attack. They've just devalued the futures based on their ability to control the event in question. Therefore, investors will see this, and will quickly learn that any futures that rise will intrinsically lose value based on the fact that they'll be more noticeable. This will poison out any predictive power the system may have had to begin with, as the rising value of a future will no longer be a good indicator that the event in question is likely.
This whole idea sounds like an office pool done by someone with bad taste. I hope it dies a well-deserved death in committee.
Virg
I like to think I am as paranoid as the next /. poster, but this crap about betting on terrorism is, well, crap. RTFA people! The introductory paragraph states what kind of things the market focuses on:
"...by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East. Initially, PAM will focus on the economic, civil, and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each. (emphasis mine)
Since when do terrorist acts represent an underlying fundemental of the countries in question? The idea is to garner data that can help guide the US policy in an extremely complicated and interrelated area of the world. The policy that would be affected would be *stratgeic* economic and military policy, not low-level tactical decision making, like deciding wether a particular Arab or Jew should be allowed to board a bus.
public void karmaWhore(String url){addSlashdotComment(fetchContent(url));}
The Register have an article on this here: Kill a Middle East head of state, win prizes! - Pentagon shows how
Actually, crazy as it sounds, this idea is based on a scientifical approach, called method of subjective probability. A similar method was used in the past to find the wreck of the Scorpion, and also a nuclear bomb which had been lost at sea by a crashed airplane. In that case, the experts bet bottles of whiskey, but it works with money too.
Ander
@=
Step 1: Everybody on /. bets US$1 that Poindexter WON'T get assassinated
Step 2: Crazy guy bets he WILL be assassinated
Step 3: Crazy guy kills him
Step 4: Profit! (Loss?)
echo 'Header append X-HD-DVD "0x09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0"' >>
This is nothing more than policy creation by polls, something the current US admin strongly criticized the previous one on.
Further, who is going to be using this system? In general it seems to underscore the point that just about anyone can be a "middle east expert".
If they were really interested in terrorism, the events to be on would be worldwide. The fact that it isn't further points out the politics that are really running the show here.
This is the science behind it
How to REALLY make a killing on the markets!
Bet on death for fun and prizes!
Every dark cloud has a silver lining!
Wall Street 'o Death
The Semtex NASDAQ
The Pentagon. Where death means business.
Misery may love company, but I want CASH!
Mod parent up.
I dunno, how is betting on a futures market like this any different from betting on, say, Northrop Grumman to produce the next generation of B-2 stealth bomber for the US military? Both terrorists and stealth bombers have been known to kill innocent children.
True, when you buy stock in Northrop Grumman, you're not betting on a terrible tragedy like a suicide bombing -- I'm exaggerating for effect. But if the moral outrage on /. is that this money is used to bet on the death of innocent people, then perhaps we should all re-examine the nature of the US's stock exchange with regard to weapons manufacturers and other companies that make products that kill people (Philip Morris maybe?).
In spite of all of the snide comments posted in response to the article, this is in fact a good thing. Using a team of subject matter experts to make bets on the probability of events has been used with effectiveness when targeted against a specific problem. Specifically, I am recalling when the US lost a B-52 carrying a nuclear bomb over the Med. in the 1960s. The Navy used a team of scientists who "made bets" on the likelihood of events occuring in the loss of the aircraft. (Aircraft turning right - 60%, headwind - 65%, etc) Based on the last known coordinates - they used this technique to "predict" where the aircraft (and its more valuable cargo) would be located. This was found to have eliminated the extremely large search area because the team was dead on. IIRC, the odds were applied using bayesian analysis.
In DARPA's case, they can tap in to a larger set of people who each watch the news and, for the most part, independently make their own opinion on what will happen in the Middle East or elsewhere. It is not frivolous, it is extremely smart.
Hmmm...
The gambler, finding nothing satisfactory for betting, sets up a slotted wheel, makes six-sided dice, designs cards which are identical from the back but different from the front, and then bets on what happens when these devices are randomized.
You know nothing about gambling.
Am I speculating on basketball because it will occur in the absence of speculators? Seriously, your post just screams about how you don't know what the Hell you are talking about.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Registrant:
Net Exchange (UWHJFAOOUD)
12730 High Bluff Dr
Suite 260
San Diego, CA 92130
US
Domain Name: POLICYANALYSISMARKET.ORG
Administrative Contact:
Net Exchange (GCEMFQRWGO) jeffvandorn@yahoo.com
12730 High Bluff Dr
Suite 260
San Diego, CA 92130
US
858 724-0390
Technical Contact:
Network Solutions, Inc. (HOST-ORG) namehost@WORLDNIC.NET
21355 Ridgetop Circle
Dulles, VA 20166
US
1-888-642-9675 fax: 123 123 1234
Record expires on 12-Mar-2006.
Record created on 12-Mar-2003.
Database last updated on 29-Jul-2003 10:44:54 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.IPOWERWEB.NET 64.70.61.130
NS1.IPOWERDNS.COM 12.129.206.202
NS2.IPOWERWEB.NET 12.129.206.200
NS2.IPOWERDNS.COM 12.129.206.203
unless of course the goverment would use a fake address and a yahoo email account to register the domain.
enjoy the rest of the day
I'll bet pretty heavily that I will not be killed during the next few years. Of course, since I'm a nobody, I'll have to give some pretty long odds.
As long as I live, I'll get some small return on my investment. If I'm killed by terrorists, I won't care about having to pay up, because I'll be dead.
--
Let's end the tax deduction for advertising!!
I hate to reply to my own post but it occured to me. Osama bin Laden could just as easily make money by betting that if Iran is NOT bombed then there will be LOW levels of terrorism. This is a promise of peace contingent on terms, almost a treaty with the terrorists.
Eat at Joe's.
This provides another way for people like Cheney to enrichen himself and his business associates. In addition to tax cuts for the rich, and enacting U.S. policy that leads to huge under the table government contracts, Cheney will be able to clue business friends in on impending policy decisions that will enable them to bet with essentially insider information. Keeping it anonymous will enable them to hide this particular conflict of interest better than other profiteering they've been engaged in.
How does a guy in a third-world country, who might have greater knowledge of a potential terrorist act, but far less money compete with someone in the US who bids $100 on a lark?
Supposedly betting on when major events would happen could help to ready everybody for the event, but I don't think the same parallel can be drawn.
If not now, when?
How does one get on this list of 'traders'? If enough people belonging to a common organization join, they could collectively 'mod' up or down the likelihood of an event occurring to suit their agenda.
For example, terrorist group XYZ plans to bomb a US embassy. They have many members on the traders list, who then mod down the likelihood of this event happening, hoping that the US govt will then reduce security at this embassy.
http://bike.stu.ph/rides - free GPS routes available for Garmin, Magellan, GPX and Google Earth
I really, really hope this is a joke...
Even senators thought this was a joke so you can be excused for thinking so. See the bold text from the rejected submission below - it's from the NY Times article.
Poindexter's Middle East Terror Bookie Scheme
2003-07-29 08:16:21 Poindexter's Middle East Terror Bookie Scheme The NY Times reports on DARPA's latest scheme: an options and futures trading market where you can bet on assassinations, toppling governments, instability and war in the Middle East (Google). The $8 million program is under the control of Admiral John Poindexter who brought us Total Information Awareness. The Policy Analysis Market starts taking registrants this week and betting/trading begins in October. Senator Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, said the idea seemed so preposterous that he had trouble persuading people it was not a hoax.
By this logic fire insurance is morbid.
Why does this sound eerily like a government-sponsored version of Assassination Politics, the piece written by cypherpunk/crypto-anarchist Jim Bell, who is now suing the government under RICO to get his freedom because they conspired against him?
Basically, his idea is the same thing, except people would be buying futures on the death of political personalities. It's strange, it's a bit fringe, it's not liked by the government except for when they use it for their own plans.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
How can anyone be surprised that America has such a poor reputation in the international community when projects like this are supported by the Government?
To think that, as a citizen of a middle-eastern country, a foreign government is offering a speculative market on my home's economic or political stability is deeply insulting. It portrays the US as an arrogant, self-centered and insular country.
My natural first reaction is revulsion, disgust and anger.
So what kind of regulations would be in effect in this market? If you were a US soldier being sent on a top secret mission to depose a leader would you be guilty of insider trading if you bet on the leader's overthrow? What about CIA operatives? Wouldn't their up to date, classified knowledge give them in unfair advantage in the market? I see a few smart government employees making a lot of money in schemes like this. Can I place a bet on that?
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
1. Set up an exchange
2. By a future
3. Invade a small country
4. Profit!
Ethics is what you say you do. Morals is what you actually do.
It seems to me that the major benefit the Pentagon would get from this is the public opinion. For instance, if most people believe that Iraq has nuclear weapons, they will be likely to bet money on it. The stronger the people feel about it, the better the "stock" will be doing. Even if Iraq does not have nuclear weapons, the pentagon knows that the people will support an attack on Iraq. The majority of the people "trading" in this "economy" will not be terrorists or people who know what is going on. They will be trading based on hunches or "analyst" predictions. Maybe the "analysts" are propaganda merchants? Most people do not have access to the facts and are forced to speculate based on propaganda or whatever else is made available.
This is clearly a tool to get feedback on how well the propaganda affects popular opinion. Maybe a side effect is that if a terrorist activity does occur that was not predicted, the people getting rich can be persecuted.
The question is how to stop insider trading. With this setup and you can bet that many in a corrupt admin will bet on a situation and make it happen. Kinda like doing a meeting; determining that we need access to Iraqi Oil and Gas; and then finding that the Saddam is trying to build Nukes against us again.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Are there limits on the size of a "trade?" If not, how can you trust the figures that result since someone loaded with cash can skew the results?
