#1. I am in possession of the URL of Tyler Cowen’s secret blog.

#2. However, nobody did rat on Tyler Cowen. And nobody did send me the URL, as such. A somebody sent me an e-mail, using a pseudonym and a forged e-mail account, hinting me about specific Google queries I should perform to land directly on Tyler Cowen’s secret blog. (Bingo!) My anonymous correspondent said that he/she weighted the moral problematic of selling Tyler Cowen down the river, but concluded that:

[...] I didn’t violate an agreement with Prof. Cowen in revealing this site, because I have not bought his book or emailed to him seeking the address.

RELATED NOTE: Today, via Tech Crunch, we are informed that The New York Times has discovered and unveiled the name of the anonymous writer who blogs at The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, a very popular and hilarious tech business blog. It turns out the fake Steve Jobs blog is written by a Forbes editor, Daniel Lyons. How did the New York Times journalist uncover the truth?

[...] The book, in part, led to Mr. Lyons’s unmasking. Last year, his agent showed the manuscript to several book publishers and told them the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine. The New York Times found Mr. Lyons by looking for writers who fit those two criteria, and then by comparing the writing of “Fake Steve” to a blog Mr. Lyons writes in his own name, called Floating Point (floatingpoint.wordpress.com). [...]

My advice to anybody with a secret blog:

• Do forbid the search engines to index your secret blog.
• Beware your writing patterns.
• Don’t drop any clues.

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Pssttt… Does somebody know who the hell hides behind the Hopefully Anonymous blog??

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TYLER COWEN – Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.

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Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution

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Photo: Chris Buck

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External Link: CFM, the vertical portal to prediction markets

Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution

Tyler Cowen’s book – Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.

Robin believes that betting markets should be used to rule many human affairs, including government policy. We should bet [*] on which policies will maximize national income, and governments should institute the policies what the betting markets show as most likely to succeed. [...]

[*] Speculate… not just “bet”.

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As I wrote many times on Midas Oracle, whether Robin Hanson’s concept of decision markets (where conditional prediction markets are used to make decisions) will end up as applications is only half of the story. (Tyler Cowen is skeptical, just as I am.) The other half of the story is that Robin Hanson’s work is also about decision-aid markets (where conditional prediction markets are used to simulate the near future). In my view, it’s only a matter of years before Fortune-500 firms and think tanks pay close attention to this sub concept. They are just discovering the classic prediction markets, these days. Give them some time.

Robin Hanson is an inventor, here. As I wrote many times on Midas Oracle, many times, an innovator comes up, captures the essence of the invention, and applies it in a way that was not envisioned by the inventor. Example: Could be that the best application of the decision markets would be, not in the world of reality (as Robin Hanson hopes), but in the world of imagination. Let’s say that the Libertarians (capital L) creates a libertarian government within a virtual game like Second Life. They could adopt the concept of decision markets to run their public, virtual government. Other ideas are possible; this is just one example, to make the point that the innovators should think outside of the box… framed by the inventors like Robin Hanson.

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Addendum: Robin Hanson’s response to Tyler Cowen. + Tyler Cowen’s response to Robin Hanson + Tyler Cowen on Robin Hanson + Robin Hanson’s answer to Tyler Cowen

DO YOU KNOW THE URL OF TYLER COWEN’S SECRET BLOG?? IF YES, PLEASE, SEND ITS URL TO CHRIS MASSE. ANONYMITY GUARANTEED. AND I PROMISE I WON’T PUBLISH IT.

[I'm testing the solidity of the oath taken by the purchasers of Tyler Cowen's new book ---they had to promise not to give out the URL of his secret blog to strangers. By the same token, I'm also testing the power of Midas Oracle when it comes to attracting Deep Throats.]

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Tyler Cowen on the Volokh blog:

New books and secret blogs: some results

A few days ago, on [Marginal Revolution], I offered access to a secret blog (over forty posts) to anyone who would pre-order my forthcoming book Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist, due out August 2 from Dutton. The deal, which still stands for all, is that the reader need only write an email to IBoughtTylersBook@gmail.com and tell me they pre-ordered the book. My underlying hypothesis was that blog readers are not always book readers, so why not package a blog with a book? I was surprised by the results:

1. The orders drove the book up to #220 on Amazon.

2. So far no one has leaked the site address, even though hundreds of people (many of them bloggers) have it.

3. Most people sent in proof of purchase, and were keen to have me look at it, even though I did not ask for it.

4. People asked very earnestly whether it was permissible to show the secret blog to their spouse (it is).

5. Some people wrote me long emails, with complex economic arguments, as to why I should give them the blog for free. But they weren’t willing to simply lie and get the site address.

6. Some people wrote me long emails with instructions and advice as to how to keep the blog secret for a long time, and possible dangers I might face in maintaining that secrecy.

We’ll see how this progresses. No, we can’t fund the nuclear umbrella this way, but I am heartened by the honesty and cooperativeness of the blog-reading community.

Tyler Cowen to Chris Masse (“Do you mention the prediction markets in your new book?“):

Absolutely I mention them, in the context of discussing Robin Hanson, in the chapter on “How to Look Good”…

TYLER COWEN – Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist.