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Don Reynolds, you’re in the “prediction market industry” —not in the “law enforcement industry”.

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All that said in all web friendship to Don Reynolds of NewsFutures.

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Makes me think of that military joke.

- How did you get in the Army?

- Sergeant, I got 3 reasons for being in the Army:

First, I’m patriotic.

Second, I love my country.

And third, they nailed me.

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ha! ha! ha!

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Robin Hanson at LinkedIn

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Robin Hanson:

[...] I have a passion, a sacred quest, to understand everything, and to save the world. I am addicted to “viewquakes”, insights which dramatically change my world view. I loved science fiction as a child, studied physics and artificial intelligence for a long time each, and now study economics and political science — all fields full of such insights. Unfortunately, this also means I am tempted to leave a subject when I have mastered its major insights.

I also have a rather critical style. I beat hard on new ideas, seek out critics, and then pledge my allegiance only to those still left standing. In conversation, I prefer to identify a claim at issue, and then focus on analyzing it, rather than the usual quick tours past hundreds of issues. I have always asked questions, even when I was very young.

I have little patience with those whose thinking is sloppy, small, or devoid of abstraction. And I’m not a joiner; I rebel against groups with “our beliefs”, especially when members must keep criticisms private, so as not to give ammunition to “them”. I love to talk to people one on one, and common beliefs are not important for friendship — instead I value honesty and passion. My family disagrees with me quite often. I don’t take criticism personally – so please, don’t pull your punches.

My hobby for many years was imagining and promoting alternative institutions, and I started a mailing list on the topic. I have designed alternative institutions for health care, law enforcement, finding criticism, conversation, dividing chores, encouraging charity, keeping yourself rational, informing elections, etc. My best idea is Idea Futures, a radical alternative to existing academic institutions. But I felt that, without contacts or credentials, I wasn’t getting very far.

So I returned to school, at great expense, to get those contacts and credentials. Perhaps surprisingly, what I most missed at school was good wide-ranging intellectual conversation. That situation has greatly improved now that I’m at GMU, and I enjoy long conversations with Bryan Caplan and Tyler Cowen (Here’s a picture of the three of us). They lack a can-do engineering spirit and gee-whiz techie gossip, but you can’t have everything.

I am interested in all aspects of the future, including uploading, nanotech, hypertext publishing, cosmology and the foundations of physics, future economic growth rates, limits of computation, and the origin of life. I’d love to specialize in the economics of science fiction. Some fun places to discuss such issues are the Polymath and the Extropians mailing list which I have participated in since 1991. (I especially enjoy posts by Hal Finney.) I don’t sign onto “Extropianism” though; I don’t sign onto any “ism”. I am, however, a Alcor cryonics customer. For a few hundred dollars a year, I estimate I’m buying a >5% chance of living for thousands of (subjective) years. But many disagree (I’d like a web ref to a critic here).

I am a 6 foot, 200 pound, 48 year-old, well-educated, married white male American, with two children. I have a wife Peggy, and sons Tommy and Andy.

My favorite charity is TrickleUp. They give $100 loans to groups of five third-worlders to start a business. Another way I’d love to help the world’s poor is to open U.S. borders to all immigrants.

My core politics is “I don’t know”; most people seem far too confident in their political opinions. Beyond that, I like to explore the potential for decentralizing functions of government, I am intrigued by demarchy, and I have invented a new form of government called “futarchy.”

My favorite musicians are Vangelis – majestic, ethereal – and Enya – passionate, ethereal.

I’m also a fan of Fractal Image Compression, the CYC approach to AI, Strauss & Howe’s Generations theory and predictions, Many Worlds Quantum Mechanics, legalizing marijuana, and the Men’s movement.

My Jungian personality type is ENTP.

If you still want to know more about me, see my writings.

