I notice you give 5 scenarios (missing the vote count was wrong for some reason other than fraud) and answer "yes" to all but one. That's convincing enough for me to ignore the rest of your weaseling over which of the four *in the absence of other evidence* is the most "plausible".
Perhaps I should have been more explicit -- I was applying Occum's Razor, which is a rule of thumb that (to paraphrase) states that the explanation or theory which requires the least amount of unsupported assumptions (a subjective determination, I agree) is most likely to be correct.
I never really followed the debate on this, and I'm not trying to convince anyone that election fraud did or did not occur (I myself haven't even formed a solid opinion on that). There are other possibilities that would explain the data, so I agree that the discrepancies do not *prove* or even *indicate* election fraud. There is, however, a bit of burden of evidence when you want to say the data doesn't even *suggest* election fraud, which is what the comment to which I originally replied seemed to be saying.
I'll go through the scenarios again (including my tongue-in-cheek scenario), trying to rephrase what I'm saying.
Could the numbers be explained by election fraud? Yes, it is possible. I'm already convinced there are plenty of people with the motivation to commit election fraud, so that requires no additional assumptions for me (and I would think for most people). The only additional part that needs to be assumed is that someone with that motivation also had the ability to commit election fraud on such a scale and furthermore that they chose to do so (or that many people could and did, either working together or independently to cause the witnessed result in aggregate). That's a small assumption for someone as cynical as myself, but no doubt some people disagree.
Could the numbers be explained by a situation where people voting for a particular candidate were less likely to admit it to pollsters than people who voted for another candidate? Yes, it is possible. I really can't think of a good motivation for that, so it's a bit hard for me to accept that possibility while it's so vague. I am, however, quite open to hearing any more specific explanations.
Could the numbers be explained by people just giving random responses to get away from the pollsters? I said no to this before, but you still mentioned it as a plausible explanation, and strictly speaking it is a possible explanation. So yes, it is possible. I'm not sure it makes much sense, since it would be just as quick to give a real answer as a random answer. But even if that weren't an issue, since the races examined in the link I gave were close, the chances of random responses skewing the results so far would be about the same as randomly selecting a bad sample to get such a skew, which has an incredible 1 to 660,000 odds. Not only does this require accepting an unsupported assumption, statistically it's just plain unlikely.
Could the numbers be explained by improper sampling? Yes, it is possible. This would require me to accept either that sampling biases existed during this election that haven't existed in prior elections, or that they existed previously but were never noticed before now. This is a bit hard for me to accept, but only because I don't see a reason to think there would be new biases introduced this election, and I do think that if similar biases had existed before then there's a pretty good chance we would have noticed them before. With additional information (e.g. some evidence that the polling process was significantly changed, possibly introducing new biases), I would have an easier time accepting this. Again, I'm open to hearing some, but no one has yet offered me any.
Could the numbers be explained by intentional distortions by pollsters? Yes, it is possible. But, just as for the election fraud possibilit
...exit polling suggests the last two elections were rigged.
As someone who works in a survey organization as a statistician, please let me explain that there is no guarantee any poll/survey comes up with the true answer. Perhaps people that voted for a candidate didn't want to admit it for some reason. Perhaps people just said anything to get away from the pollsters. Or perhaps the sampling was messed up. Or perhaps the pollsters had their own agenda.
While everything you say is true, I think it is more misleading than the grandparent statement (maybe that's because you're a statistician?;-) Sorry, couldn't resist the joke). GP said "...exit polling suggests the last two elections were rigged." (emphasis mine). It does indeed "suggest" election rigging, in the sense that election rigging is the most straightforward, plausible explanation.
I have heard lots of speculation similar to yours, but I haven't heard convincing evidence or even a convincing rationale.
Could the numbers be explained by election fraud? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? With no further information, yes of course -- there are many people who would have been strongly motivated to try to rig the system in a close election.
Could the numbers be explained by a situation where people voting for a particular candidate were less likely to admit it to pollsters than people who voted for another candidate? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? Maybe, but if so it's not as straightforward as the explanation for election fraud. If you have a convincing rationale, please share it or provide a link.
Could the numbers be explained by people just giving random responses to get away from the pollsters? No, my understanding is that it could not explain the numbers with without an extremely unlikely coincidence -- the discrepancies are too large to be adequately explained by this. The top Google result for a search on "exit polls statistical significance" sends me to this document (pdf link) about the 2004 polls. Assuming the math in that paper is even close to correct, it would be extremely unlikely that random responses could explain what happened.
Could the numbers be explained by improper sampling? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? Maybe, I don't know. If you have one, please share it or provide a link.
Could the numbers be explained by pollster plotting? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? Maybe, but I really doubt it. This would wind up being a pretty significant conspiracy theory. If you think you have one anyway, please share it or provide a link.
I think GP's quoted statement was a reasonable and accurate assessment of the situation (not the whole comment, just the part that we've quoted). If GP had used the word "proves", or even a weaker term such as "indicates", I wouldn't have been inclined to argue with you. However, the word "suggests" is weak enough that I don't see a need to hedge it with idle speculation on what else might possibly be the case -- we might as well put forth the explanation that God intervened in the election to cause the result He desired.
In summary, your response seems to imply that there is a more likely explanation than election fraud -- but without any supporting evidence or even a convincing rationale, I don't think that's true.
It really doesn't matter how many parties are involved in a country's government. The majority party gets to write the rules (laws) and more importantly...interpret them. The Swedish government is no different than any other country.
Well, that's not strictly true -- not all democracies are built in exactly the same way. Many democratic countries have systems that use proportional representation (rather than "winner takes all"), and encourage or force the creation of coalition governments if one party can't get more than 50% representation alone.
The USA has a system with that "winner takes all" sort of feel -- which is why, under the current system in the US, there will very likely never again be more than 2 dominant parties in national politics, and if there are, it will almost certainly be a transient situation that will last no longer than 1 major election. Instead, you are more likely to see platform shifts in the dominant parties in attempt to (re)gain those "third-party" voters.
On the other hand, Sweden does use coalition governments, and such a system encourages parties to form alliances with one another or at least avoid alienating one another in situations where their platforms are not strictly at odds. So, it is entirely likely that the larger parties take more notice of smaller parties in Sweden than in the USA, beyond attempts to absorb their voting base.
While I understand why that could have been taken as a joke, it probably wasn't. There is a belief that the US national bird was almost the Turkey, though it is most likely a myth.
So what you are saying is that the rational choice -- for everyone -- is not to support the band. Is that still true under the assumption that if no one supports the band, the band will stop producing music?
If everyone followed your logic, the band would stop producing music. Even if, for every individual, it is worth it for them to pay $1 for the download in order to keep the music coming, and even if that additional payment (in aggregate) would make the difference in whether or not the band continues producing music.
So, to recap, let's assume every rational person would be willing to pay $1 to the band to keep them producing more music, but instead makes the "rational" choice not to pay anything. The result would be that the band stops producing music, and all those "rational" people didn't get the outcome they would have preferred (and which they could have achieved, but failed to achieve due to your "logic"). To put this in more technical terms, global adoption of your strategy does not result in a globally optimal situation, even though it is optimal for each individual. (Or to use game theory jargon, your strategy may result in a Nash equilibrium, but it does not result in a Pareto optimum.)
