Physical Computer Attack

Turns out the idea I had for a computer virus that physically attacks people has happened.
An epilepsy support forum has been targeted with flashing javascript. The whole attack is very sick. Still I think I was right for pointing out the threat. The warning could have lead the epilepsy forum to turn scripting off. I do not know how a migraine forum could prevent trigger images though.

Let me be the first to say Holy Shit

*THIS POST IS FALSE the silica hydrogen compound is a room temperature metal and a superconductor but not both at the same time*
I have talked about the possibility of of a hydrogen based room temperature superconductor here. As described in that article I believed a metallic hydrogen could produce a superconductor that would be such an advance as to be reasonably called a paradigm shift.

It turns out someone has made a room temperature superconductor using hydrogen. The pressure required for the compound is not practical. Now that hydrogen has been shown to have these properties more research into practical compounds will be encouraged. The area has recently seen another practical improvement. The first ambient at normal temperature superconductor has been reported in the last few days also.

So what does a room temperature superconductor mean? I have no idea, but it is probably the biggest innovation in electricity since *Nicolas* Tesla. It is something so odd that you are much better spending your time figuring out what do do with it then trying to think what other people are going to do with it. But to give one of a hundred possible examples, with a superconducting power cable you can produce electricity anywhere and transport it without loss. This would increase energy efficiency by over 30%*.

So my bet on what the maximum temperature superconductor by the end of the year is out by at least 110K. If you want to make a bet you can do it here.

*edit. You lose about 10% of electricity to power line loses and about 20% to disparities in usage between different times. You can smooth out these disparities by transporting the electricity during your night to someone elses peak demand time of day.

Why is there more business news then science news?

If almost all economic growth is caused by science why are scientific advances not reported in more detail then some change in bank shares? If science is going to effect the economy and our lives much more then sterling doing badly against a basket of currencies or even a basket of scampi then it should be reported.

For news media "five hours of viewing would yield 71 minutes of politics, 26 minutes of crime, 12 minutes of disasters and 10 minutes of celebrities. Science, technology, health and the environment received just six minutes of coverage (with health and health care accounting for half of that."

One possible way to help fix this is betting markets for science. These would provide
1. a figure on science that the public could understand. For example imagine a news broadcast
"the market odds for 5 degrees global warming in 50 years today moved up 2% to 95%"
2. Provide a way to hedge. Resource futures allow people to guarantee they will earn a certain amount for their produce. Science prediction markets can provide a similar hedge. A company owning port space in northern Canada could bet against global warming to guarantee a certain minimum income.
3.To subsidise scientific research. Scientific prediction markets would reward scientists for being right.

You could claim that scientific market would not provide any mew information as research companies already know this information. If they do the public could still benefit from this knowledge. If they do they are better predictors of science then they are of resource prices which seems unlikely. The market in science futures should be every bit as valuable as the market for resource futures. A coal market might help you plan for electricity supply in 10 years time but so can a market of superconductors or one on fusion power.
Saying there is no need for science futures because private firms carry out research is like saying there is no need for resource futures because private companies grow/mine the materials.

Anyway if you think scientific prediction markets are a good idea or a bad one you can make a prediction here

Giving up on music

This makes me look like one of the monkeys at the start of 2001AD but I buy CD's. Lots of them. Almost everyone else I know gave up on new music a few years after leaving college. But I keep wandering round shops with handfulls of laser readable processed dinosaur bones like some sort of animal. I do not own an Ipod, I dislike the idea of Apple chaining up my files so I just continue to fill my house with disks.

The desert sessions 9&10 arrived yesterday and it is the last CD i will buy*. I will not buy new music until the music industry stops trying to steal from me. They are currently trying to make the internet more expensive and have less freedom. It is immoral for the record industry to take money from me for pirating when I do not pirate. Is is immoral for them to take freedom from me. It is immoral for them to sue 14 year old girls. It is immoral for them not to give the money they made suing p2p programs to the people they were suing for. I am not going to fund this behaviour anymore.


*I will buy music from skint artists from their website Jape, David Kitt and Mumblin' Deaf Ro people like that.

Is metallic hydrogen a black swan?

I have set up a prediction market for superconductor temperature here. One problem with this bet is black swan events

When betting on the price of gold or the score in a football match you know it is very unlikely to move outside certain ranges. Scientific knowledge does occasionally make huge advances though.

To take one example say someone creates metallic hydrogen at reasonable temperatures. This substance is estimated to have a superconducting temperature at near room temperature. Well 230 85 K but the upper end of this is at the level to completely change the world (with the huge assumption that the pressure metallic hydrogen existed at is practical).