I think someone should make a betting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H futures market of DARPA research ideas, and people can bet on whether they think they'll succeed or not.
.... trade on this Policy Analysis Market idea. :P
I think I know where I'll place my bet^H^H^H
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
Look at how unpredictably the stock markets behave already
Before we bash this system too much, it is probably worth thinking about alternatives. Everybody should agree that asking middle eastern experts about events in the middle east is a good idea; if you have many experts you can esitmate a probability by taking the average of their estimated probabilities. This is certainly imperfect, but what solution is likely to do better?
The market idea has the additional benefit of letting the experts place bets; i.e., they can put in more money if they are more confident in their assessment and less money if they are less confident.
Right now, apparently, the market is only open for a select group of experts. But say that even anonynmous_loser was let into this market (and that the problem of terrorists betting on their own acts were solved). Why would he palce a bet unless he thought he had a valuable insight, not accurately captured already? Similarly, an expert who finds that he always loses money on this in encouraged to quit, but a good expert gets encouraged to bet more.
I would challenge people who don't believe in this to come up with a more efficient prediction system. Given a set of middle eastern experts with varying (but uncertain) capability and who make different predictions; the desired output is accurate probabilities of events.
Tor
This is already being done.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
I was listening to a spokesperson from the Economist on BBC this morning, defending the Economist's involvement. She mentioned that there was a $100 limit (per bet, i believe?)
So, no one is going to make millions blowing up buildings...
The facts have a liberal bias. --The Daily Show
Im going to bet my retirement plan on peace, thats what im going to do.
on a more serious note... megadeath had a song peace sells... but whos buying
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Bullshit. What a bunch of self-loathing liberal bullshit.
Some guy raped your mom and fucked her in the ass? Don't blame it on him. He wasn't treated with respect. Certainly don't punish him. Be a good self-loathing liberal and blame yourself. Take some sensitivity training classes and the problem will go away.
Fact is, the world is haves and have-nots. The have-nots will always try to agitate for more power, money, resources, etc. They don't give a shit about respect. And if you self-loathing liberals give away or do away with the power of the US, if you give those piss-ant countries power, will they then be our friends and benefactors? Bullshit. I know you self-loathing liberals thinking that only white, male, Americans are self-interested and that everyone else on the plant is Ghandi, it's bullshit. Especially so since some of these people have screwed up fundamentalist ideologies which are based on the principal that they are right and there is no way they could ever be wrong.
I think Israel should be punished for the way it treats Palestinians. But don't be a fool. Disproportionate power/wealth mixed with fundamentalist ideologies will always be a recipe for terrorism.
I feel sorry for you because you loath yourself.
Why buy airline options *before* 9/11? The share prices for airlines fell after 9/11 if I am not mistaken which means that the price of options would have fallen after that date. Anyone buying airling options before 9/11 would have lost money after the event.
Eat at Joe's.
Most people do not have a direct connection to Middle East politics, so investments will be pretty much random bets. However, the American people get lied to and cheated every day, so they have a lot of historical knowledge. Also this will open up the opportunity for insider trading, so you don't have to be a company officer any more.
Did anyone else get a very Architect-ish feel from that paragraph? Had to go back and read it once or twice more, before it began to even make sense.
former adm John M Poindexter is the lovely proponent of this miscarriage of justice.
you may remember him for being convicted of 5 felonies during the Iran/Contra scandal, and for proposing everyone's favorite Total Information Awareness system.
he just -loves- to do insane things.
someone should take away his $10m/yr budget before he gets something past the politicians on the hill.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The oil isn't going to last forever. This is a perfect investment opportunity for rich Saudis funding the terrorist activities. Talk about win-win -- kill infidels and make your money back, courtesy of the US government.
1. Train fanatics in suicide bombing
2. Invest in appropriate futures
3. Execute the attack
4. Profit !!
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Not true. Once a load of data is amassed about what people think will happen, then policy makers in various countries will be able to make good guesses about how to avoid bad things. It should eventually have a great effect on policy. I bet that whoever thought of this will end up with a Nobel Peace Prize in about 50 years.
The reason I believe that this promotes the status quo is that in general markets like stability, dislike change, and respond poorly to FUD.
If this is set as a plan of government, then as soon as the market changes BAM! the laws change. There is no guarantee of stability for future prediction, and the market will flucutuate rapidly. BAM! The laws change again. BAM! the laws change again as the market swings the other direction.
After only a few test swings, people will grow tired of ever changing legal landscapes, and will just opt for anything, as long as it is stable.
In my veiw, human nature being what it is, and the current lack of long-term thinking that dominate current market structures, I don't see this as a particulary good way to run a country.
Not neccesarily. Options can go either way, and you make money by predicting which way they'll go.
hint -- research the difference between 'put' and 'call' options.
Yes a predictive tool. Basicially, this a way to measure the current "worth" of a particualar idea by using a market-type game theory. As ideas become more likely, their worth rises so they will be bid-up by the masses (of analysts). The most likely will float to the top. The theory is that no one person has perfect (or infinite) insight and information, but thousands of people - each acting independently in a common market - will distill some insight by their collective action. That is classical political-economic theory.
Take the "money and morality" part out and you can see the academic value in a theory like this. Can anybody suggest a better option? Perhaps a bunch of ivory-tower professors and analysts making wild-a** guesses (WAGs) around a conference table? Which WAG is more "valuable" than the others?
It occurs to me that since international events often impact stock prices, people interested in mitigating the risk to their investments could use this market to hedge. For example, if I have a big stake in a company whose fortunes would be adversely affected by terrorism in Israel, I could place a bet *for* terrorism in Israel. That way if it happens, my losses in the stock market will be partially offset by my profits from this futures market. If it doesn't, I'm out the money I put into the futures market, but that's the nature of a hedge.
My bet on terror in Israel will probably also alter the odds on that issue, which may encourage the U.S. (and others) to work harder at preventing incidents in Israel, which is good for my investment. As such, a market like this will probably encourage the U.S. to work harder to manage threats which are financially dangerous, rather those which are dangerous to people. I'm not sure that's where we really want to go, but then again I doubt this market would be used as the sole basis for decisions, and it could be useful as long as its biases are understood.
As others have said, the real problem here is what happens when bettors have the ability to influence the outcome of their bets. Terrorists could potentially fund their operations by betting on long-shot attacks and then carrying them out. The dynamics of that would be interesting in an intellectual sense:
The answers to those questions might be interesting, but the potential cost of "wrong" answers, in terms of lives and property, could be huge. Speculators trying to make a quick buck voting against terrorism or investors trying to hedge against terror-derived risks could actually end up *funding* the mayhem.
I suppose one way to mitigate this risk would be to carefully vet all potential bettors and verify that they have no potential ties to terror. This wouldn't be completely foolproof, but if done right it would pretty much eliminate the risk of terrorists profiting from the market in a big way. The cost of doing it right, however, especially if the pool of bettors is worlwide, would be staggering.
There are so many implications and counter-implications that it seems impossible to predict with any accuracy what the effect of this system will be.
Perhaps we should bet on it?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If I purchase futures on a bombing attempt in a Tokyo subway, the bet, er. investment doesn't necessarily have to be on the bomb actually going off.
Let's assume some this activity has a large amount of optimism in the investing community... enough that the DoD notices and takes action to stop it.
As a result, the bomber and his bomb are found and stopped. The resulting investigation determines that (s)he was going to but the bomb in a Tokyo subway within the date of futures delivery. This plot can still be proven to have come within the future's contractual guidelines (and thus pay out), since the bomber was found to exist _and_ have been planning to bomb said target on said date. You just have to make sure the contract doesn't specify that the attempt be successful.
The DoD may even have limitations in their plan to cut out success propability of any event (to prevent aforementioned "profit from others misery" liability)
- Sig
I seem to remember reading that there was also an unusually high short position taken in those two airlines by a small number of traders, just before the attacks. I don't know what ever became of that investigation.
Some guy raped your mom and fucked her in the ass? Don't blame it on him. He wasn't treated with respect.
Did my mom rape him with a pole in his ass before he did this to her? If so, my mum should be ashamed and understand why she was raped.
That's the proper analogy, not yours.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that terrorism isn't something that just falls from the skies (not meant to be a funny remark)? Do you really believe people blow themselves up for the sake of money?
How naive can one be?
Terrorism sucks majorly, but there's only one way out of it. Every self respecting being knows that retaliation feeds terrorism, it doesn't prevend it. It should not be so hard to understand history.
Shock!
AP reports Senate Armed Services Committee chairman says Pentagon plan to create this market will be scrapped.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left Zulus
that our current administration has completely lost touch with reality. And their sanities.
Everyone seems to think this is a way to set out a honeypot for terrorists - but it seems more like a harebrained yet interesting scheme for rewarding analysts. Where this would really make sense is in, say, the State Department or the CIA where you have a large community of analysts looking at the current world situation. You let them all play this game; the payoff comes as their Christmas bonus. It'd be a great way to reward (or promote) people with insight into current affairs.
A friend of a friend who traditionally hosts a Super Bowl party used to make book on various game events, from final score to the opening coin toss. He also gave odds on a terrorist event at the game and a blimp crash. Yes, those could be combined into a double payoff if it involved a Black Sunday scenario.
Should he resume covering these odds, I guess he could just log on and abstract the line in real time. No more anguished nights poring through Foreign Affairs and Soldier of Fortune looking for the elusive hints to set the opening line.
That the site will be down before August 1st? Or that Doubleya will be a 1-termer?