You know how they say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."? I think that is the case here -- you know enough game theory to decide what a rational player would do, but not enough to realize there is a better end result that can be achieved if you take a global view. The situation here is essentially the Prisoner's Dilemma:
The unique equilibrium for this game is a Pareto-suboptimal solution--that is, rational choice leads the two players to both play defect even though each player's individual reward would be greater if they both played cooperate. In equilibrium, each prisoner chooses to defect even though both would be better off by cooperating, hence the dilemma.
Some of us hope to achieve the Pareto optimum, which would be better for all involved than what would result if everyone adopted your strategy. So do not discourage others from supporting the band. Do not delude yourself into thinking that the only thing that makes sense is not to support the band -- that sort of thinking often leads to worse results than an approach which is a little less "rational".
Maybe in Kentucky $60k/yr is a decent family income, but you would be hard pressed to afford a $200k house on that.
Wow, you're pretty off-base, I'd say. First, let's look at median state incomes: I count 32/51 states+DC that have a median income less than $60k. Even California's median income is less than $65k. If you look here instead, you get much lower numbers -- I don't know why.
Anyway, I live in Louisville, Kentucky. It is, according to the US Census Bureau, the 27th largest city in the US (I point that out just to make it clear I'm not in a rural area, where (I'm fairly sure) housing is much cheaper by $/sqft).
My fiance and I have a combined income of $70k, and just bought our first home. We were approved for a mortgage of up to $300k. Granted, I thought that was a little ridiculous, but I later realized we *could* have afforded to pay it. We got our loan at 5.875% (30-year fixed) due to good credit, and we're fairly frugal people, but it would not have required much effort -- maybe a bit of attention to how often I upgrade my computer equipment, and that sort of thing. According to this, a 95% loan on a $300k house would cost less than $1,700/month. Add on property taxes and home insurance, and we'd be looking at around $2k/month. The amount of money we put into savings each month plus the amount we're actually paying for our mortgage easily tops that (well... it doesn't really stay in savings because I usually dump it back into the mortgage as additional principle payments). Now, I admit would couldn't afford that if we had 2 children, and we're making $70k instead of $60k, but on the other hand I'm talking about a $300k house, as opposed to $200k.
But let's back up a minute -- this begs the question (yes, it really does, you grammar Nazis -- it "fails to consider the question") of whether you need a $200k house in Kentucky. I can promise that you don't. See, I don't know what $200k will get you in the San Francisco area, but with just a quick search out here you can get a 9-room ranch-style house (4-bedroom, 2-bath) with an unfinished basement on 16 acres of partially wooded land (with pond(s), a stream, a deck, and a 2-car carport) with an asking price under $180k. With a bit of effort looking around and some negotiating, I'm sure you can get more for a full $200k.
Suppose the germ developed a version of itself that was 100% lethal and then killed its own host before the host could spread it. Well the germ dies too, doesn't it?
No, the germs don't necessarily die. There are plenty of diseases that can be transmitted from a dead body. That's how humans get mad cow disease from eating beef, for example.
Now, like the GP poster said, if germs actually evolved the ability to control the dead, they could animate the dead body to actively seek out new, live hosts. This would be a very effective trait, and it would be naive and irresponsible to assume such a thing cannot happen.
So... you think they're upset because the two-month price drop made them realize just how much of a premium they paid to get it first?
I dunno, I agree with some of the other posters -- if they were willing to pay the premium, they were willing to pay the premium, and that should be the end of that. I can't imagine they didn't realize they were paying it -- and even if they didn't know how much was going into Apple's pockets, they were still willing to pay the high price.
I have a different theory. There's a very subtle difference between being upset they paid so much and being upset others aren't having to pay as much, and I think a lot of the bitching is probably because of the latter. The short wait before the steep drop offends their sense of fairness more, and it makes the iPhone less of an elite status symbol than if it had stayed more expensive longer. So in that second sense, they may not have gotten what they thought they were paying for -- 2 months of elite status rather than, say, 6 months.
Of course, anyone bitching that they would prefer for others to pay more for something (rather than because they would prefer to have paid less) will be recognized for the elitist, superficial snob they are. Therefore even if that is the real reason behind much of the bitching, I bet they won't say it that way -- they'll complain that it was a "stupid" move for Apple, or that Apple gouged them, or something else that misses the reason they're actually upset. I'm not saying that Woz is one of those people -- just that he probably knows how many of that type of people are customers.
I think someone wearing a bomb, wanting to get in as far as possible, would NOT be wearing the mechanism on the outside of their clothing
Aha! So clearly, it should be policy to let anyone through who looks like they have a bomb, and respond with appropriate force against those who appear to be no threat at all.
39 cm^3 that's a bar of length 3.9cm, height 1cm and width 1cm
Close, but no cigar. A bar that's 3.9cm x 1cm x 1cm is only 3.9cm^3. On the other hand, a bar that's 5cm x 3.9cm x 2cm is 39cm^3, which is still a nice-size battery for a laptop (assuming the article meant 39(mm^3) rather than (39mm)^3), if it can last as long as is expected of laptop batteries.
Actually, I have to agree with the AC here. AC was arguing with a specific point you made:
Likewise, if it's been shown that on average men are stronger than women, and you pick a random woman and a random man, odds are that the man is physically stronger than the woman. That's not discrimination, it's statistics. Anyone telling you different is wrong.
Strictly speaking, what you said is not a statistical fact. In practice, it is extremely likely to be true that a higher average means there are better than even odds that a random man is stronger than a random woman, but there are plausible scenarios where the odds are reversed when compared to the averages. ACs have given 2 such scenarios -- one involving outliers due to genetic defect, and one involving a bimodal distribution.
Neither AC, I think, was attempting to say that their scenario is true, or even that it is false that "[If] you pick a random woman and a random man, odds are that the man is physically stronger than the woman." They were saying that the statement "if it's been shown that on average men are stronger than women, and you pick a random woman and a random man, odds are that the man is physically stronger than the woman." is not true -- in other words, that the part about the odds does not necessarily follow from the part about the averages.
To give another example, let's imagine that Chuck Norris has a daughter, and then later ascends to another plane of existence during one of his roundhouse kicks. This daughter, like her father, is strong enough to knock the earth out of orbit, should she decide to roundhouse kick solid ground. Her incredible strength (paired with the loss of Chuck Norris) could result in a situation where the average strength of women is higher than the average strength of men. However, it could still be true that if you pick a random woman and a random man, you are more likely to get a man who is stronger than the women -- in this case, because the chances of selecting Chuck Norris's daughter in a random sample is abysmally small, similar to AC's previous comment about removing outliers from the average (a point you seem to have misunderstood).
Note again that I am not speaking to the reality of the situation (as should be clear by the Chuck Norris references); I am making a point that the information about averages does not mean what you think it means.
The reason this happens is that in measuring whether a random man is stronger than a random woman, you ignore how much the man is stronger or weaker -- you merely measure whether he was stronger. So, Chuck Norris (or Chuck Norris's daughter) would be reduced to a single, evenly-weighted binary data point; no single data point can move the result more than any other data point. This is not true for averages, where a single outlier can drastically change the result.
It's just useful information when dealing with, or predicting future observations about, populations similar to the sampled one. Trying to state otherwise is ingenuous.
Well, kinda. It is useful information, but not as useful as you seem to think; in fact, given just the averages without any distribution information, there is virtually nothing you can extrapolate or predict about the population. Now, if you also knew that the distributions were normal distributions (which they probably are in reality, but should not be assumed to be), then the quoted statement would be true. If you further had information about the standard deviations of the distributions, as well as what the averages are (in actual value, not just knowing which is higher), then you could probably calculate the odds that a random man is stronger than a random woman. Information which includes distribution data along with average data is far more meaningful than unadorned averages.
They were superbly trained these students. Their minds were fine, keen, ready. When they weren't working, they rested. They were not blunted and distracted by a dozen other obligations. They never fell asleep in class because they were tired from having worked on rotational duty the day before. Their society maintained them in complete freedom from want, distractions, and cares.
What they were free to do, however, was another question. It appeared to Shevek that their freedom from obligation was in exact proportion to their lack of freedom of initiative.
He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand. At first he refused to give any tests or grades, but this upset the University administrators so badly that, not wishing to be discourteous to his hosts, he gave in. He asked his students to write a paper on any problem in physics that interested them, and told them that he would give them all the highest mark, so that the bureaucrats would have something to write on their forms and lists. To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. How could the diligent students be distinguished from the dull ones? What was the good in working hard? If no competitive distinctions were to be made, one might as well do nothing.
"Well, of course," Shevek said, troubled. "If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it."
It's a very interesting fiction book which explores several "what if we did things *that* way instead?" ideas with regard to society; education is one of those touched on. I highly recommend it. From your comments, you in particular may find some ideas that resonate with you.
Ah, I don't recall you saying anything about a secret bid
From this comment by me, which is part of the back-and-forth you and I have been having (emphasis added):
The same thing happens with the auction type described earlier, for a different reason -- it is a secret auction. So, if you bid $11,000, no one else will know what you've bid, and they'll keep on bidding. If someone else bids $10,000 before it's over, and that's the second-highest bid, you'll have to pay $10,000.
That only works with secret sealed bids
Which is exactly what we (or at least I) have been talking about this entire time. The original comment in this thread of conversation said (emphasis added):
Auctions that follow the Vickrey auction scenario are much closer to the "right" market price. Basically, everyone posts a secret bid, and the person who bids the highest wins, paying the price of the second highest bid.
To which you replied:
In order to be fair the person bidding the highest should pay what they bid.
That is how this started, and so I have been making the case for allowing the highest bidder to pay the second-highest bid under that auction type, not in auctions in general (which should have been clear from the "street-corner" and eBay examples I have given, where the highest bid is what I said would be paid). If you didn't understand what we were talking about, you should have paid more attention and/or read the Wikipedia link which explains exactly what we were discussing.
The "you waited too long to bid" scenarios you describe cannot happen in Vickrey auctions, and so they are irrelevant to this discussion. The only reason I brought up other auction types (eBay's proxy bidding and open bidding auctions) is to illustrate the fact that they, too, only require the highest bidder to pay more than what the second-highest bidder is willing to pay (if the bidder is smart and/or no one is cheating), and therefore the Vickrey auctions should intuitively have similar final prices to other auction types, despite allowing the highest bidder to pay the second-highest bid. That, and the fact that you said (emphasis added) "Generally no, whatever a person is willing to bid is what they should pay if they bid the highest.", which is not true even in regular auctions. Perhaps you meant "Generally no, whatever a person bids is what they should pay if they bid the highest.", but that isn't what you said.
I'm sorry if you didn't realize what I was talking about, but it should have been obvious from the thread.
That may be the way it works on eBay but that's not how it works at live auctions. At a live auction you don't tell the auctioners what your max bid will be. Nor will they automatically raise your bid for you.
True, but in real auction it is true that the highest bidder must only out-bid the second highest bidder. If I am willing to pay $100 for an item, but the most anyone else is willing to bid is $50, then I can win the auction for $51. Just like the system we're discussing.
And as regards auction winners only paying the second highest bid, as I said if someone wants to they can easily shutdown bidding by bidding a ridiculus amount. And you haven't offered a rejoiner.
You must not be looking at all the score-1 comments that go over this, in response to the many people who have brought up the same erroneous point you have. So, since you insist, I'll go over it again.
First, as I already said, this system is a secret auction. That means you can't shut down bidding with any of your bids, regardless of what they are -- because no one will see anyone's bids until the end. All bids are accepted, regardless of whether they beat the highest bid or not. When the auction ends, all bids for an item are examined, and the person who entered the highest bid is asked to pay the amount of the second-highest bid.
Second, what happens if two people enter outrageous bids? The second-highest bid is still outrageous, and that means the highest bidder must pay an outrageous price. So entering an outrageous bid is very risky at best.
Third, there is no advantage to an outrageous bid over an actual "highest you are willing to pay" bid. Imagine an auction that has a minimum allowed bid of $10, and you are willing to pay up to $150 to win. Imagine further that you make an outrageous $1,000,000 bid. If the second-highest bid was $100, you will pay $100. But if you had entered a $150 bid, you would still only pay $100 in that case. So what is the advantage of entering the $1,000,000 bid? Nothing. However, if the second-highest bid turns out to be $200, you'll have to pay $200 -- more than you wanted to pay. That wouldn't happen if you had bid $150. Or even worse, if someone else makes a $900,000 bid (trying to do the same thing you are doing), then the second-highest bid was $900,000 -- that means you will have to pay $900,000 for an item that you wanted to pay no more than $150 for. Which is a better idea? Bidding $150, or $1,000,000? Outrageous bids offer no advantage over a reasonable bid, but do create the risk of having to pay far more than you intended.
If this person keep stonewalling he or she's not willing to pay more.
Close -- they're not willing to pay more if they don't have to. That doesn't mean they wouldn't pay more if necessary to beat another determined buyer.
It's unfair when someone bids the highest but doesn't pay what they bid.
No, it's not. It seems to me that you think so because, in your mind, a "bid" is defined as "the amount the person should pay if they win". Yes, by that definition, of course they should. But only because that is how it was defined in the first place.
Why in the world would anyone say what their maximum bid is? And why would eBay ask for it, if eBay does?
eBay does indeed ask for it. Essentially, eBay is trying to give the advantages of typical auctions (such as the top bidder only having to out-compete the second-highest bidder to win) without requiring the bidder to monitor the auction and keep bidding over and over. Read about it here. You'll notice that things work exactly as I have described in my two examples so far. The terminology here might be useful for us to come to an understanding -- you enter your "maximum bid", and eBay enters real bids on your behalf. That way, you pay what you bid, as you insist should be the case -- but yet the winner still only has to pay at most 1 increment higher than the second-highest bidder, as I have insisted is fair.
As I wrote above, under a system the winning bidder only pays the second highest amount there is an extreme reason to bid higher than you can pay, by bidding higher you shutdown bidding.
No, there is not. With eBay, if the starting bid was $100, and someone else has bid $101, and I then enter my maximum bid as $11,000, it won't display $11,000 as my real bid. It will enter a "real" bid of $102. If someone else then enters a maximum bid of $200, eBay would enter a bid for me of $201. And so on. So it does not shut down the bidding in any way. If you entered $11,000, and someone else has the same "bright" idea and enters $10,000, then you will automatically bid up to $10,001 (or some other increment -- I think the increment is dependent on the current high bid) and you'll have to pay $10,001. So, just as you have said, do not bid more than you are willing to pay!
The same thing happens with the auction type described earlier, for a different reason -- it is a secret auction. So, if you bid $11,000, no one else will know what you've bid, and they'll keep on bidding. If someone else bids $10,000 before it's over, and that's the second-highest bid, you'll have to pay $10,000. Again, do not bid more than you are willing to pay! This auction type is trying to achieve similar results to eBay, but without some of the problems eBay has due to open bidding. One example is called "shill bidding", a form of cheating sellers sometimes employ; another is the fact that people often get so emotionally involved in "winning" the auction that they wind up bidding an amount they later regret. With eBay's "maximum bid" system (if people used it correctly) or this other system's secret bidding (which is really the same thing as eBay's system, except secret), buyers won't be driven to bid higher by emotion, and thus the final price is more likely to be a good estimate of the market value.