In this case the prediction for the superconductor temperature is in two forms
1. Something similar to the current rate of change happens. A few degrees a year.
2. Something completely new comes along with really different properties (figure 2 here).


Metallic Hydrogen would not even be that novel. It has been modeled theoretically and we know people are trying to make it. Usually in prediction markets you have scoring rules that give out money/points based on how close to the answer you were. In these cases where huge changes have a reasonable chance of occurring these sorts of scoring rules might be unfair.

Say there is a 90% chance that research will continue along its standard path to 188K. Say there is a 5% chance that nothing will change. And say there is a 5% chance the maximum temperature will suddenly jump up to 270K. Does this mean that the market will sit at 193K? Will people in the lab who create a room temperature superconductor go out and bet heavily on their side moving the market (and making them money)? Will people ignore the black swan of room temperature superconductor and move the market to a “sensible” level? Humans do have a bias to ignore unlikely highly risky possibilities.

Could this bias make scientific prediction markets more profitable for those that create huge innovations?

Is anyone interested in science prediction markets?

I set up one to find out. Please go here and make a prediction. The bet is on what the highest temperature superconductor by January 1st 2009 will be.

You need about 20 predictions to have a reasonable estimate. Real money prediction markets have the advantage of giving a greater incentive to be correct. I think it would be funny to have physicists in finance doing physics for a change.

Superconductor betting. How and why.

Setting up a superconductor betting/information market would
1. Provide publicity to superconductor research
2. Provide incentives to develop and publish theoretical models of
metallic superconductors. Publishing the models would move the market
in the way you have already bet on.
This would make more cash for the model developer. The theoretical
models should aid the actual production of the materials.
3. Provide some incentive for the development of superconductor materials.
4. Provide some evidence on whether these sorts of information markets
work. Whether they encourage research and results. If they do they
could be used for other research areas.
5. It would provide an estimate as to how well markets predict and incentivise scientific development. There are results on how well they predict elections and sports games but not much on science. If these markets are useful at predicting and incentivising science they would be very valuable.

It to set up would need
1. To get someone famous to talk about it. One of the aims of the market is to provide publicity to the area of research and nothing provides publicity like a celebrity bet. Stephen Hawking famously loves a good bet.
http://hanson.gmu.edu/press/natureNov02.pdf
2. To live in Ireland. We seem one of the only countries that allow this
sort of betting.
3. To figure out if this could be classed as a charity. You are
sponsoring scientific research. However you are also engaging in
betting which is illegal in most of the USA.

I will describe later the mechanism of a science prediction market that also allows donations to sponsor those that advance knowledge.

Useful Superconductors

FX prediction market has a bet on the likelihood of an alloy high-Tc superconductor by 2017. The current market value of this places it at 65% likely.

77 kelvin is given as the useful figure because this is the boiling point of Nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is in fairly cheap plentiful supply so if you can get a superconductor that works at that temperature it is useful for commercial applications.
Being malleable and ductile would also add to the practical applications of the superconductor. Malleable and ductile in this description are slightly ambiguous, I assume only metallic compounds can have these qualities but I could be wrong. So replace malleable and ductile with metallic in the post if that is a better description.


Superconductors have all sorts of known useful applications. It is such a weird property that trying to figure out what you can do with them is like a bronze age swordmaker trying to figure out all applications of iron.

This is an in depth description of the superconductivity phenomenon. Figure 12 shows the historical evolution of the maximum superconducting temperature.



If you look at this graph you can see that a metallic superconductor if current trends continue a metallic superconductor would be nearing the temperature of liquid nitrogen. This of course assumes that a metal could superconduct at this temperature.

Using these two graphs and this bet we can have some evidence of what the current trends in these class of superconductors is and also how likely people believe these trends are to continue. From this information we can estimate if actions have an effect on the development of this class of superconductors.

One way to encourage superconductor research would be to offer a prize for new metals that increase the highest temperature of superconductivity. Superconductor research is materials research that is not overly expensive. However it does require a reasonable level of investment. As such any prize for the development of new superconducting materials would need to be considerable. The producer of a metallic superconductor could expect to make significant commercial results from the discovery.

Theoreticians however do not need as much money. They could make a prediction on the properties of metallic superconductors and not have to go through the cost of actually producing the materials.

So if you could give a prize to the most accurate prediction of the future of metallic superconductors this would slightly encourage experimental research into metallic superconductors. It would I believe more strongly affect theoretical examination of the problem.