They have never released any information on the parties who purchased the put options on the airlines and the company that covered the insurance on the WTC. Info is just sitting there waiting to be discovered on this. It would be very simple to track down, but it has never been done. This cover story that the options have never been claimed is rubbish. The options had to be bought from a trading account or brokerage somewhere in the system. It's like saying you have a check in your hand that hasn't been cashed and claiming that you can't look at the account number on the bottom of the check and tell who wrote the check.
Odds on the US pissing off and alienating every other country in the world even more than it already has?
Place your bets^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Start trading now!
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
... as will all the other "good" psychics out there with a few Dollars (Euros?) in their pocket.
In fact, maybe we should start a new kind of Psychic Hotline and parlay all the predictions into bets... oh, sorry, investments in the PAM!
What a riot!
bshanks writes "apparently, markets are the best way known for large groups of humans to aggregate their information and make predictions. Information markets are (i think) markets designed to elicit various types of predictions. Successful information markets include the Iowa Electronic Market, which predicts political events more accurately than major news polls, and the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which predicts box office revenues and Oscar winners." Paul Johnson appears to have verified this experimentally (if informally):
So it
this comment is completely offtopic and unrelated to the issue at hand here. some people are blatantly abusing their mod points to push a side agenda here.
why does this continue to sit at +5? nice work, idiot moderators.
The pentagon thinks that economic forecasting is a good predictive model and wants to extend that to predicting terrorist attacks? I think the 3 million set aside for the project went straight up their noses.
Here's an item for their futures market: Pentagon get bitch-slapped by public opinion prob > 1.00.
I do not see this idea as much as a way of obtaining information as a way to keep public in perpetual fear...
Now that "Terrorist warning level" start to fade in interest, with governement calling orange, red alert when they need to get support.
Now that people can bet, and continuously worry about terrorism, government tend to get support
Just another propaganda tool !
Art Bell wrote this in 1997. It didnt make him too popular with the Feds, he was jailed for tax evasion. Now the Feds are stealing his idea?
"A few months ago, I had a truly and quite literally "revolutionary" idea, and I jokingly called it "Assassination Politics": I speculated on the question of whether an organization could be set up to legally announce that it would be awarding a cash prize to somebody who correctly "predicted" the death of one of a list of violators of rights, usually either government employees, officeholders, or appointees. It could ask for anonymous contributions from the public, and individuals would be able send those contributions using digital cash.
I also speculated that using modern methods of public-key encryption and anonymous "digital cash," it would be possible to make such awards in such a way so that nobody knows who is getting awarded the money, only that the award is being given. Even the organization itself would have no information that could help the authorities find the person responsible for the prediction, let alone the one who caused the death."
Assassination Politics text
I put $100 on a Spanish Inquisition.
Is this is poor taste?
Sure, but so is justifying attacks on other countries with fabricated weapons assessments.
While I see how something like this may place the public "in fear" or even be manipulated behind the scenes so that it might be used to sway opinion, I think that this is more likely to calm than terrorize. Turning such events into games desensitizes people and distances them from the grim realities that they represent.
Why not though? Las Vegas is the very manifestation of the American Dream, why not embrace it and make it part of our foreign and domestic policy.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
There isn't any "science" in that article. Just unsubstantiated claims.
They ignore the most basic factor in this equation.
The people with the most knowledge may have an interest in hiding that knowledge.
The easiest way for them to do so would be to artificially inflate a completely different scenario to focus attention on that item.
Like bidding up an attack on Egypt on a certain day. When the actual event will be the assassination of an Israeli government official.
Why buy airline options *before* 9/11? The share prices for airlines fell after 9/11 if I am not mistaken which means that the price of options would have fallen after that date.
It is a *PUT* option. It is a promise to sell the buyer the stock at a given price on a given date. As the seller you are betting that the stock will be *lower* than the price you promised to sell at, the buyer is betting that it will be higher. If the stock plummets you make money.
"Science behind it"
Look at the page!! Its a dartboard, people!! Your money is paying for this!!
Be untraceable. You intend on losing these bets.
Put lots of big bets on something that isn't your target.
That will get the security forces watching that target.
You proceed with your plan knowing that you'll have fewer security forces to deal with around the real target.
There is no way the government is going to find ANY valuable information this method. It is just disgusting that people could make money off of other's misfortunes. Our government has already spent $600,000 developing this program and they plan to spend another $149,000 this year, all of which could've gone to better places. The House plans to approve more money for next year. Please write your local Representative and ask them to vote against it if you don't want your money being wasted. http://www.house.gov/writerep/
Pentagon to Abandon 'Terror' Futures Market Plan
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, July 29, 2003; 11:48 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said he spoke by phone with the program's director, "and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped."
(more in the article)
Welp, who said that the government doesn't act fast. The website is being taken down and the program is being terminated.
Am I the only who is intrested?
I already use www.tradesports.com.(done ok up 10% for the year)
I won't trade on an assasination but perhaps a revolt in say, Iran or Jordan.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
National Security.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I heard from a snopes like site (which actually makes it just about as relevent as any source on the options story), that there WAS a large amount of put options on UAL and AA place before 9/11, but also there was alot of put options place before 5/11 and 1/11. Basically there is always people hedging bets in the airline industries against tragedy by buying put options (anytime a airplane goes down the respective share prices drop drastically, Alaska saw this happen). Its basically an insurance policy, and in this case it came through.
This is a case where an action looked at out-of-context looks nefarious because of circumstance. Once you know that people often buy large put options in industries prone to disaster, the fact that a routine purchase happened close to 9/11 looks pretty normal. In fact, its no more nefarious then buying an insurance policy against the World Trade Center collapsing (there was one). Does the purchase of that policy PROVE pre-existanct knowledge of the 9/11 attacks? Not by a long shot.
It is considered wise to buy a life insurance policy on yourself to protect your family in case of sudden death? Does this mean you EXPECT to die suddenly? No, your just being careful and cautious.
BTW, the purchase of a put option depends on the stock and the percentage difference in the price. The further you go from the current price the cheaper they get. There was a case when Warren Buffet (sp?) bought both put and get options on the same stock because he wanted some insurance in a volitle market.
So if someone were to 'bet' that the current U.S. president was going to be assassinated, would that individual still be hauled in by the secret service? Or would they be hailed a national hero for participating in a patriotic act...?
Omigod! Predictive tool, my ass! How desperate have we gotten to keep our economies stable in times of despair? A way to instantly give people an economic boost when tragedy strikes?
The ability to hedge against disaster has kept America strong for many years. Farmers use futures to protect against natural disasters and other problems, locking in profits regardless of crop yields. Insurance companies use futures to protect against natural disasters and partially fund payouts for hurricanes and other catastrophes.
The economic need for such a tool is real and not in the least bit evil. The fact that this could also have powerful, tangible benefit to those in a position to stop these disasters from happening is an awesome second advantage.
I see no reason why this isn't perhaps the most sane and intelligent thing that our intellligence agency has ever tried to do. Even if they are doing the "Dr. Evil" about it, it will still be a powerfully benign force.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
This sounds like a great application of economics!
I suspect it's already in effect.
Eg, given the U.S. reliance on Saudi Oil and the vulnerability of the U.S. economy to any instability in the House of Saud, wouldn't it be prudent to have a backup source of oil in, oh, say Iraq?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
it was originally slated to become a piece of TIA.
This is interesting if only because funding for the TIA was cut by Congress in the 2004 Defense Appropriations Act and killed by the Senate's 2004 defense appropriations bill recently.
Does this mean that TIA will be built through the back door with many much smaller projects instead of one massive project? The smaller projects could be linked and analyzed via a separate piece of analysis software. Commercial business intelligence and data-mining tools could probably do the job with a little modification.
It sounds a little like the title of that old Don Henley song, Building the Perfect Beast.
You know the little Terrorist Threat Level Monitor, with all the pretty colors? Well, why not take the data from this and turn it into a more informative one (or one that gives more control over the population).
Analyst:"Today's Terrorism Futures Market seems to indicate that there is a high probability of a biochemical attack in the next week. I hope everybody has stocked up on cellophane and duct tape."
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Instead of a futures model, have a MMORPG model. Create an online game, and force everyone in the Middle East to join. The rules state that the players have to do what they were planning to do in real life tomorrow, in the game today. This would mean that the game will exactly predict the future for the next twenty-four hours.
Of course, you couldn't force people to play forever, so the game would have to be a pretty awesome. So people will spend more and more time playing, and therefore, neglect actually doing what their avatars do today, tomorrow. So the game is doomed to fail. Damn it!
Well at least they'll spend less time blowing each other up.
This is just wrong.
My lack of faith in my government continues unwavered..
Terrorism bids on you!!
Sorry, had to do it.
ooo my.
Acording to nyt/ap report: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29WIRE- PENT.html?hp it is over... free reg required
It took all of what, 8 hours?
First let me say that I acknowledge the immoral depravity of this plan. But in the world we live in, where guys like Cheney, Poindexter, Perle, et al. are getting rich through state-fronted corporate-controlled murder, torture, theft and imperial conquest, I would actually be pleased if they did this as long as the market were limited to around 10000 traders. It's not like it would change anything as far as who's getting rich off killing, it would just make more of it public, and makes it impossible to deny what is really happening. That is, it has a chance of generating some public awareness of a corrupt system that already exists anyway. Sure, anyone who participates in this should go to prison, but those people should already be in prison. But the problem is that if they limit it to 10000 [of the wealthiest individuals in the world], there's no way to make it *regressive*, which means they wouldn't limit it like that. What they really want is to open it up so all our 401/k's and social security taxes get put into it, then they can convert it into the usual upward funnel, whereby the collective wealth of the little guys gets transfered up to Poindexter's buddies.
Remember, the aim of this administration (and the power behind it) is NOT to stop terrorism. On the contrary, the more terrorism there is, the more military might we need to "control" it, the more they get rich. Since the public can't seem to (is not allowed to) understand *that* fact, maybe they'd understand *this*, because it's so blatant. Of course that's wishful thinking, though.
As reported in Yahoo News The Pentagon has Abandoned its plan for the Terrorism Betting. My favorite quote from the story:
"The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," said Sen. Ron Wyden D-Ore.
It seems a similar predictive effect could be gained by just polling a large pool of experts in the area on a variety of topics at regular intervals. Perhaps by allowing the experts to gamble on their precictions, they expect their predictions to be less politically motivated and more honest. OTOH, with the market setup, experts with more money to gamble can skew the market in the wrong direction. A few dullards with deep pockets could move the markets in the wrong direction. A poll gives equal weight to everyone's opinions. Someone else has already pointed out that the well informed mass makes better predictions than the individual. ~the fowlerserpent
*Terrorists* wouldn't do this. No masses of legitimate money to throw into markets, hard to ensure that a country gets overthrown.
Evil rich old white men, on the other hand....God, nothing like encouraging economy power players to become involved in politics to the point of overthrowing countries.
We're in a Republican era.
May we never see th
According to this BBC article, the plug has already been pulled.
It seems to be dead in the water already . The question is, has it really (cough *Echelon* cough).
It's a bull market and gonna be that way for a long time.
Wow, and I thought all slashdotters were sysadmins or IT consultants...
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
According to this article just posted at the BBC, it looks like they've bailed already. =D
Market as Oracle
Despite the sensationalism, this could be pretty interesting.It shows that the stock market had effectively decided which shuttle contractor was responsible for the Challenger disaster within minutes of seeing the explosion come across the news wire.
Here's the citation:
Michael T. Maloney and J. Harold Mulherin.
The complexity of price discovery in an efficient market: the stock market reaction to the Challenger crash, Journal of Corporate Finance, Volume 9, Issue 4, September 2003, Pages 453-479.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0929-1199(02)00055-X
I cannot see how this could be legal. It seems to be close to a public "hire the hitman" database.
In addition, what about betting on domestic events? It is against the law to threaten US officials, so wouldn't some of the examples given i.e "assassination of xyz" be illegal if bet on this country?
That being the case, it would seem hard to glean an accurate picture for predicting world events.....
apparantly, they've decided that maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all (or they decided it became public too soon). In any event, looks like game over.
d =D 7SJ9EF00_story
http://start.earthlink.net/newsarticle?cat=6&ai
A goal is a dream with a deadline
(Although not before it was co-opted by citizens wielding the mightiest of meme weapons, ironic repurposement:
http://www.cafeshops.com/totalawareness)
Now, one day in the sunlight was enough to convince the DOD to scuttle this bizarre notion spawned by market-theory-dweebs-turned-spooks.
In the days just prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the stocks of United and American Airlines were shorted by parties unknown.
So let me get this straight. They have no idea who they are making the payout for stock trades? The government doesn't want their tax from the capital gain?
If thats the case, how do I sign up for a stock account where I can be "parties unknown", and not pay taxes?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
This is essentially just a terrorism and geo-political version of some that the University of Iowa has been doing for years:
http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/
Rumors abound as to whether or not politicals have tried to ``manipulate'' these markets before to get people to think certain candidates were going to win. The only thing they know for sure is that unless the right people put serious money forward, its predictive value is squat.
The idea was proposed way back by John Brunner in his book "Shockwave Riser" (highly recomended -- also read "Standing on Sansibar"). It's called a "Delphi Poll" or "Delphi Pool" (both terms seem to be in popular use), and there have been numerouse attempts to implement this (which usually failed because auf lack of betters).
The Idea is quite interresting, especially with respect to the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy: if a number of people have bet a large amount of money on some future event, they will try to make it happen...
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
Seriously, wouldn't terrorists just use the system to place false alarms? Log in and bet that something's gonna happen tomorrow in Japan when really it's happening tonight in San Francisco?
Wow, a lucrative publishing contract! I don't have to be evil anymore. --Meteor
bidding on terrorism..wait I thought the stock market was for that?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Think about this for a second ... according to Efficient Market Theory the information that the pentagon is seeking would already be factored into the price of securities widely traded today. The task would be to build a predictive model based off the financial securities currently available to track potential future world events. Problem is there are so many factors which influence the prices of any given security on a day to day basis, that information relevant to any particular event would take a very well defined model that can statistically separate out a wide variety of factors.
... as was pointed out by comments regarding Arthur Anderson and Enron. Creating a new market will NOT increase the efficiency, and since there are political goals at stake, and parties with vested interests both running and participating in the market outcome, the results are significantly likely to be highly biased anyway.
The crux of the problem is that Markets are NOT truly efficient
I just want to know which harebrained econ dropout came up with this idea in the first place?
They say terrorists can bid, because they will be totally anonymous - yeah right!
I know there are a lot of criminals that are considered dumb, like the kind of small theft guys that walk through the snow or use their driver's license, leaving easy identifaction of themselves. But do they really think real terrorists are that dumb? It almost sounds like a giant sting operation, hoping the bad guys will bet on themselves.
Looks like the images are gone/slashdotd/censored... so here's a mirror
Jordanian overthrow,
bidding on assassinations,
cool graphics...
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
The lunacy has ended. I wonder how many tax dollars were wasted... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,93190,00.html
I'm considerably more Libertarian than the next guy, but you need to take the tin foil hat off for this one.
A futures market like this is just an efficient, effective tool for measuring the likelihood of something happening. It's essentially a datamining technique where you have a large number of intelligent actors processing information for you and coming together to find a market-clearing price. From this price, you can back out the likelihood of the event occuring.
This is nothing more than an application of sports betting or like the Iowa Electronic Markets, which I understand are good predictors of election results.
Alas, I'm afraid some of the more fanciful suggestions here will not come to pass. Do you really think a terrorist would be foolish enough to trade large on a DoD futures market right before committing some act? It would seem silly to do that with your DoD account when you could just sell airline and insurance stocks instead.
A market like this is not going to be sufficiently liquid for someone to either hedge the risk of an event or profit much on one.
That is, if you came to the market and tried to buy $3 billion worth of "Chippewa Falls destroyed by fire and brimstone SEP '03" futures, you'd probably spook the market and wouldn't find any profitable edge.
If I were the King of Jordan and I found out people were willing to pay $97 for a "King overthrown by December" I'd be pretty damned greatful for the head's up. It's like a free opinion poll.
And...except that it might be government sanctioned (though it would be easy enough to have an outside firm run the market), this is not different than betting sites making markets on whether Saddam will still be in power.
TIA sucks. But I think this is a not-so-novel, but pretty ingenious thing that really doesn't trample anyone's liberties.
Only a capitalist would try to bet on other people's lives.... Market is their God! :(:(:(
KoalaBear33
......The worst thing in my life happened when the stock market started mattering more than the economy
If this was really representating the voice of the people, then statistically it should be identical to the real result. It wasn't the nearest. Conclusion : something skewed the result / reasonement. Really, 2nd place really beg the question. It should have been 1st. It isn't.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Shortly after 9/11, the U.S. government hired some Hollywood types to get together and build some worst-case scenarios to adjust the planning process. Now that the government wants to develop an Open Source scenario process with feedback from real events to distinguish between accurate and innacurate scenarios, people are outraged and are misinterpreting the intent and consequences of the project. Maybe the term "market" is too closely associated with profiteering and market manipulation. Maybe the current government is doing too many other big-brotherish things and people are worried. But that isn't what this futures market exercise is about.
Scenario building is a common process for governments, militaries, corporations, and individuals. I taught scenario building for several years in university social science classes using this Art Kleiner article. The subtitle of the article was "thinking the unthinkable" and it dealt with the Cold War, fossil fuel depletion, global famine, and other pressing problems.
The biggest problem with a scenario 'market' is that the feeback mechanism is likely to favor the mundane, most likely possibilities. This is good for every day progressions, but the really interesting points in history are at discontinuities - times where there were sudden changes that upset the existing order. 9/11 was a 'long shot' according to standard statistics, which are inherently backward looking. Good scenarios are less a way of predicting what will happen than what could happen. Good scenarios don't have to come true to be good scenarios - they just need to help us acknowledge and see past our (otherwise invisible) assumptions. While lots of people pay lip service to "thinking outside of the box," scenario building is one way to actually do some original thinking. Our society should be combining research of what is with imagination of what might happen. It would be reckless not to do so.
The Pentagon has abandoned plans to set up an online trading market to help predict terrorist attacks.
The rest of the story can be found HERE
They seemed to have changed their minds on the issue.
When the futures fluctuate dramatically due to the new 'interest,' the Pentagon won't be the only one who knows. This system essentially lets terrorists know the probability of success of a given terrorist action before they launch it. They can see which of their plans have leaks and which do not, and use that data to organize more effectively.
This is an idea which Has Not Been Thought Out.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Wouldn't the US Gov't have a vested interest in making sure investments that were contrary to the US best interest were unsuccesful ?
If there is strong investment in they idea of a
terrorist attack on US soil wouldn't the US be required to do everything possible to insure these 'investments' weren't succesful ?
I'm only going to say this once, but I'm going to say it loudly.
You sure as fuck weren't watching the implied volatility and put/call ratios on airlines the week before 9/11.
If you don't know what that sentence means, you need to do some research. A lot more research. The story has since been picked up by conspiracy theorists, and the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty much nil. Dig back to September and October 2001, and read the financial press instead. You can find a lot of good starting points in the comments of this Slashdot article.
For the record, I believe (on circumstancial evidence - namely the rapidity with which the story was buried, leaving only conspiracy theorists to increase the noise-to-signal ratio,) that the SEC did the Right Thing - turned their conclusions over to other organizations who could ensure that the Right Thing (namely, outside of SEC jurisdiction) would eventually get done.
Also for the record, as I don't have a need to know, I can only hope that my speculation outlined above is correct. I do look forward to finding out when it's all declassified some decades hence. Gonna make for some damn interesting reading.
AP reports:
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner says he spoke to the program's director and that they both agreed "this thing should be stopped." A formal announcement is expected soon.
The senators called the idea "a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism" and declared it "ridiculous" and "grotesque." The opinion was echoed Tuesday by ranking Democratic Senator Tom Daschle, who said the program was an incentive to commit terrorist acts.
Hi, I'm from the F.U.D. er.. I mean U.S.A.!
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The Science Novel "Earthweb" by Marc Stiegler, gives a pretty good example of how an Ideas Futures Market could work. It includes not just betting, but prizes, feedback, and histories (think accuracy karma).
I'm disappointed to see all the negative reactions to this idea. I think trying to provide an incentive to many different experts to predict events of national importance is a great way to leverage the best minds in the country.
I can understand that some people are uncomfortable with the idea of letting investors profit from the death and misery of others. One way to alleviate such concerns would be to stipulate that any profits from the proposed futures market could only be donated to charities. This way, an incentive still exists for an investor to accurately weight his beliefs for different events, but succesful investors will only benefit society and not profit from the pain of others.
-Emin
I'd put money on Poindexter getting capped for coming up with this assinine (sp?) idea. (Just kidding, of course FBI/Carnivore/Echelon/TIA/CIA/HomelandSecurity/Etc .) (Damn what a large number of spy on the people groups we have these days. wow.)
Seriously though, there has to be a black market version. I wonder if there already was one or two. It not, there are now.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Pair of dictator assasinations for some civil wars!
And the best part of the game would be to keep one of each type so all the other players are just one card away from cornering their market and wondering what the #$%#.
Why have 1 person driving a backhoe when you could employ 20 with shovels?
Can't even spell Canada for gods' sake!
9/11 occured on Dubya's watch, can't change that fact. And he's just digging us deeper.... -AC the way to be!
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29WIRE- PENT.html?hp
if it was a hoax, those the NY Times talked to would have said so. Also note that Net Exchange links to the site prominently. Nice it's cancelled. http://my.netomat.net/catalyst/Catalyst3/
Some other poster mentioned put options on airlines in the wake of the 9-11 terror attacks. But if you saw the S&P 500 futures, you would know that when they reopened for trading after the attacks, the opening gap was tremendous, IIRC about 60 points. That's $3000 profit for a short Emini contract, which is traded electronically and requires less than $4500 margin (varies by broker). The big boy S&P 500 contract is $250 per point, so 60 points = $15,000 profit if you were short.
The important factor is the SIZE of the S&P futures market. It is huge and could easily absorb any short selling by Osama bin Laden without missing a beat.
The other Mideast futures lesson is what crude oil prices did during the outbreak of war in the first Gulf war. IIRC, the prices had been going steadily higher and when the airstrikes began, prices dropped $10 VERY QUICKLY. Crude oil futures trade 1,000 barrels, so you pocket a nice $10,000 if you were short. I've often thought the thing to do if you were Saddam was to go long on crude futures, do some sabre rattling, and then cash out with a nice profit...
pot.kettle(black);
It's Magritte! He's as Belgian as French Fries!
I see a lot of people complaining about this, but it sounds to me like an excellent and forward-thinking idea. I see a lot of "forecasts" on slashdot and kuro5hin, but how many of these loud forecasters would put their money where their mouth is? It's amazing how often both pundits and ordinary internet users make stupid, unfounded predictions. And are never called on it. This system would select for accurate prediction.
I think the people complaining about this have never paid attention to how markets work already.
This has been around for quite a while now...
http://www.ideosphere.com/fx/
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
Indexes, probably never.
Individual stocks? Multiple times a day during earnings season, and about 10% of the time before any given takeover/merger announcement. Typically there's a surge (or drop) in price on massive volume compared to recent trading.
Rumors leak.
You can't trade on insider information, but you can trade on rumors, provided those rumors aren't coming from insiders. When I see changes in price and volume that cannot be rationally explained, and I see merger rumors in the business press, and the rumored merger makes business sense at a price higher than that at which the company's trading, sometimes I'll put on a trade. Sometimes I get lucky and the deal goes through at a substantial premium. Sometimes the deal goes through - but at the price that had already been leaked. Sometimes I get unlucky and the rumors turn out to be bullshit. To date, I've been more lucky than unlucky. I pays my money and I takes my chances.
But to answer the broader form of your initial question - when was the last time a free market system composed of millions of individual traders paying their money and taking their chances - predicted specific events within days of their happening? It happens every day.
For readers who have a philosophical or ideological problem with the notion that a "free market system" composed of "individual traders" is somehow able to "predict" events, shift gears for a bit.
If I told you a distributed computing network composed of millions of individual price-estimating nodes had the emergent property of being able to predict prices in advance, you probably wouldn't blink - yet that's all a market is.
After wasting $600,000 of the tax payers dollars the military has decided that it's futures market was a bad idea. One place where that money could/should have been spent thing is fixing the problems in Afghanistan (remember that little country we destroyed and were suppose to help rebuild 2 years ago). It's now being over run, again, by warlords. Another is finding Saddam, why don't they invest some research dollars into finding him? Or Osama for that matter. Or investigate N. Korea a little bit more for the nuclear weapons program? I'm seriously starting to wonder where they find these research people. Did they find them on the psychic network?
Unfortunately, it was a public relations disaster and has already been scrapped.
Funny though, their website says no government agency would have access to the identities of those who bet... Well, say someone puts several million dollars on the empire state building being destroyed the day before it happens. What are the chances that they will get a visit from some well-armed FBI agents?
There is a big difference between this and the other examples cited. And one that might render this experiment useless. The Iowa Electronic Markets and similar experiments let masses bid on how masses react. (Everyone, but mainly US citizens, can place a bid on how the US population as a whole will vote). The USS Scorpion had experts in the field bidding on where the submarine could be found. In both cases, the bidders are part of a relevant population, either by being experts or by being part of the pool that will contribute to the final decision.
This DARPA initiative let's every Tom, Dick and Harry bid on what a small group of people, namely 5-20 terrorist leaders, will do.
To make this work like the earlier examples, they'd either limit bidding to members or Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Queda, PIRA and other terrorist groups (not quite feasible). Or they have to limit this to experts like police, intelligence services, insurance companies, security consultants, political observers, maybe journalists and the like.
for practically all our information on events in the Middle east, how exactly does that make us experts?
Just because you're a couch potato/news junkie, does not qualify you to be an investor in a futures market.
I'm going to sue! I thought of bombing the vatican FIRST!
This space available.
darn, misspelled "Shockwave Rider" in the parent. Hate to reply to self. Oh well.
BTW: here is an interresting article on the topic (in German, go fishing): Wetten, das die Zukunft spannend wird!...
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
I disagree. If people want to invest their money solely on the basis of CNN and Fox, they are more likely to lose it. That will improve the market because these investors will have less money to invest and be more interested in research. There are tons of information available about the countries of interest - most of us don't have time to keep up.
Remember, intelligence agencies have a very bad track record at predicting future events. That may be because the incentives affecting an individual employee reward political conformity rather than correctness. The Cold War was largely shaped and perpetuated by the flawed intelligence of the CIA and KGB.
The proposed system creates a class of analysts with an incentive for accuracy. And having their own money at stake will harness the analytical powers more effectively.
In the big picture, Enron-type disasters are needed to discipline the market. Likewise, this events market would make some mistakes. Maybe after losing a few thousand dollars people would learn not to predict events based on their political beliefs or what they saw on TV.
fuck! I meant to check 'post anonymously', not 'no karma bonus'! SHIT!
You have to admit this idea is quite "american."
The assassination of the King of Jordan sounds dramatic, but more mundane political changes have been bet on for a long time now. And in some cases in an ideas market system between individuals, not just solely with a traditional bookmaker. I know that Sporting Index and Betfair (the latter site seems to be rather IE-specific) have bets on the outcome of elections. A typical instrument might be one that pays $1 for every seat won by a political party in one parliamentary election - so if the party wins 200 seats you receive $200. Then the price this instrument trades at tells you the market's expectation of the result; a market-maker like Sporting Index might offer to buy the instrument at $300 and sell at $330. For Betfair, I think the price is solely determined by individuals.
As for whether anyone would want to place such bets, I can imagine that if you were the King's wife or close associate you might want to hedge against him being killed; in fact betting that he will be assassinated is just another form of life insurance. Or if you are the king's son and can't wait to succeed to the throne, bet that he won't be assassinated in the next 20 years, and on that future security borrow some money to fund your playboy lifestyle in the meantime.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Poindexter's firing.
They put away a guy named Jim Bell for just thinking about such an idea, and now they're trying to implement it themselves! What the hell?!?!?!?
Go google for Jim Bell and Assasination Politics and you'll see it's exactly the same idea as this.
... awaiting for nothing else but a such move like this one :)
Bravo Pentagon!!!