If you still think it would be a good idea to bid an outrageously high amount, read some of the other comments. There are a lot that explain why it is a horrible idea.
To discourage one rich developer from sniping the property with one outrageous bid and paying only the reasonable bid [...]
This system already does that. If two people make outrageous bids... guess what, the final price is the second-highest outrageous bid. It'll only take once of that happening to discourage that person from making outrageous bids. Furthermore, you gain nothing by making an outrageous bid instead of a reasonable bid. If you could "snipe" a property with an outrageous bid while paying only a reasonable bid, that means you could have made a reasonable bid and still won. Give me a concrete example of a situation where making an outrageous bid is better than biding the highest you are truly willing to pay. Please -- I don't think such a situation exists.
Yes, that's why I said "if all commerce worked as you describe". I could have worded things differently without changing my point, which was that the system you describe is extremely biased toward the seller.
At auctions only 1 or a small number of items are put on sale. Each item may be owned by a different person, who wants to get the best price they can.
Yes, and sellers get better prices by having the buyers compete, similar to how buyers get better prices by having stores compete when there is a large supply. Does that mean that retail stores should have to sell for the lowest price they are willing to accept? Of course not. If they can price their items lower than their competitors, they probably will (though I realize the reality of pricing if often more complex than that), but that doesn't mean they should price them as low as they can afford.
Similarly, a buyer need only pay enough to out-compete the other buyers, as in the example I gave. Auctions that work this way still favor the seller (as will any free market situation where there is limited supply and more demand), just not beyond what is necessary. A buyer in a limited-supply situation must out-compete other buyers, but need not pay any more than that, as the minimum price that will beat all other buyers is, by definition, still a better price than the seller could get from anyone else. Let me repeat that in a different way -- if the person willing to pay the most stonewalls by refusing to pay more than the second-highest bid, the seller has no better options, and thus should still accept the price (assuming it was higher than their minimum threshold). Why do you think this is unfair?
Generally no, whatever a person is willing to bid is what they should pay if they bid the highest.
Could you give me a reason? What you are suggesting isn't true of any non-silent auction system I am aware of (not that I'm an expert or anything), so I'm not sure what you mean by "generally". Here's another example. On eBay, you type in a "maximum bid" of $100 for an item that has a starting price of $10 and no bids yet. Someone else enters a "maximum bid" of $75. eBay then automatically bids for you at $75 I believe, or maybe it increments a small about so that you've bid $75.50 or $76 -- the specifics are unimportant. Then no one else bids. You bid the highest! Does that mean you should have to pay $100, because that's what you are "willing to bid"? No, you should only have to pay $76, just enough to beat the other potential buyers. However, you said "whatever a person is willing to bid is what they should pay if they bid the highest", which would mean you should have to pay $100. I can see no logic in that, merely a system that blindly favors the seller as much as possible.
Don't bid higher than you're willing to pay!
Pay attention: I am not suggesting you bid higher than you are willing to pay. Contrary to what so many people here seem to think, there is absolutely no advantage to bidding higher than you are willing to pay in this system. (There are plenty of comments explaining why; there's no need for me to hash through it again.)
What I am arguing is that there is no reason the highest bidder should pay the most they were willing to pay, as opposed to the most that would beat out the other bidders. In fact, I would argue that in silent auctions where the highest bidder pays what they bid, many people probably don't bid the highest amount they would be willing to pay -- they take a gamble on trying to bid just high enough to beat the other bidders. The pay-the-second-highest-bid system encourages bidders to actually bid as much as they are willing to spend, and thus it takes the random element out of it -- the bidder who is willing to pay the most wins, while the seller gets a better price than they could have from anyone else. You won't get the same effect otherwise.
If all commerce worked as you describe, the result would be that every purchase takes place at the highest price a buyer is willing to pay. Why should it be that way? There is the highest price a buyer is willing to pay, and the lowest price a seller is willing to accept. Why shouldn't the "fair market price" be somewhere in between those two values? After all, the seller is essentially gambling on the price they'll receive -- if they can't afford to accept anything less a given price, they should clearly state that minimum acceptable price before bidding begins.
In other words, what you seem to dislike about that system GP described is not that that the bidder can't pay "full price", or that they will bid more than they can afford (or are willing) to pay (because there is no reason to think either of those is true), it's that the system doesn't totally favor the seller as much as possible (within the realm of not cheating the buyer, admittedly) -- it favors some degree of compromise between the buyer and the seller.
Imagine there is someone standing on a street corner trying to sell a desirable item to anyone who will buy it (it can be a car, if you want a car analogy). People start informally bidding for it. One very observant person is willing to pay $100 for the item, but merely watches the bidding for a while without speaking up. The bids seem to slow as the value approaches $70. Finally, one person says "$75! That's the most I'll give you." The seller looks around, hoping someone will bid higher, but everyone else starts to clear from where they have gathered. The observant person walks up and says "I'll give you $76." Assuming the person who bid $75 wasn't bluffing, and doesn't get emotional about the loss, the observant person will win the auction for approximately the second highest bid.
Is this unfair? Should the observant person have offered $100 simply because they would have been willing to pay that much? If the seller had an obvious financial hardship, and were making a sacrifice to get quickly needed money, someone might offer to pay more than they have to out of altruism -- but we're not talking about charity. Is it not fair for the person willing to bid the highest to end up paying the second-highest bid, on the grounds that the seller cannot get a substantially higher bid through competition between buyers?
all I hear is the single point data, "last year was one degree warmer then the average", what is the variance? is this the fifth consecutive year above average?
Really? There's a lot of data that's a lot more convincing than that. In fact, I'd say there is no credible debate that global temperatures are increasing. There is debate about whether human influences are the cause, as well as about whether there's much or anything we can do to stop or slow it, and additionally there is debate about whether we should even if we can.
Here's a sample, from an article in the BBC, dated March 16, 2007:
The Noaa said that temperatures were continuing to rise by a fifth of a degree every decade. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.
For clarity, the NOAA is the (US) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Degree" most likely means Celsius (a change of one fifth of a degree C is equivalent to a little over one third a of a degree F), as that is the default unit in the rest of the article. The referenced article is about the northern hemisphere, so I assume that is what the quote refers to as well. I'd also like to point out that the last statement in the quote, "The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995," is saying that 10 (out of the last 11 years) constitute all 10 of the top ten warmest years ever recorded. That is a much stronger statement even than saying that 10 out of the last 11 years are above average. There is other data like this out there. If all you hear is single data points about the past year... then your data source is hardly keeping you informed.
Just to be thorough, here is a bit more data for you, this time directly from the NOAA (emphasis mine):
Both data sets also show that the past nine years have all been among the 25 warmest years on record for the contiguous U.S., a streak which is unprecedented in the historical record. [...] This reflects the long-term warming trend both in the U.S. and globally. U.S. and global annual temperatures are now approximately 1.0F warmer than at the start of the 20th century, and the rate of warming has accelerated over the past 30 years, increasing globally since the mid-1970's at a rate approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.
Just to be totally clear, this is referring to land temperatures in the continental US.