I believe we should use a form of betting market to incentivise research into superconductors. I will describe how this market would be designed and the pros and cons of the scheme in another post.

If you have any opinions on how to phrase the question so that knowing the answer requires more knowledge in this area to be acquired. How to judge the question reliably and in a trustworthy way is another important question.

Prediction markets: For realreal or for playplay?

When running a prediction market is it more accurate to use play money (karma) or real money? This paper here and the easier to read presentation description here provide evidence it does not effect the markets accuracy. Both result in accuracies much greater then the average opinion of the people in the market.

This means that people with more confidence betting larger amounts tend to be more accurate. People without strong opinions being less involved in predictions seems to increase accuracy.

It is interesting to wonder why money does not seem to benefit accuracy. Could it be that using money attracts some of the wrong kinds of bettors? Would some combination of real and play money provide more accurate predictions? In this case there would have to be different types of bets in the real and play money that both happen to be of similar accuracy.

If it is the case that people bet the same with real and play money could it be that money is just a karma substitute?

One important factor with the use of real money is that it rewards those who are right in a way that they can eat. Karma does not butter any parsnips. For using prediction markets in science I think you should reward those who make accurate predictions in a way that aids their making predictions in future.

Bias and Netflix Prize

The Netflix prize aims to get an algorithm that judges better how people rate items.This article in wired talks about the use of examining human biases to help you rate items.

I find human cognitive biases fascinating and used them to develop a lottery number generator. What biases could affect the netflix prize?

Genetic Bias. As this article describes numerous of our biases/opinions have a genetic basis.

The article reports on how your opinions on X-Rated movies has a genetic component. Now unless you have an identical twin in your Netflix set (they are 0.2% of the world population) this information may not be of much use. Still I think it is interesting that because some opinions have a genetic component peoples Netflix ratings probably have a genetic component.

There is a list of cognitive biases here. If I think of any others that are relevant to the Netflix prize I will post an article.

Off hand I would expect these effects
1.Bandwagon effect. If everyone you know says a film is good you will probably go along with them to some extent.

2. Post-purchase rationalization. Your ratings are likely to be slightly higher then your real feelings. The fact you went and rented the film means you have a certain investment in it being good. If you then say you were wrong you are admitting being wrong to some extent. People hate to admit being wrong.

3.Zero-risk bias. This is tenuous but i think users are more likely to rate a .5 movie as 0 then a 4.5 movie as 4. One bias i have not heard mentioned is how people will order films based on how this will make them look.

This slate article describes he phenomena. I expect that people will also overrate pretentious movies on the grounds that no one want to give Battleship Potemkin as 1 and Porkies 2 as 5.

Why use prediction markets for science?

I got a very good comment on this article

“Cold fusion cannot be confirmed by a popularity context, or by politics, and not even by asking experts. There is only one way to confirm that it exists: by experiment…. Objective, replicated instrument readings are the one and only standard of truth in experimental science.”
This is correct, if everyone in the world thinks the world is flat it is still not. The only standard of truth is experimental science. However prediction markets do provide scientists with publicity, understandability and money. All these are useful.

Prediction markets give the public a readable figure on how likely *people think* a certain event is*.

They provide a method to clear FUD from scientific debates. For example when climate change skeptics are asked to bet on their prediction they suddenly become less supportive of their criticisms.

""Richard Lindzen says he's willing to take bets that global average temperatures in 20 years will in fact be lower than they are now." (thanks to William Connolley for the tip). Given his widely-promulgated views, I took this quote at face value and contacted him to arrange a wager. A payoff at retirement age would be a nice top-up to my pension.

Now here's the kicker. Richard Lindzen will indeed accept a bet - but only if offered odds of 50:1 in his favour!"

Another advantage of prediction markets is they provide a way for scientists to make money by being right. Being right is something we should encourage scientists to be. If the market is inaccurate you can make money betting against it.

The scientific method does change over time

That talk gives the following additions to the scientific method over time.
2000 BC - First text indexes
200 BC - Cataloged library (at Alexandria)
1000 AD - Collaborative encyclopedia
1590 - Controlled experiment (Roger Bacon)
1600 - Laboratory
1609 - Telescopes and microscopes
1650 - Society of experts
1665 - Repeatability (Robert Boyle)
1665 - Scholarly journals
1675 - Peer review
1687 - Hypothesis/prediction (Isaac Newton)
1920 - Falsifiability (Karl Popper)
1926 - Randomized design (Ronald Fisher)
1937 - Controlled placebo
1946 - Computer simulation
1950 - Double blind experiment
1962 - Study of scientific method (Thomas Kuhn)

There is a big push at the moment to have papers properly blinded so reviewers do not know who they are reading.