I guess the payoff would be pretty low for a car bomb in Israel. Since it seems to happens almost every other week.
sjees, never mind, ill come back tomorrow /Dread
the problem i see with this is as follows (forgive me if someone has already pointed this out):
lots of bets are placed on 'assassination of the president'. if this is actually being treated as intelligence then something will be done to prevent it from happening and nobodies bet will pay off. wising up, they bet on 'prevented assassination attempt of the vice president' the next time around.
for occurances such as this, only 2 parties will know about the event: the people who hatched the scheme, and the people who prevented it from being thwarted.
so only the government and the assassins can say that this bet should have paid off.
assuming that we don't listen to the assassins (theyre just saying things at this point, nothing would keep them from saying anything they want) then all we have is the government telling us what 'prevented' bets paid off and which ones didn't. of course, the government can also say whatever it wants, but they're on 'our side' so we'll be more likely to listen to them.
with a government that is ridiculously tight-fisted regarding information on events that actually DID happen (sept. 11 anyone?), to assume that they would be any more lax in disclosing events that might have happened is silly.
there are plenty of reasons they could supply to justify not divulging info that would have profited a speculator (national security would be the first one they'd use), but the consequence of this is that the market would reflect on whatever the government wants it to reflect, rather than the real world.
that, and it's barbaric.
Is it any surprise that a guy named Poindexter has been in charge of so MANY bad ideas?
By Ken Guggenheim
... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?" he said.
July 29, 2003 | WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., said he spoke by phone with the program's director, "and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped."
Warner announced the decision not long after Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle took to the floor to denounce the program as "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism."
Warner made the announcement during a confirmation hearing for retired Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, nominated to be Army chief of staff.
"This is just wrong," declared Daschle, D-S.D.
Warner said he consulted with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, and Appropriations Committee chairman Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and they agreed "that this should be immediately disestablished."
He said they would recommend that the Pentagon not spend any funds already in place for the program and said they would pull the plug on it during House-Senate budget conference committee negotiations later on this year.
The little-publicized Pentagon plan envisioned a potential futures trading market in which speculators would wager on the Internet on the likelihood of a future terrorist attack or assassination attempt on a particular leader. A Web site promoting the plan already is available.
When the plan was disclosed by two Democratic senators Monday, the Pentagon defended it as a way to gain intelligence about potential terrorists' plans.
Earlier, Warner had said that his staff was looking into the program and would report on it later Tuesday. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said she was appalled to hear of plans to set up "a futures market in death."
Other Democrats expressed similar alarm.
"The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., one of two lawmakers who disclosed the plan Monday.
The program is called the Policy Analysis Market. The Pentagon office overseeing it, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."
Traders would buy and sell futures contracts _ just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would be based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks.
Holders of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong.
A graphic on the market's Web page Monday showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown. Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as Middle East market, the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea missile attack.
That graphic apparently was removed from the Web site hours after the news conference in which Wyden and fellow Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticized the market.
Dorgan described the market as "unbelievably stupid."
"Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in
But in its statement Monday, DARPA said markets could reveal "dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."
According to its Web site, the Policy Analysis Market would be a joint pr
It is a *PUT* option. It is a promise to sell the buyer the stock at a given price on a given date.
No, it is a RIGHT to sell at the given price, not a promise. That's why it's an option. The owner does not have to exercise the option.
What a concept! Why, if we applied this logic to the conomy at large we could have predicted the bursting of the tech bubble on the market or the accounting fraud at places lik Enron and Worldcom... if we only had a more general economic futures mar- oh wait, nevermind.
Actually, it's the other way around:
If A sells B a put option on American Airlines with a strike price of $10, A is giving B the right to sell one share of AMR to A at $10.
If the stock goes down, say to $3, B can go into the open market, buy a share at $3, and then immediately sell it to A for $10, netting $7. (In reality, options aren't settled this way - A just pays B $7 directly, B doesn't have to buy the stock and then resell it).
In the scenario described above, B is betting that the stock will decline, while A is betting that it will stay stable or rise.
You described selling a call option, which is also a bet that the stock will go down. If A sells B a call on American at a $10 strike price, then A has sold B the right to _buy_ a share of American from A at $10. If the stock drops below $10, the option is worthless (B would be insane to buy a share from A at $10 if he can buy in the open market at $5). If the stock goes up to $15, then B can buy the share from A at $10, and sell it in the open market at $15, netting $5. In this case, A is betting that the stock will decline, while B is betting that it will rise.
The both buying a put and selling a call are bets that the stock will decline, the two have different risk profiles - if you buy a put, the most you can lose is whatever you paid for the option; if you write a call, your losses are technically unlimited (i.e. you sell a call at $10, and the stock goes to $1 million a share - you're on the hook for $999,990 per share).
not this ridiculous assasination futures, but forecasting other things. you could make a forecast on moore's law NOT holding up, and make money if you are right. and so on. This has great possibilities, and lead to free exchange of ideas. thats what the DARPA's public internet was for.
It's time to step back from the keyboard for a minute. Do you honestly believe that betting on murder is a good idea? If you answered yes then you are a moron. Stop embarrassing yourself in public.
IANAE. I am not an economist.
Yet I'm afraid that I think this one is likely to work, in predicting terrorism: when I look at it, it does not look like a true market.
To me, a true market has to have a supply and demand function. That is, if the price for an item is high, then people have to be able to step in, openly, and meet the demand with new supply, and cash in.
In this case, if the price for a terrorist attack was high, then someone has to be able to step in, provide the terrorist attack, and accept the money. That's just not going to happen, for obvious reasons: if it did, then it would make the market work successfully, but for an undesirable goal -- and would be shut down.
So this market has no true supply. That being the case, the most significant determinant of this market will not be true terrorism, but the trades of the biggest players. Those biggest players, in turn, may well be the media opinion columnists. They make their prediction, they explain their prediction in an article, people jump on the bandwagon, and the price rises. They then sell.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't think this one's going to work. In my opinion unfortunately, because having committed Slashdot heresy and read the article, it looks to me like the original arguments had merit.
Just not this implementation.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
When the fall came, it came with breathtaking speed. All the 50 years of prediction had proved to be pretty much dead on. The same could be said about Apartheid South Africa. In the end all their military might did not save either of them. Their own people stopped believing in their own system. When they stopped believing in themselves, they were doomed.
Israel presents the same situation. There is no one outside of the US and Israel that still believes in the Zionist cause. The Israeli's themselves are beginning to see that they are no different in their persecution of the Palestinians than how Jews had been persecuted for 2000 years. They are beginning to see that their quest for a country based on ethnic and religious purity is no different than such efforts in other countries. The result of such policies is always oppression, genocide and ultimately disaster. All of those other governments are now gone, leaving Israel alone.
How to predict when it will be over? History indicates that it is impossible to say when, but history also seems to say that when it comes, it will come rapidly.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=54 2&ncid=716&e=8&u=/ap/20030729/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/te rror_market
WOW!
Who let the Ferengi in?
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
The notion of "anonyminity" is total bullshit. Why do the press insist on reporting such inaccuracies? Everyone who connects to the site can be traced back to an IP and the government now has the ability to "sneak and peek" at all sorts of things without probable cause. With very few exceptions, the entire idea is a joke to anyone who doesn't have their head up their butt.
I think the whole project is nothing but a big honey pot for nutball wannabe terrorists, soldier of fortune subscribers, and another way rabid right wingers can maximize the entertainment value from someone else's misery.
As we New Yorkers like to say: fuckin' A.
... the trail went to a German bank, and I couldn't find any more info than that.
In the week before 2001-09-11, the volume of options traded on UAL (United Airlines) and AMR (American Airlines) was 500% of normal. 500% is not a blip. It's a huge freaking spike.
I didn't get these numbers from some.conspiracy.theory.org, I got them from cboe.com: the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, the official clearinghouse for options in the USA.
As for who did it
I agree with the parent. This was the smoking hot $40 million money trail and it dropped off the news radar within days.
"Follow the money" -- Deep Throat
Havn't you heard of Nick Leeson and the Barrings Crisis? He isn't the only trader who has put good money after bad chasing after bad in the same way as a lossing gambler does.
Yet I'm afraid that I think this one is likely to work, in predicting terrorism: when I look at it, it does not look like a true market.
Sorry, I wrote that -- I meant "unlikely to work".
Like a futures market, the number of contracts can be increased, this would allow those who believe price have "gotten" away from reality to make a profit. If it functions anything like the Iowa futures market (which I would sugest that you look up wwww.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ ), you could buy a set of new contracts for $1 from the central issuing authority. This would be two contracts, one paying off a $1 if the event happens and one paying of $1 if it does not happen. Those who believe a paticular contract is overpriced would buy a pair of contracts from the central authority and then SELL the "overpriced" contract into the market and retain the oposite contract. The selling in the market would move prices down, supply and demand always holds. Say the terrorist strike on america contract reached $.95 cents, and I didn't think one would happen. I would buy contract sets for $1 a sell the overpriced half for $.95 and hold onto the underprice part. if it doesn't happen I would recieve an additional $1 and be $.95 richer or every dollar I put up. I'm a financial engineer, and political futures marekts have been quite efficent. Read up on the Iowa political markets, they have been very good at predicting the future.
The worst part is the contract design. There is no graduation in risk allowing finer cintrol with the suggested mechanism. Futures on sports matches usually have to translate into something numerical like goal differences.
This is a brilliant idea.
Think of all of those professors and random FBI desk jockeys who proclaimed after Sept. 11th that we should've seen the signs. That one FBI woman (name escapes me) even tried to tell her boss, yadda yadda. You all remember that.
Well, this is the best way possible to sift through all that information. It's a well understood element of Game Theory, and it's quite frankly one of the coolest ideas I've seen the government do in a while (followed by the no-call list =)
This site is not about making money off of atrocities ($100 per bet), it's about getting people who know what they are talking about to talk, and filtering out the noise. Do you really think they are going to let joe al-queida terrorist set up an account with his hotmail address or whatever? Please.
This will be highly regulated. Washington insiders, foreign analysts/investors, professors, intelligence analysts. This is not the kind of place where joe dude off the street logs in and slaps down 5 bucks on King Hussien getting shot. This is an awesome concept, and honestly, they should've had it much much sooner.