Why wasn't last year['s hurricane season] more severe? That was what was predicted, guess they were wrong....darn
How is that insightful?! <sarcasm> Oh noes, last night was a good 10 degrees below average for where I live! Guess that proves them "global warming" idiots wrong. </sarcasm>
A single day's weather does not prove anything. Nor does a single season's. If, over the course of 10 seasons, we see a trend of weaker-than-predicted hurricane seasons, it might mean something (though I'm not sure why we're comparing to what was predicted -- wouldn't comparison to a historical average be more meaningful?).
Those who offer a single data point to support or refute a hypothesis are either being intellectually dishonest, or are just ignorant -- unless the hypothesis states that a certain occurrence is impossible, in which case a single (verifiable) counter-example is indeed sufficient.
Instead, the only return on investment has been negative.
<sarcasm> Oh come now, you know that's not true. For example, I'm sure everyone with a piece of the Haliburton pie has seen a very nice return on their investment. And as we know from the intuitive wisdom which is trickle-down economics, giving more money to those who are already ridiculously rich is the best way to help those who are struggling economically. Ergo, I'm sure our economy has flourished as a result of this war spending. </sarcasm>
tying to apply risk managment in situations where you don't fully understand what is going to happen is VERY poor risk managment, VERY poor. for all you know you'll make a bad situation worse.
Funny, I thought the only time risk management was necessary was in situations where you have uncertainty about what is going to happen. If you do fully understand what is going to happen, then it's really just "making the best choice possible", isn't it?
Yes, it is possible that some attempts to reduce greenhouse gases could do more harm than good. That doesn't mean we should ignore the issue -- all we can do is make the best decision we can with the information and models we have. The best decision may be to do nothing, but if so we need to come to that conclusion by examining the situation and evaluating the possible outcomes (both good and bad) from various courses of action. We also need to examine our level of uncertainty, which is the point you are attempting to make.
Just because there is uncertainty doesn't mean the best choice is to ignore the problem altogether (and I would like to emphasize that ignoring it is very much a choice). If so, no one would ever go to war -- for all you know, you could lose a bunch of lives, waste a bunch of resources, and not achieve any of your aims. We make risky choices in the face of uncertainty all the time. Why is it you think we shouldn't apply risk management to those situations? That just seems to make absolutely no sense at all.
you have to start to wonder, which party is the one telling you what you want to hear no matter what they believe in order to get you against the other party
I don't wonder. I can tell you that it's both Republicans and Democrats. If you think it's just one of them, you're fooling yourself. I'm sure I can find some Republican sound bites that are at least as hypocritical, if you're really naive enough to think they don't exist.
And don't jump to the conclusion that I'm a Libertarian just because I dislike both Republicans and Democrats. Most Libertarians probably do the same thing. As well as Greens. (I say "probably" because I haven't listened to them enough to know for sure.) Politicians from the latter pair of parties get a little more credibility from me simply because if they were really, truly not concerned about anything but their political careers, they would go more mainstream and become Republican or Democrat -- they must have at least a little principle. But beyond that (probably small) amount of principle, almost all of them are still going to say whatever will get them votes.
you have to start to wonder if that's the only thing that matters to them, standing up for something they really believe or just saying whatever will get them another vote
You see, they're all politicians. At election time, a politician's success is generally measured by votes. Therefore, by definition, a politician who puts a high priority on getting votes is more likely to be a successful politician. Regardless of what party they affiliate with. Even a certain degree of "straight-talking" or "bucking the trend" is most likely calculated to make them seem like they are willing to take stances that will hurt their votes -- thus increasing their credibility and in turn their votes. (Cynical? Yes. Too much? Maybe, but maybe not.)
The only thing that seems to matter to 99.9% of today's successful politicians is who gets credit for what and if they can make the other party look bad.
There, I fixed that for you.
Those of us that love this country and it's laws that allow us to own a firearm understand this. If you like Japan so much, by all means, go there.
No one said they didn't love this country. No one said they like Japan better. I really get aggravated by the "Well, if you think Country X is better, why don't you just go there?" response to criticism of our nation. Does loving our country require believing that it is perfect in all ways, can do no wrong, and could not possibly be better? Does pointing out one particular way in which the US isn't quite as good as another country mean we would prefer that other country? No and no. I can love my country and still notice ways it could be better. I can whole-heartedly believe my country is the best in the world, and yet still look at other countries to see if they have any laws or policies that might benefit us to adopt. If blind patriotism is the only response you can muster to a legitimate comparison between our country and another, then you are clearly not offering productive (i.e. rational, intelligent, and insightful) debate.
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Perhaps I should have been more explicit -- I was applying Occum's Razor, which is a rule of thumb that (to paraphrase) states that the explanation or theory which requires the least amount of unsupported assumptions (a subjective determination, I agree) is most likely to be correct.
I never really followed the debate on this, and I'm not trying to convince anyone that election fraud did or did not occur (I myself haven't even formed a solid opinion on that). There are other possibilities that would explain the data, so I agree that the discrepancies do not *prove* or even *indicate* election fraud. There is, however, a bit of burden of evidence when you want to say the data doesn't even *suggest* election fraud, which is what the comment to which I originally replied seemed to be saying.
I'll go through the scenarios again (including my tongue-in-cheek scenario), trying to rephrase what I'm saying.
I have heard lots of speculation similar to yours, but I haven't heard convincing evidence or even a convincing rationale.
- Could the numbers be explained by election fraud? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? With no further information, yes of course -- there are many people who would have been strongly motivated to try to rig the system in a close election.
- Could the numbers be explained by a situation where people voting for a particular candidate were less likely to admit it to pollsters than people who voted for another candidate? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? Maybe, but if so it's not as straightforward as the explanation for election fraud. If you have a convincing rationale, please share it or provide a link.
- Could the numbers be explained by people just giving random responses to get away from the pollsters? No, my understanding is that it could not explain the numbers with without an extremely unlikely coincidence -- the discrepancies are too large to be adequately explained by this. The top Google result for a search on "exit polls statistical significance" sends me to this document (pdf link) about the 2004 polls. Assuming the math in that paper is even close to correct, it would be extremely unlikely that random responses could explain what happened.
- Could the numbers be explained by improper sampling? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? Maybe, I don't know. If you have one, please share it or provide a link.
- Could the numbers be explained by pollster plotting? Yes. Is there a reasonably convincing rationale that explains why this might have happened? Maybe, but I really doubt it. This would wind up being a pretty significant conspiracy theory. If you think you have one anyway, please share it or provide a link.
I think GP's quoted statement was a reasonable and accurate assessment of the situation (not the whole comment, just the part that we've quoted). If GP had used the word "proves", or even a weaker term such as "indicates", I wouldn't have been inclined to argue with you. However, the word "suggests" is weak enough that I don't see a need to hedge it with idle speculation on what else might possibly be the case -- we might as well put forth the explanation that God intervened in the election to cause the result He desired.In summary, your response seems to imply that there is a more likely explanation than election fraud -- but without any supporting evidence or even a convincing rationale, I don't think that's true.
The USA has a system with that "winner takes all" sort of feel -- which is why, under the current system in the US, there will very likely never again be more than 2 dominant parties in national politics, and if there are, it will almost certainly be a transient situation that will last no longer than 1 major election. Instead, you are more likely to see platform shifts in the dominant parties in attempt to (re)gain those "third-party" voters.
On the other hand, Sweden does use coalition governments, and such a system encourages parties to form alliances with one another or at least avoid alienating one another in situations where their platforms are not strictly at odds. So, it is entirely likely that the larger parties take more notice of smaller parties in Sweden than in the USA, beyond attempts to absorb their voting base.
