The Future of Bitcoin

Responding to an article by Krugman on Bitcoin, Opinion | Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic, I wrote the following:

People that I know of that have an interest in bitcoin and its related activities mostly see a future in the ledger aspect, not in mining. Cryptocurrencies themselves will likely die out, maintained in an alternative world of criminal activity, while the ledge has been taken up by many as a way of maintaining accuracy in transactions, not necessarily monetary.

In retrospect, it might be more judicious to think that Bitcoin will not die out but morph into some other beast, as it is unlikely as it will completely disappear, simply added to the mix of technologies. Someone will make better use of it as a transactional system.

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Review - The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies

The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott E. Page My rating: 4 of 5 stars Generally, I found the book most engaging for understanding perception, heuristics and decision making, although this did not seem to be the primary premise of the book. As for the writing, it was a bit long-winded, using analogies to make points, even though the concepts themselves are readily accessible without elucidation. As to its purported focus, it provides academic, empirical, and statistical support for diversity, not necessarily racial or ethnic, with the premise being that diversity of viewpoint within groups is powerful, so much so that it trumps individual excellence. View all my reviews

A Response to Twilight of the Polymaths (NY Times)

Since you are aware of the fox and hedgehog dichotomy, you might be aware of Tetlock’s book and long-term study showing how foxes best hedgehogs in political prediction, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Although depth in specialties has its merits, I can see how that depth also leads to a kind of blindness, a ‘man with a hammer’ problem, while polymaths, or people with broad awareness can sometimes pull together diverse facts to form insights that are not bound by one’s expertise. Along the same lines, many insights in technology don’t come so much from depth, but by ‘cross-pollination’ of ideas, of taking the basic concepts of one specialty and applying them to a peripherally-related one.

Raison d'Etre (Reason for Being)

I recently picked up Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment , an insightful analysis of expert opinion. Although there are many factors that might distinguish experts in the ability to predict outcomes, liberal versus conservative, intellectual depth and education, source material, etc., Tetlock found that the best predictor of forecasting accuracy was thinking like a fox, as opposed to the hedgehog, ala Isaiah Singer's essay. Fox thinking is nuanced and composed of many different themes, often conflicting, while hedgehogs tend to believe in one big, overarching idea. This site, and my expected use, is to document my own failures and successes in predicting political and economic futures. The title, Elephant's Memory, alludes to the fox-like tendency, maybe even need, to remember one's own flawed predictions and adjust future reasoning accordingly.

Foxes and Hedgehogs

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