I have heard it said that the U.S. Government should be ran like a profitable business. It appears that the U.S. Government has listened, and opted to emulate the mafia... wait... does that count as a business?
I was under the impression that this tool would be INTERNAL to the various government agencies, in which case as long as it's kept out of the public eye it is a wonderful tool. It's a great way to eliminate the tiered filter effect that stops or corrupts information on its way from the bottom to the top of the chain of command.
I'm surprised that anybody thought it could be anything less than a complete disaster to open it to the public. The costs in world opinion and strained diplomatic ties can't help but outweigh any predictive ability of the system.
...and all Gambling is Investment. That's just the way the ruble rolls. What i don't get is why anyone---unless they spent the last five years in a coma---would trust the markets to have any predictive power on an issue like this. Me, i'd bet a thousand that Saddam is either alive or dead, or somewhere in between.
Thanks, I hadn't had my coffee yet - you deserve all the "informative" mod points that went to me ;)
If I'm understanding correctly where I got it wrong is that if you buy a put option you have the option, but are NOT obligated (as I mistakenly said), to sell at the given price on the given date.
Thanks for your reply [and nice name. Did you really work for them?]
I can see how this works. However, what you are describing allows supply not of the traded product (that is, the terrorist strike), but of the derivative, which is a function of many things, including terrorist strike, but also including media articles and such. As such, it is a derivatives market, and I question how well derivatives markets predict the future.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
There's a simple solution to that. Make it so the option pays if either (a) the attack actually happens, or (b) it almost happens but is stopped by police, military, etc. That way, if the terrorists get caught, you still get paid. Win-win for everybody.
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
Do you really think a project like this was not well-thought out, as to the reaction it might get from the public?
Possibly this is just to show there are "level heads" in the legislature who oppose such a crazy project.
> Make it so the option pays if either (a) the attack actually happens, or (b) it almost happens but is stopped by police, military, etc.
That would be quite simple, if it were simple to define "almost happened" in a rational way. Does a tip that prevents a disaster count if the person involved is arrested before any of the plan is put in motion? Considering the scope this thing promised, how does a government being "almost overthrown" play out? It would be a great idea if you could define these things empirically, but there'd be a large amount of disagreement about what "almost" means. This would introduce uncertainty about the value of the futures, with the already-mentioned chilling effect on investment. And, it still doesn't answer for how increasing awareness for a possible event can alter its course, which again introduces uncertainty that'll chase away investors.
The thing to remember, which is one of the reasons it's such a dumb idea, is that it doesn't just include domestic (to the U.S.) terror events.
Virg
If it isn't a sick and twisted joke, it's a poorly thought-out, completely obvious, absolutely useless trap.
Osama: "No, we didn't blow up the mall of America; why, we bet half a million on Mount Rushmore!"
A good question, which has a good answer. And yes I did work for enron's trading desk, I'm a trader/financial engineer so dealing with how to make money ect off futures markets is what I do. There is a supply mechanism for the derivative, which is what you want. Because of the size of the positions one can take $100 there should be only a very very weak market mechanism to create the underlying behavior. The best evidence that markets can predict outcomes comes from here. www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ The Iowia Electronic markets and it's derivatives have been very succesfull in predicting the outcomes of political elections. The traditional futures markets are very adept at anticipating future events. When this idea was applied to the political area once again it proved true. Go to their website and search about the program and you will see that derivatives marekets (if structured well which isn't hard unless yoru california) are BETTER tools than most other ones. Their not perfect, but their BETTER than other tools hence the value in creating the electronic market.
- Run a large company with financial interest in a U.S. invasion of Iran.
- Launder money to someone without ties to your company.
- Have him bet heavily on an Iranian-backed terrorist attack.
- Let the President declare war.
- Make bank on arms sales and infrastructure contracts.
If you stand to make a couple billion in the process, you can easily recoup the costs of wrongly predicting an attack.Ceci n'est pas une signature.
I think many of the comments hit the target by calling the scheme a means of information gathering. If the FBI/NSA/CIA starts questioning people that bet correctly on the futures, wouldn't that actually be a deterent to betting? If you have inside information you wouldn't want the Government to know that. So would the information gathered be less than reliable? Doesn't the fact that the Government is obvious in its intent to gather innformation from the trades make the information useless?
Dear DARPA: I would like to request a $3 million grant to set up an online system of futures trading for predicting the probability and time of Mr. Poindexter's (and cohorts) next conviction. This is scientifically feasible. For contact information, please go to AOL Keyword: Taxpayer Waste.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Yes, there was an insurance policy (with Swiss-Re and AXA, if I remember correctly).
Does the purchase of that policy PROVE pre-existanct knowledge of the 9/11 attacks? Not by a long shot.
It does, if you consider that Swiss Re and Axa were also targets of the same "investors"... who specifically picked UAL an AA among all the airlines, and who specifically picked Swiss Re and AXA among all the (re)insurance companies.
But maybe the investors weren't on Bin Laden's team, but rather on the CIA's
In general, the idea that people are making a big deal out of something with a more mundane explanation is a good one. But in this case, according to the *actual* Snopes site, that doesn't seem to be the case - http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.htm
I don't even need to put my case forward this time.
Stupid arrogant arse-licks.
Any statement we find offensive.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
perhaps you have read the paper/s by jim bell (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&i e=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=assassination+politics) . while you might be appalled by the thought of bidding on destruction, you might like to know of the many other beautiful things that capitalism has brought us! child labor, sex trade, cigarettes... predicting the unthinkable is not pretty.
to bet against things that you know most people would bet on? For example, if one of the questions were "Will New York city fall victim to a terrorist attack in the next 5 years?" I would think that most of the "investors" would vote "Yes" on this. The government would see this, flood New York with FBI agents, and probably prevent an attack from happening. Knowing this would be the sequence of events, I would bet against this happening...easy money.
The Axed Docs are on Cryptome.
Informative?!? Are you on crack? The guys posted a bloody .doc file infected with a fucking Sircam virus! Gawd, please check those links...
...I suggested this market to a friend who works for a key Senate Committee concerned with this issue right after Sep 11th. Not surprised to see it experimented with and dispappointed to see it killed prematurely.
There is no more effecient entity for gathering information and predicting events than a free market where information provides the edge needed for personal profit. If this experiment highlights a few individuals with a talent for event-prediction the real power would come later - from a vastly expanded market where volume, interest and other indicators can be analyzed for telltale patterns of activity. But that market already exists.
Prior to Sep 11th sales of reinsurance companies and purchases of gold were out-of-step with market momentum. Only after Sep 11th did this market action's meaning become clear. The lure of easy money to finance future terrorist operations will be too great in the future for then hostile actors to not perform the same clandestine trading. Only when these patters are analyzed for correlations with intelligence data will a valuable real-world indicator exists for predicting future terrorist attacks using what I would term financial signals.
I would hope that homeland security would employ the same information model used in hedge-funds: a real-time information bus. Where various feeds are aggregated to deliver buy/sell signals (threat signals) - the true beauty of which is that intel sources and methods can be protected because its the signal strength, frequency and correlative properties which matters most in aggregate analysis.
I hear various members of Congress talk about how screwed up that situation is on TV and I laugh at how quickly the solution could be implemented if USGOV could afford one solid hedge-fund CTO.
For the record, the Conspiracy Theorists (a simple Google search will confirm) have made the connection between Deutsche Bank, who processed these transactions, and our current Executive Director of the CIA, A B Krongard - who founded A B Brown, which was bought by Deutsche Bank, he remained on as a director.
Now, while this has a distinct odor, it's nowhere near "smoking gun". I'm just wondering what a big invenstment banking director has, in the way of experience with the Spy Business, such that he lands a cushy job with the CIA? I mean, what are they teaching these bank directors anyway? Is it the fancy sports cars, or what?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Foresight Exchange has a market that has been running since at least 1994. It uses fake currency, has email and telnet interfaces, and a mailing list for development of the code that runs the market.
The group of people behind this market tends towards transhumanism, extropianism, etc. You can find a summary of "how the market worked so far" at http://www.extropy.org/ideas/journal/previous/199
Also intereesting: Jay Scott wrote a bot for automating purchases and sales in this market.
So, right about now the government should be getting busy arresting itself.
I don't think we can really trust the people who shorted the stocks right before 9/11, can we?
I guess that was their beta test program for this idea.
either this is a hoax or it's the most masturbatory fundamentalist-capitalist display of self-worship, arrogance, callousness and insanity i have ever witnessed.
is this a joke???
Agreed on this and everything else you said in your post. I'm an active trader who saw the bizarre option behavior and damn near traded on it simply because the rest of the market was in lousy shape that week, so it was a cinch that it was a leaked earnings warning or impending downgrade. I decided not to make the trade because the implied volatility was pricing in what I figured was a damn near impossible move down. I mean, even if you know the stock's gonna fall, if you overpay for the puts, you still lose money. And there's just no way it's gonna fall that much... so I scratched my head, put the airlines on my radar screen as a sector to watch, and went back to watching the rest of the market. And then the shit hit the fan.
During the week in which trading was halted, I found myself periodically *screaming* at the television that someone, somewhere, had damn well better be spending this week looking at [things I thought of that I've SNIPPED], to say nothing of things I hadn't thought of.
For what little it's worth (now that the idea of integrating a market with intelligence data as an early-warning system been dropped due to a PR blowback), thanks for being part of it. You did good.
Is $3M/yr worth building a diplomatic eyesore that only filters the stupid and greedy?
And I think they will probably do just that eventually.
Or - they won't even have to. Someone else will and they will get all the intel they need by monitoring the prices.