While I understand why that could have been taken as a joke, it probably wasn't. There is a belief that the US national bird was almost the Turkey, though it is most likely a myth.
If everyone followed your logic, the band would stop producing music. Even if, for every individual, it is worth it for them to pay $1 for the download in order to keep the music coming, and even if that additional payment (in aggregate) would make the difference in whether or not the band continues producing music.
So, to recap, let's assume every rational person would be willing to pay $1 to the band to keep them producing more music, but instead makes the "rational" choice not to pay anything. The result would be that the band stops producing music, and all those "rational" people didn't get the outcome they would have preferred (and which they could have achieved, but failed to achieve due to your "logic"). To put this in more technical terms, global adoption of your strategy does not result in a globally optimal situation, even though it is optimal for each individual. (Or to use game theory jargon, your strategy may result in a Nash equilibrium, but it does not result in a Pareto optimum.)
You know how they say "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."? I think that is the case here -- you know enough game theory to decide what a rational player would do, but not enough to realize there is a better end result that can be achieved if you take a global view. The situation here is essentially the Prisoner's Dilemma: Some of us hope to achieve the Pareto optimum, which would be better for all involved than what would result if everyone adopted your strategy. So do not discourage others from supporting the band. Do not delude yourself into thinking that the only thing that makes sense is not to support the band -- that sort of thinking often leads to worse results than an approach which is a little less "rational".
Maybe in Kentucky $60k/yr is a decent family income, but you would be hard pressed to afford a $200k house on that.
Wow, you're pretty off-base, I'd say. First, let's look at median state incomes: I count 32/51 states+DC that have a median income less than $60k. Even California's median income is less than $65k. If you look here instead, you get much lower numbers -- I don't know why.
Anyway, I live in Louisville, Kentucky. It is, according to the US Census Bureau, the 27th largest city in the US (I point that out just to make it clear I'm not in a rural area, where (I'm fairly sure) housing is much cheaper by $/sqft).
My fiance and I have a combined income of $70k, and just bought our first home. We were approved for a mortgage of up to $300k. Granted, I thought that was a little ridiculous, but I later realized we *could* have afforded to pay it. We got our loan at 5.875% (30-year fixed) due to good credit, and we're fairly frugal people, but it would not have required much effort -- maybe a bit of attention to how often I upgrade my computer equipment, and that sort of thing. According to this, a 95% loan on a $300k house would cost less than $1,700/month. Add on property taxes and home insurance, and we'd be looking at around $2k/month. The amount of money we put into savings each month plus the amount we're actually paying for our mortgage easily tops that (well... it doesn't really stay in savings because I usually dump it back into the mortgage as additional principle payments). Now, I admit would couldn't afford that if we had 2 children, and we're making $70k instead of $60k, but on the other hand I'm talking about a $300k house, as opposed to $200k.
But let's back up a minute -- this begs the question (yes, it really does, you grammar Nazis -- it "fails to consider the question") of whether you need a $200k house in Kentucky. I can promise that you don't. See, I don't know what $200k will get you in the San Francisco area, but with just a quick search out here you can get a 9-room ranch-style house (4-bedroom, 2-bath) with an unfinished basement on 16 acres of partially wooded land (with pond(s), a stream, a deck, and a 2-car carport) with an asking price under $180k. With a bit of effort looking around and some negotiating, I'm sure you can get more for a full $200k.
Telecommute for the win.
Suppose the germ developed a version of itself that was 100% lethal and then killed its own host before the host could spread it. Well the germ dies too, doesn't it?
No, the germs don't necessarily die. There are plenty of diseases that can be transmitted from a dead body. That's how humans get mad cow disease from eating beef, for example.
Now, like the GP poster said, if germs actually evolved the ability to control the dead, they could animate the dead body to actively seek out new, live hosts. This would be a very effective trait, and it would be naive and irresponsible to assume such a thing cannot happen.
So... you think they're upset because the two-month price drop made them realize just how much of a premium they paid to get it first?
I dunno, I agree with some of the other posters -- if they were willing to pay the premium, they were willing to pay the premium, and that should be the end of that. I can't imagine they didn't realize they were paying it -- and even if they didn't know how much was going into Apple's pockets, they were still willing to pay the high price.
I have a different theory. There's a very subtle difference between being upset they paid so much and being upset others aren't having to pay as much, and I think a lot of the bitching is probably because of the latter. The short wait before the steep drop offends their sense of fairness more, and it makes the iPhone less of an elite status symbol than if it had stayed more expensive longer. So in that second sense, they may not have gotten what they thought they were paying for -- 2 months of elite status rather than, say, 6 months.
Of course, anyone bitching that they would prefer for others to pay more for something (rather than because they would prefer to have paid less) will be recognized for the elitist, superficial snob they are. Therefore even if that is the real reason behind much of the bitching, I bet they won't say it that way -- they'll complain that it was a "stupid" move for Apple, or that Apple gouged them, or something else that misses the reason they're actually upset. I'm not saying that Woz is one of those people -- just that he probably knows how many of that type of people are customers.
The competition DIDN'T, that's for sure.
Didn't, or couldn't?
I think someone wearing a bomb, wanting to get in as far as possible, would NOT be wearing the mechanism on the outside of their clothing
Aha! So clearly, it should be policy to let anyone through who looks like they have a bomb, and respond with appropriate force against those who appear to be no threat at all.
39 cm^3 that's a bar of length 3.9cm, height 1cm and width 1cm
Close, but no cigar. A bar that's 3.9cm x 1cm x 1cm is only 3.9cm^3. On the other hand, a bar that's 5cm x 3.9cm x 2cm is 39cm^3, which is still a nice-size battery for a laptop (assuming the article meant 39(mm^3) rather than (39mm)^3), if it can last as long as is expected of laptop batteries.
Neither AC, I think, was attempting to say that their scenario is true, or even that it is false that "[If] you pick a random woman and a random man, odds are that the man is physically stronger than the woman." They were saying that the statement "if it's been shown that on average men are stronger than women, and you pick a random woman and a random man, odds are that the man is physically stronger than the woman." is not true -- in other words, that the part about the odds does not necessarily follow from the part about the averages.
To give another example, let's imagine that Chuck Norris has a daughter, and then later ascends to another plane of existence during one of his roundhouse kicks. This daughter, like her father, is strong enough to knock the earth out of orbit, should she decide to roundhouse kick solid ground. Her incredible strength (paired with the loss of Chuck Norris) could result in a situation where the average strength of women is higher than the average strength of men. However, it could still be true that if you pick a random woman and a random man, you are more likely to get a man who is stronger than the women -- in this case, because the chances of selecting Chuck Norris's daughter in a random sample is abysmally small, similar to AC's previous comment about removing outliers from the average (a point you seem to have misunderstood).
Note again that I am not speaking to the reality of the situation (as should be clear by the Chuck Norris references); I am making a point that the information about averages does not mean what you think it means.
The reason this happens is that in measuring whether a random man is stronger than a random woman, you ignore how much the man is stronger or weaker -- you merely measure whether he was stronger. So, Chuck Norris (or Chuck Norris's daughter) would be reduced to a single, evenly-weighted binary data point; no single data point can move the result more than any other data point. This is not true for averages, where a single outlier can drastically change the result.