An mp3 talk on how the scientific method has changed is here.

So it might be odd but it is not heretical to suggest that the funding of science or even some elements of the scientific method can be altered to take markets into account. This will not alter the place of experiments but could alter the rewards and incentives available to scientists.

*edit. As Dunc correctly pointed out.

How likely is cold fusion?

How likely do people think it is that cold fusion is a real phenomenon? Based on how likely people view cold fusion it can be used to decide whether to spend time/money/effort investigating it.
The Fx prediction market has a bet
“Cold fusion of deuterium in palladium can produce over 10 watts/cc. net power at STP (standard temperature and pressure). Cold fusion is discussed on the fusion newsgroup.”


The judging of this statement could be quite difficult due to ambiguities. However the statement is currently thought to have a 12% likelihood of being true. This means there is about a 1/8 chance that cold fusion is a real phenomenon according to the market. I believe that if people really believed cold fusion was this likely more mainstream research would be studying it. The market could be inaccurate in that
1. The question and judging of it are viewed as too ambiguous to trust.
2. Because real money is not used in this market the market is distorted by irrational bettors.

One problem with the field is that it has attracted cranks and conspiracy theorists. This now makes it difficult for a legitimate researcher to look into the area. The 12% figure could be accurate and some grand conspiracy against cold fusion exists. It is a feature of conspiracy theories that this hypothesis is likely to be supported by believers in such a conspiracy even though other explanations may be more accurate. Another possibility is that the 12% figure is accurate but that researchers fear being dismissed as cranks if they research the area.

Imagine the case where the market was overly optimistic and it used real money. A researcher with evidence against cold fusion could bet heavily against it. Then she would publish a result that showed it to be less likely. When the value of her bet (idea futures) increased she could then sell her “no cold fusion” bet and make a profit. As shown in this post people who provide evidence against conspiracy theories are frequently the subject to abuse.

So how likely do you think cold fusion is?

Will the seed vault be used?

PPX has a bet on whether the doomsday vault designed to hold 4.5 million samples of plant life will be needed in its first year. The seed vault is a bank of biodiversity to counteract the problems of farming moving to a low number of species. If a plant becomes endangered seeds of the plant can be taken from the vault and used to reintroduce the plant. Storing seeds of many varieties means that if conditions devastate one species of plant being grown other similar species with different genes can be used to resist the unfavorable conditions.


The PPX market currently places the chances of the seed vault being used in its first year at 25%. This is a very high probability as if the seed vault is used a serious environmental problem must be underway. The vault is only a final insurance policy against conditions leading to species extinction rather then something for common usage. Imagine you invented a insurance policy that people believed had a ¼ chance of being used in its first year. You would wonder why no one had this policy before?

Problems with Science Prizes

One major problem with science prizes is that in creating publicity they also attract crazies.

James Randi offers a 1 million dollar prize for someone exhibiting paranormal powers. This prize has produced a lot of anger in the paranormal community and Randi has spent a great deal of time dealing with it.

“The fact that this celebration of the upcoming closing of the challenge is bringing such joy to the woo-woo community, proves that the challenge offered an insurmountable impediment to the wonder-workers out there. They will all heave a mighty sigh of relief when March 7th, 2010, rolls around, and then will begin wailing that they weren’t given their chance to carry off the prize money…”

Another example of this is Alfred Wallace (the co-discoverer of evolution) who won a prize for proving the world was not flat.

“The judge for the wager, the editor of Field magazine, declared Wallace the winner, but Hampden refused to accept the result. He sued Wallace and launched a campaign, which persisted for several years, of writing letters to various publications and to organizations of which Wallace was a member denouncing him as a swindler and a thief. Wallace won multiple libel suits against Hampden, but the resulting litigation cost Wallace more than the amount of the wager and the controversy frustrated him for years”

Prizes put up a great “put up or shut up” argument however particularly with people with odd beliefs engaging with them is a bit like covering yourself in barbecue sauce and rolling around in a bag of rabid badgers. Can you think of anyways to reduce the crazy tax associated with science prizes?

PS3 makes a comeback

The PPX betting exchange has a bet that the PS3 will be more popular then the Wii or the Xbox360 in the final quarter of 2009. Betting exchanges only says what people believe is likely to happen. They have been very accurate predictors in the past.