Remember 9/11? Well, there are still some billions left over from a very suspicious short put against two very unlucky airlines. The US already has a system in place to monitor EVERY financial transaction, but they can't get this one solved? Hmm...
n g_ 9-11_Stock_Trades_Co/revealing_9-11_stock_trades_c o.html
Read it for yourself!
http://www.americanfreepress.net/051302/Reveali
You hear the cops finally busted Madame Marie
for telling fortunes better than they do?
- Bruce Springsteen
The CIA is going to raise $2.5 million dollars by investing in the Sept 11th tragedy?
Please, common sense dictates that when you factor in the size of the CIA budget and other less nefarious ways of procuring more cash (drug sales, counterfeiting foreign currency), the idea that they would risk investing in the Sept 11th tragedy seems ludicrous.
Foresight Exchange uses play money for betting on real world events, including politics and catastrophies.
In early September 2001, they estimated a (around) 40% probability of a major act of terrorism in the US.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Well, the Snopes sight specifies that the transactions before sept 11 were 200 times normal, but it doesn't specify the fequency 200 times normal spikes happen (1 per 200 days?). If one heavy institutional investor was responsible for the infrequent but regualar put purchases it would still explain it properly yet Snopes would still tell the truth.
/ 2/ 62018.shtml
BTW, the snopes article was updated Oct 3, 2001, less then 3 weeks from the tradegy. I don't think suffcient time had passed for a througho debunking.
btw... here's a source
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/6
Sometimes when they "ask the audience" the audience is wildly off. And this is with publicly known _facts_ not paranoid speculations based on fear and/or hatred.
or mabey someone will come up with a scheme to collect the money (or think they have).
Or mabey someone will inform their mother to make a particular bet before they drive that truck loaded with explosives through a sky scrapper.
Oh come on, this project has no saving graces. The Bush administration is full of nutcase ideologues, ever read the PNAC site?, and this just the high priests of the religion of the market trying to have mass.
Totally offensive. Disgusting. How would Americans like if somebody outside USA set up the same thing and bet on the killing of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeldt, ...
What planet does the USA Govt elite live on?
the predictive value of competitive scenerio evaluation ( ie. the sort of markets proposed ) has been repeatedly demonstrated to be effective in analyzing complex scenerios which possess substantial degrees of uncertainty. Successful forcasting of such scenerios requires the assimilation of diffuse and variegated information sources. A futures market is a nearly ideal mechanism for modeling such information. DARPA didn't pull this idea out of their asses , it's been studied for over a decade in various incarnations.
slashdot used to be a fun and useful venue for vetting ideas , but now it's useless. Too many idealogues , and militant cinicists. Wave to the future boys , it's passing you by.
Would indeed have worked, if there hadn't been so many of them who had the same idea....
An archive of the Policy Analysis Market site, just before it disappeared, is here:
a rket-org/
http://www.firstpr.com.au/archive/policyanalysism
I think this ranks in the stupidity stakes with the 1950s/60s Project Orion proposal for blasting a manned spaceship into orbit by exploding hundreds of atomic bombs underneath it:
http://www.mediamatic.net/cwolk/view/7049
Csound, 21 metre Sliiiiinky, the Gentlemanly Art of
Anonymous Coward? Very well.
So you guys don't feel like keeping up appearances anymore. Spoooky.
How entertaining it is to say You as if you Americans were _all_ to blame, isn't it.
How rude of me.
But guess what will happen.
It's a pity you erased the site. It would have prooved tangible proof of stupidity [al right; it's not as if we don't have fuel, but c'mon.] as opposed to you guys bombing countries with the awsome Veto-explanation 'Tell ya later'.
-Tell ya later? But we need some serious evidence right now. It's countries you'll demolish, y'know?
-Yeah, but we Really promise we'll tell ya later. Meanwhile we'll spy on your UN delegates.
-Well.. If you Really promise; then it's ok. Just do me a favour and spread your legs for me so that I may lick your ass correctly, k?
Great, guys.
Keep it up the good work and we promise to be your humble lackeys.
'Sure there's a God. He just doesn't want to get involved.'
no shit.
Greetings from Stockholm.
This is strange !! This webpage disappeared today.... probably slashdot effect caused it or maybe they decided to back out and take it down !!
Now I know that they update their website frequently !!
Read my other post about this, basically the Put trades are large frequent purchases. Large investors in insurance and airline industries play put options to balance their investments. All in All, companies spend HUNDREDS of MILLIONs of dollars buying theses options per year. Note, that's not the payoff, that's the cost of buying the option, which is usually far under the cost of the payoff. A put option with a strike price of 20 on a stock that recently went from 30 to 40, is probably very very cheap.
BTW, those airlines slipped 50% from the beginning of 2001 to just before the tragedy. Stocks that slip such as that are prime targets for buying put options.
By Eli Lehrer
Consequences ensue.
People actually trading on death! What a horrible idea!
Not only should terrorism derivatives be outlawed, so should terrorism insurance.
And life insurance! Who in their right mind would buy life insurance! You give your beneficiaries a reason to knock you off so they can profit from your death - and you pay the premium yourself!
(In most cases its illegal for the beneficiary to buy insurance on someone else. Except for businesses. A business has every reason to work a "key employee" to death because they'll just replace him with a warm body and collect a million bucks or few.)
Okay, complete OT, mind if I ask a question: what happened with Enron, with regards to you? How did you come to be working at a company that turned out so corrupt? And what was your response as news started filtering down? Or did you get blindsided (and if so, how)?
[And on a related note, was Enron betting, not based on markets, but based on something like Stratfor forecasts? Was that a major part of the circumstances of their downfall?]
Also, how did Enron manage to mess up the market's predictive properties in their own case? What weaknesses does this imply to the market model, and how can this be fixed? Or did they? Did the market correctly predict things?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Take a breath, for crying out loud.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
I'm saddened by the knee-jerk reactions I'm reading here from /. users. There is real science here, and it has been used successfully in the past. Apparently, some /. readers are not interested in science and its potential benefits.
Ok, let's say that the military backs off on this project, and it turns out that perhaps it could have saved many lives. Too bad? If it doesn't work, the research does not stop, does it?
In wartime, lots of seemingly "crackpot" ideas are tried, because OUR LIVES DEPEND ON IT. Let the results speak for themselves, when the time comes. Letting a couple of science-deaf congress critters make fun of the idea and away it goes. Too bad, one less weapon in our anti-terrorism armament. Maybe we should get rid of the guns toted by the guards at the airline security checkpoints, too. Or maybe the metal detectors. Goofy ideas, too, eh?
The famous example of using these theories was the finding of a sub that was lost in mid-Atlantic during the Cold War. An amazing story of how "new" science and seemingly anti-common sense work could reap great benefits.
By the way, DARPA has the word "research" in it. Not everything they try becomes operational, not everything they try works, but some do, like microprocessors.
And don't worry about this all being "sick". The military (and even insurance companies) have to plan and study for events and things that are a LOT more disgusting than simply wagering on unpleasant outcomes.
Do you think that ground troops and their commanders don't go through similar patterns of thinking and behavior as this betting pool? If they don't cover all the possibilities, they become dead soldiers.
By the way, also, commercial firms are heavily into this type of information analysis, successfully predicting credit card fraud, and so on. If we cut it off for the anti-terrorism, we just make ourselves more open to attack. If there is one clear result of the 9/11 commission report, we need a way to process ALL the information, as fast as possible to see danger patterns as they unfold. This means that the information gathered will not always be processed by people. In that case, you need algorithms and techniques to squeeze knowledge out of the Niagara Falls of data. How do you develop the algorithms? Research projects like the above.
What happened with me? I had joined the company for about 3 months in their rotational program and was learning how to be a trader and BOOM the company blew up. Thus I became an underemployeed graduate student. I saw things coming apart, but I didn't think the company would go compleatly away, the deal they had with dynegy was something I thought was going to work. I saw everyone I knew, all my friends lose their jobs and try and fight their way into the few other spots open in the industry only to lose them again quickly. Enron was a nice place to work they treated people well paid them very well and it was a place where you could come up with an idea and get the resources to do it. The whole problem was that the guys who DID a deal got to VALUE the deal and the profits off it which made their bonus. Some people got greedy and made bad deals make money on paper and were given more and more room to make deals. There were great energy traders at enron, who made the market spent the time and energy and made very good money off trading in the markets by having MORE information and analysis that anyone else. The TRADERS didn't lose all the money, didn't bankrupt the company... the structured finance guys most of whom were close to fastow did that. They took out loans based on shams and lies and then took the cash to pay off the last sham transaction and the whole thing kept getting bigger and bigger until they couldn't get any more money. Enron is an example of how the market goes off the BEST information that it has at the time, if those are lies the market gets offtrack. The marekt isn't perfect, but it is ON AVERAGE better than anything else we've got.
But that means that your internal corporate finances were based upon personal hype, not on any market process at all.
If I understand correctly, the Fastow-group traders would be a natural outgrowth of such a thing: you feed more resources to those who simply *say* that they were successful; but the fantasy world has a much higher success rate than the real world. So you automatically are going to funnel more resources to the frauds.
So it sounds to me like you are saying that Enron did not follow market principles.
That said, did the derivatives market predict the crash of Enron, before the news was out through other sources?
I understand what you are saying about it being better on average, but one needs to look at the worst cases -- Enron, Worldcom, Waste Management, and so on, and see if the derivatives market is generally predicting the failures successfully, or not predicting the failures, or is statistically the same as other methods. Once you know that, then you can look and see what the limitations of the derivatives market is, with regard to forecasting, and perhaps find better forecasts.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The NY Times had a story yesterday about how they will be abandoning their plans.
- PENT.html?ex=1060598562&ei=1&en=db62c44e2fbc6b 4a
The Pentagon's plan was met with astonishment and
derision almost from the moment it was disclosed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/29/politics/29WIRE
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.