Webonaut

Just a note for myself really (can't imagine anyone else here being interested in economics...) The Market Hypothesis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis ) is a cornerstone of Capitalism, but it's ideologically flawed. People are sheep - they follow each other. What's more, the ones who aren't sheep who should be asking "what is the true value" of some company or other, are actually asking "what are the sheep going to do". When bubbles form they are propelled even by those who can see it is a bubble. They buy even if they believe the stock to be already overvalued - if they believe others will be suckered into it for some time yet - it's all about getting out in time. The market is beginning to understand - the FT Weekend frontpage confirmed this in UK Hedge Funds Make Millions From Betting On Decline In Value Of Sterling where it says : "The 3 hedge funds - which are the 1st, 2nd and 4th largest in Europe... do no...

Two recent articles about Artificial Intelligence creating music caught my eye + ear : 1. T his one about software that emulates (mostly dead) performers : http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/virtual-musicians-real-performances 2. And this one about software that composes : The real Tin Man : http://bit.ly/cGunrQ Firstly, these are both impressive pieces of code - as a developer and a musician this is clear. But secondly, the doom-sayers predicting these replacing humans is garbage. Why? Let's look at each in turn. 1. This is amazing, modelling the characteristics of a performer from dusty old recordings - presumably how loose their timing was etc, and - given a decent quality midi file of a song - plays that song (on a real, MIDI'ed up instrument) in the style of that performer. You can never second guess what a real person is going to do. If I'm well pissed off one night, that will affect the performance. Similarly, when I'm chilled out, and different "me...