Well, kinda. It is useful information, but not as useful as you seem to think; in fact, given just the averages without any distribution information, there is virtually nothing you can extrapolate or predict about the population. Now, if you also knew that the distributions were normal distributions (which they probably are in reality, but should not be assumed to be), then the quoted statement would be true. If you further had information about the standard deviations of the distributions, as well as what the averages are (in actual value, not just knowing which is higher), then you could probably calculate the odds that a random man is stronger than a random woman. Information which includes distribution data along with average data is far more meaningful than unadorned averages.
From this comment by me, which is part of the back-and-forth you and I have been having (emphasis added): That only works with secret sealed bids
Which is exactly what we (or at least I) have been talking about this entire time. The original comment in this thread of conversation said (emphasis added): To which you replied: That is how this started, and so I have been making the case for allowing the highest bidder to pay the second-highest bid under that auction type, not in auctions in general (which should have been clear from the "street-corner" and eBay examples I have given, where the highest bid is what I said would be paid). If you didn't understand what we were talking about, you should have paid more attention and/or read the Wikipedia link which explains exactly what we were discussing.
The "you waited too long to bid" scenarios you describe cannot happen in Vickrey auctions, and so they are irrelevant to this discussion. The only reason I brought up other auction types (eBay's proxy bidding and open bidding auctions) is to illustrate the fact that they, too, only require the highest bidder to pay more than what the second-highest bidder is willing to pay (if the bidder is smart and/or no one is cheating), and therefore the Vickrey auctions should intuitively have similar final prices to other auction types, despite allowing the highest bidder to pay the second-highest bid. That, and the fact that you said (emphasis added) "Generally no, whatever a person is willing to bid is what they should pay if they bid the highest.", which is not true even in regular auctions. Perhaps you meant "Generally no, whatever a person bids is what they should pay if they bid the highest.", but that isn't what you said.
I'm sorry if you didn't realize what I was talking about, but it should have been obvious from the thread.
That may be the way it works on eBay but that's not how it works at live auctions. At a live auction you don't tell the auctioners what your max bid will be. Nor will they automatically raise your bid for you.
True, but in real auction it is true that the highest bidder must only out-bid the second highest bidder. If I am willing to pay $100 for an item, but the most anyone else is willing to bid is $50, then I can win the auction for $51. Just like the system we're discussing.
And as regards auction winners only paying the second highest bid, as I said if someone wants to they can easily shutdown bidding by bidding a ridiculus amount. And you haven't offered a rejoiner.
You must not be looking at all the score-1 comments that go over this, in response to the many people who have brought up the same erroneous point you have. So, since you insist, I'll go over it again.
First, as I already said, this system is a secret auction. That means you can't shut down bidding with any of your bids, regardless of what they are -- because no one will see anyone's bids until the end. All bids are accepted, regardless of whether they beat the highest bid or not. When the auction ends, all bids for an item are examined, and the person who entered the highest bid is asked to pay the amount of the second-highest bid.
Second, what happens if two people enter outrageous bids? The second-highest bid is still outrageous, and that means the highest bidder must pay an outrageous price. So entering an outrageous bid is very risky at best.
Third, there is no advantage to an outrageous bid over an actual "highest you are willing to pay" bid. Imagine an auction that has a minimum allowed bid of $10, and you are willing to pay up to $150 to win. Imagine further that you make an outrageous $1,000,000 bid. If the second-highest bid was $100, you will pay $100. But if you had entered a $150 bid, you would still only pay $100 in that case. So what is the advantage of entering the $1,000,000 bid? Nothing. However, if the second-highest bid turns out to be $200, you'll have to pay $200 -- more than you wanted to pay. That wouldn't happen if you had bid $150. Or even worse, if someone else makes a $900,000 bid (trying to do the same thing you are doing), then the second-highest bid was $900,000 -- that means you will have to pay $900,000 for an item that you wanted to pay no more than $150 for. Which is a better idea? Bidding $150, or $1,000,000? Outrageous bids offer no advantage over a reasonable bid, but do create the risk of having to pay far more than you intended.
If this person keep stonewalling he or she's not willing to pay more.
Close -- they're not willing to pay more if they don't have to. That doesn't mean they wouldn't pay more if necessary to beat another determined buyer.
It's unfair when someone bids the highest but doesn't pay what they bid.
No, it's not. It seems to me that you think so because, in your mind, a "bid" is defined as "the amount the person should pay if they win". Yes, by that definition, of course they should. But only because that is how it was defined in the first place.
Why in the world would anyone say what their maximum bid is? And why would eBay ask for it, if eBay does?
eBay does indeed ask for it. Essentially, eBay is trying to give the advantages of typical auctions (such as the top bidder only having to out-compete the second-highest bidder to win) without requiring the bidder to monitor the auction and keep bidding over and over. Read about it here. You'll notice that things work exactly as I have described in my two examples so far. The terminology here might be useful for us to come to an understanding -- you enter your "maximum bid", and eBay enters real bids on your behalf. That way, you pay what you bid, as you insist should be the case -- but yet the winner still only has to pay at most 1 increment higher than the second-highest bidder, as I have insisted is fair.
As I wrote above, under a system the winning bidder only pays the second highest amount there is an extreme reason to bid higher than you can pay, by bidding higher you shutdown bidding.
No, there is not. With eBay, if the starting bid was $100, and someone else has bid $101, and I then enter my maximum bid as $11,000, it won't display $11,000 as my real bid. It will enter a "real" bid of $102. If someone else then enters a maximum bid of $200, eBay would enter a bid for me of $201. And so on. So it does not shut down the bidding in any way. If you entered $11,000, and someone else has the same "bright" idea and enters $10,000, then you will automatically bid up to $10,001 (or some other increment -- I think the increment is dependent on the current high bid) and you'll have to pay $10,001. So, just as you have said, do not bid more than you are willing to pay!
The same thing happens with the auction type described earlier, for a different reason -- it is a secret auction. So, if you bid $11,000, no one else will know what you've bid, and they'll keep on bidding. If someone else bids $10,000 before it's over, and that's the second-highest bid, you'll have to pay $10,000. Again, do not bid more than you are willing to pay! This auction type is trying to achieve similar results to eBay, but without some of the problems eBay has due to open bidding. One example is called "shill bidding", a form of cheating sellers sometimes employ; another is the fact that people often get so emotionally involved in "winning" the auction that they wind up bidding an amount they later regret. With eBay's "maximum bid" system (if people used it correctly) or this other system's secret bidding (which is really the same thing as eBay's system, except secret), buyers won't be driven to bid higher by emotion, and thus the final price is more likely to be a good estimate of the market value.
If you still think it would be a good idea to bid an outrageously high amount, read some of the other comments. There are a lot that explain why it is a horrible idea.
To discourage one rich developer from sniping the property with one outrageous bid and paying only the reasonable bid [...]
This system already does that. If two people make outrageous bids... guess what, the final price is the second-highest outrageous bid. It'll only take once of that happening to discourage that person from making outrageous bids. Furthermore, you gain nothing by making an outrageous bid instead of a reasonable bid. If you could "snipe" a property with an outrageous bid while paying only a reasonable bid, that means you could have made a reasonable bid and still won. Give me a concrete example of a situation where making an outrageous bid is better than biding the highest you are truly willing to pay. Please -- I don't think such a situation exists.
Not all commerce is an auction.
Yes, that's why I said "if all commerce worked as you describe". I could have worded things differently without changing my point, which was that the system you describe is extremely biased toward the seller.
At auctions only 1 or a small number of items are put on sale. Each item may be owned by a different person, who wants to get the best price they can.
Yes, and sellers get better prices by having the buyers compete, similar to how buyers get better prices by having stores compete when there is a large supply. Does that mean that retail stores should have to sell for the lowest price they are willing to accept? Of course not. If they can price their items lower than their competitors, they probably will (though I realize the reality of pricing if often more complex than that), but that doesn't mean they should price them as low as they can afford.
Similarly, a buyer need only pay enough to out-compete the other buyers, as in the example I gave. Auctions that work this way still favor the seller (as will any free market situation where there is limited supply and more demand), just not beyond what is necessary. A buyer in a limited-supply situation must out-compete other buyers, but need not pay any more than that, as the minimum price that will beat all other buyers is, by definition, still a better price than the seller could get from anyone else. Let me repeat that in a different way -- if the person willing to pay the most stonewalls by refusing to pay more than the second-highest bid, the seller has no better options, and thus should still accept the price (assuming it was higher than their minimum threshold). Why do you think this is unfair?
Generally no, whatever a person is willing to bid is what they should pay if they bid the highest.
Could you give me a reason? What you are suggesting isn't true of any non-silent auction system I am aware of (not that I'm an expert or anything), so I'm not sure what you mean by "generally". Here's another example. On eBay, you type in a "maximum bid" of $100 for an item that has a starting price of $10 and no bids yet. Someone else enters a "maximum bid" of $75. eBay then automatically bids for you at $75 I believe, or maybe it increments a small about so that you've bid $75.50 or $76 -- the specifics are unimportant. Then no one else bids. You bid the highest! Does that mean you should have to pay $100, because that's what you are "willing to bid"? No, you should only have to pay $76, just enough to beat the other potential buyers. However, you said "whatever a person is willing to bid is what they should pay if they bid the highest", which would mean you should have to pay $100. I can see no logic in that, merely a system that blindly favors the seller as much as possible.
Don't bid higher than you're willing to pay!
Pay attention: I am not suggesting you bid higher than you are willing to pay. Contrary to what so many people here seem to think, there is absolutely no advantage to bidding higher than you are willing to pay in this system. (There are plenty of comments explaining why; there's no need for me to hash through it again.)
What I am arguing is that there is no reason the highest bidder should pay the most they were willing to pay, as opposed to the most that would beat out the other bidders. In fact, I would argue that in silent auctions where the highest bidder pays what they bid, many people probably don't bid the highest amount they would be willing to pay -- they take a gamble on trying to bid just high enough to beat the other bidders. The pay-the-second-highest-bid system encourages bidders to actually bid as much as they are willing to spend, and thus it takes the random element out of it -- the bidder who is willing to pay the most wins, while the seller gets a better price than they could have from anyone else. You won't get the same effect otherwise.
Here's wha
If all commerce worked as you describe, the result would be that every purchase takes place at the highest price a buyer is willing to pay. Why should it be that way? There is the highest price a buyer is willing to pay, and the lowest price a seller is willing to accept. Why shouldn't the "fair market price" be somewhere in between those two values? After all, the seller is essentially gambling on the price they'll receive -- if they can't afford to accept anything less a given price, they should clearly state that minimum acceptable price before bidding begins.
In other words, what you seem to dislike about that system GP described is not that that the bidder can't pay "full price", or that they will bid more than they can afford (or are willing) to pay (because there is no reason to think either of those is true), it's that the system doesn't totally favor the seller as much as possible (within the realm of not cheating the buyer, admittedly) -- it favors some degree of compromise between the buyer and the seller.
Imagine there is someone standing on a street corner trying to sell a desirable item to anyone who will buy it (it can be a car, if you want a car analogy). People start informally bidding for it. One very observant person is willing to pay $100 for the item, but merely watches the bidding for a while without speaking up. The bids seem to slow as the value approaches $70. Finally, one person says "$75! That's the most I'll give you." The seller looks around, hoping someone will bid higher, but everyone else starts to clear from where they have gathered. The observant person walks up and says "I'll give you $76." Assuming the person who bid $75 wasn't bluffing, and doesn't get emotional about the loss, the observant person will win the auction for approximately the second highest bid.
Is this unfair? Should the observant person have offered $100 simply because they would have been willing to pay that much? If the seller had an obvious financial hardship, and were making a sacrifice to get quickly needed money, someone might offer to pay more than they have to out of altruism -- but we're not talking about charity. Is it not fair for the person willing to bid the highest to end up paying the second-highest bid, on the grounds that the seller cannot get a substantially higher bid through competition between buyers?
Just to be thorough, here is a bit more data for you, this time directly from the NOAA (emphasis mine): Just to be totally clear, this is referring to land temperatures in the continental US.
A single day's weather does not prove anything. Nor does a single season's. If, over the course of 10 seasons, we see a trend of weaker-than-predicted hurricane seasons, it might mean something (though I'm not sure why we're comparing to what was predicted -- wouldn't comparison to a historical average be more meaningful?).
Those who offer a single data point to support or refute a hypothesis are either being intellectually dishonest, or are just ignorant -- unless the hypothesis states that a certain occurrence is impossible, in which case a single (verifiable) counter-example is indeed sufficient.
Yes, it is possible that some attempts to reduce greenhouse gases could do more harm than good. That doesn't mean we should ignore the issue -- all we can do is make the best decision we can with the information and models we have. The best decision may be to do nothing, but if so we need to come to that conclusion by examining the situation and evaluating the possible outcomes (both good and bad) from various courses of action. We also need to examine our level of uncertainty, which is the point you are attempting to make.
Just because there is uncertainty doesn't mean the best choice is to ignore the problem altogether (and I would like to emphasize that ignoring it is very much a choice). If so, no one would ever go to war -- for all you know, you could lose a bunch of lives, waste a bunch of resources, and not achieve any of your aims. We make risky choices in the face of uncertainty all the time. Why is it you think we shouldn't apply risk management to those situations? That just seems to make absolutely no sense at all.
And don't jump to the conclusion that I'm a Libertarian just because I dislike both Republicans and Democrats. Most Libertarians probably do the same thing. As well as Greens. (I say "probably" because I haven't listened to them enough to know for sure.) Politicians from the latter pair of parties get a little more credibility from me simply because if they were really, truly not concerned about anything but their political careers, they would go more mainstream and become Republican or Democrat -- they must have at least a little principle. But beyond that (probably small) amount of principle, almost all of them are still going to say whatever will get them votes. You see, they're all politicians. At election time, a politician's success is generally measured by votes. Therefore, by definition, a politician who puts a high priority on getting votes is more likely to be a successful politician. Regardless of what party they affiliate with. Even a certain degree of "straight-talking" or "bucking the trend" is most likely calculated to make them seem like they are willing to take stances that will hurt their votes -- thus increasing their credibility and in turn their votes. (Cynical? Yes. Too much? Maybe, but maybe not.) There, I fixed that for you. No one said they didn't love this country. No one said they like Japan better. I really get aggravated by the "Well, if you think Country X is better, why don't you just go there?" response to criticism of our nation. Does loving our country require believing that it is perfect in all ways, can do no wrong, and could not possibly be better? Does pointing out one particular way in which the US isn't quite as good as another country mean we would prefer that other country? No and no. I can love my country and still notice ways it could be better. I can whole-heartedly believe my country is the best in the world, and yet still look at other countries to see if they have any laws or policies that might benefit us to adopt. If blind patriotism is the only response you can muster to a legitimate comparison between our country and another, then you are clearly not offering productive (i.e. rational, intelligent, and insightful) debate.