This bet of the PS3's success this bet has shown a general decline in value from 50% likely to under 10% at its lowest. There has been a recent upsurge in the value of this bet. This means people are starting to believe it is more likely that the PS3 will win the console war. Some possible explanations for this are that betters believe that
1. The victory of Blu-Ray over HD-DVD means that people will now buy the PS3 as a media player.
2. The Xbox360 will be replaced by another console
3. The Wii’s popularity is a short term event.



For the probability of the PS3 winning the console war to go from 10% to 30% indicates a major change in attitude to the PS3. This could be important to game developers/reviewers who need to decide what console to concentrate on. It could also affect consumers who want to decide which console to buy as the most successful console tends to have more games options available.

How to pick a Jazz name

I just bought a trumpet and now talk only in Jazz speak. So I need a Jazz name of the form First Jazz Surname. I reckon the following is a good deciding mechanism.

1. Any Chronic Medical Condition? Bleeding Gums, Itchy feet, Dicky Ticker, Seasick
2. Any crime convictions? Louitering, shoplifting etc. You may need to make the crime sound better. Shoplifters should be “lightfingers”. Necrophiles should be “splits” things like that

The idea is similar to Douglas Copeland in Jpod where he describes how your stripper name is the cheapest form of sugar you ate yesterday. Any suggestions for other things that could make your jazz name? What is your Jazz name Daddyo?

Hamster Maths Experiment

I noticed something looking at descriptions of Platonic solids. Have you noticed the obvious omission? Yeah there is nothing in the table about how hamsters react
to each solid. So I decided to run an experiment using Broc the hamster and some models from this book.

The tables seem to completely neglect rodents reactions to these shapes. I was shocked too, what are these so called 'mathematicians' being paid for?

So I decided to stick a yogurt drop in a tetrahedron to measure how long it takes for a hamster to break into each one. This important information would then be added to all tables of platonic solids.

The hamster at first seemed circumspect of the tetrahedron in his house. Presumably he was busy calculating out equations about it.

Soon he was obviously involved in calculations

He then took a quick break to discuss elliptical curve cryptography.

After that Broc was right back to trying to find the yogurt drop. He spent some time digging under the platonic solid.

Eventually Broc gave up on his Platonic solid research and went back to running on hs wheel. After 24 hours the experiment was suspended and no further solids were attempted.


Hamsters appear too stupid to do geometry.

Never mind the length feel the material

I have never seen an economy, it is a group concept like pressure. Some people look at various figures and diagnose the economies health. This is like examining the Yetis leavings to diagnose illness in it.

There is one class of these indicators that I think is really interesting: Length indicators. These are measurable criteria that are used to judge mood and thus how people will spend and earn money.
For women the proposed indicators are hair and skirt length. The logic for skirts is that when money is freely available people are more open and willing to wear short skirts. When times are tough people cover up. So 20’s flappers and 60’s mini’s were eras of economic growth. 30’s and 70’s misery had longer fashions.

For hair the belief is the opposite long is good economy short is bad.

Of course men cannot be judged by such frippery. Instead you judge men moods with big powerful jutting: skyscrapers. When things are going bad no one builds them. When things are going well they try outdo each other with their size (this theory is comedy gold). So just when someone is trying to build the biggest is when a recession comes. Andrew Lawrence’s skyscraper index theory is described here


So U2 building a giant new skyscraper in Dublin would indicate our economy is about to go into recession.

The highly sexist nature of the indices makes me highly dubious that they are meant to be taken seriously. I have noticed though that when a country is doing well beer must be from far away and served pretentiously. Could the % of beer sales that are from domestic brewery’s be a good economic indicator? If you have any theories on what correlates with economic confidence please comment.

Why research stem cells?

Can we use markets to answer how likely the "may" in "Stem cell research may provide us with cures for diseases" is?
According to the PPX market the stem cells are 94.50% likely to cure a disease by 2015. So roughly if you bet 19 dollars that stem cells will cure a disease by then you would only get 20 back.

This means stem cells are viewed as highly likely to cure human diseases in the near future. This information is useful as stem cells which come from human embryos are highly controversial. When defending any such controversial action is is useful to be able to estimate its eventual usefulness.

Losing Faith in Google Knol

The PPX odds that Google Knol will become more popular then Wikipedia by 2010 have halved. Knol has been set up by Google to provide information on diverse subjects in a similar way to Wikipedia. Knol differs from Wikipedia in that each article will have a primary author.



A certain percentage of the Google share price is based on the belief that Google will develop new services that will dominate that area. In this case the market is showing that this belief is no longer fully held in this market. This suggests that if Google shares do have an “invincibility” cost built into them they could lose this.

Another result of this belief is that continued strong use of Wikipedia is likely. As such continuing to update information on the site is warranted.