Obama had a great win in South Carolina yesterday. Unfortunately, it was expected and seems not to have moved the prediction markets much. Yet, I think our country and the world would be much better off if he wins. With our help, he can win.
Sadly, Obama’s chances only rose slightly from 31% […]
Yahoo is shutting down it’s “picks” section. Although I have not visited that section in 8 years or so, I have a special place in my heart for it. I started visiting yahoo picks in the first few months after it opened its doors in 1995. For years, I have had this […]
I was asked by PARC to present again on the psychology of facebook. (Why do some applications go viral? You can read my speaking notes or watch this 1 min 52 sec screencast that is almost identical in content or grab the slides or handout.) But the main reason to reprise that post […]
At an interesting talk today, I found out that behavioral economists cannot use any form of deception in their experiments. I found this norm somewhat puzzling, because psychologists often include mild deception (like confederates) that cause no harm to the subjects but offer new research opportunities. At previous talk, I heard a researcher […]
I was just thinking about this issue as I read this post about how to get hired by Google. Then, along comes this terrific list of criteria is about screening for good tech hires. Hint: what you want is not printed on the resume. I am sad that the cat is out of […]
My friend Richard sent me this interesting link and email in response to my post yesterday:
[Intrade.com is] moving beyond prediction markets that try to determine who will win
the election, towards markets that predict the effect of someone
winning the election. In other words, markets that attempt to predict
the price of oil, interest rates, # troops […]
Obama’s win in Iowa was quite impressive for two reasons: it is important and it was indeed unexpected. On Intrade.com’s prediction market, Obama implicit probability of capturing the nomination jumped from below 20 percent on January 1 to 64 percent after the Iowa caucus. See the huge spike in this graph of Obama’s prospects […]
I am a little late to the game here because I was traveling yesterday, but I have some thoughts to share about Obama’s historic victory. I disagree that Thursday’s Iowa caucuses were a victory for extremism, something proposed on e-thepeople.org today. I also disagree with Kent Wicker’s highly rated comment that Hillary Clinton […]
This article details how an application on facebook is helping to spread spyware called “Zango”. When I saw the headline, I was worried that this violation involved the features that facebook offers. But in fact, the spyware is just a link to install malicious code on your computer. It can only be […]
About
I am a grad student at Stanford University in the Communication Department and a founder of e-thePeople.org, a digital townhall. A longer, more self-indulgent bio.
Einstein Eightball
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
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Please send me email at mike (at) weiksner (dot) com
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