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May 19, 2008

Dr. Eric Schmidt
Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Google, Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

Dear Dr. Schmidt:

YouTube is being used to share videos produced by al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups. The purpose of this letter is to request that Google implement its own policy against this offensive material, remove these videos from YouTube, and prevent them from reappearing.

Today, Islamist terrorist organizations rely extensively on the Internet to attract supporters and advance their cause. The framework for much of this Internet campaign is described in a bipartisan staff report released last week by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (“Committee”), which I am privileged to chair, titled Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat. The report explains, in part, how al-Qaeda created and manages a multi-tiered online media operation that produces content intended to enlist followers in countries all over the world, including the United States. Central to this media campaign is the branding of content with an icon or logo to guarantee authenticity that the content was produced by al-Qaeda or allied organizations like al-Qaeda in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam (a.k.a Ansar al-Sunnah) or al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb. All of these groups have been designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) by the Department of State.

Searches on YouTube return dozens of videos branded with an icon or logo identifying the videos as the work of one of these Islamist terrorist organizations. A great majority of these videos document horrific attacks on American soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. Others provide weapons training, speeches by al-Qaeda leadership, and general material intended to radicalize potential recruits.

In other words, Islamist terrorist organizations use YouTube to disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training – activities that are all essential to terrorist activity. According to testimony received by our Committee, the online content produced by al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organizations can play a significant role in the process of radicalization, the end point of which is the planning and execution of a terrorist attack. YouTube also, unwittingly, permits Islamist terrorist groups to maintain an active, pervasive, and amplified voice, despite military setbacks or successful operations by the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

YouTube posts “community guidelines” for users to follow, but it does not appear that the company is enforcing these guidelines to the extent they would apply to this content. For example, the community guidelines state that “[g]raphic or gratuitous violence is not allowed. If your video shows someone getting hurt, attacked, or humiliated, don’t post it.” Many of the videos produced by one of the production arms of al-Qaeda show attacks on U.S. forces in which American soldiers are injured and, in some cases, killed. Nevertheless, those videos remain available for viewing on YouTube. At the same time, the guidelines do not prohibit the posting of content that can be readily identified as produced by al-Qaeda or another FTO.

I ask you, therefore, to immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube. This should be a straightforward task since so many of the Islamist terrorist organizations brand their material with logos or icons identifying their provenance. In addition, please explain what changes Google plans to make to the YouTube community guidelines to address violent extremist material and how Google plans to enforce those guidelines to prevent the content from reappearing.

Protecting our citizens from terrorist attacks is a top priority for our government. The private sector can help us do that. By taking action to curtail the use of YouTube to disseminate the goals and methods of those who wish to kill innocent civilians, Google will make a singularly important contribution to this important national effort.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this critical matter and I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Joseph I. Lieberman (ID-CT)
Chairman, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

Congress to Take Testimony on Internet Gambling Ban

By Matt Richtel

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 made it illegal for banks and other financial institutions to process online wagers. The goal was to find an indirect way to regulate offshore casinos [... and sportsbooks... and real-money prediction exchanges...], which are outside the jurisdiction of American law enforcement. In short: the casinos are out of reach, but not the banks in the United States that process their transactions.

The question now is whether the banks are capable of stopping the transactions. [...] Under the gambling act, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve were charged with coming up with rules that financial institutions would be required to follow to block gambling transactions. [...]

Congressman Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat, is the chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services. He is also the author of a bill that would legalize and regulate Internet gambling – a law that would essentially override the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. [...]

There is still plenty of room for disagreement on this subject. I take the position (PDF) that, while point shaving in amateur sports may be somewhat more common than previously believed, the suspicious statistical trend that he identifies (heavy favorites win yet fail to cover the spread more often than expected) is unlikely to arise primarily from widespread corruption.

I base my opinion on the observation that the same statistical pattern also appears in NBA and NFL game outcomes, yet athletes in major professional leagues are unlikely to engage in point shaving.

NFL and NBA players who are sufficiently talented to reliably influence game outcomes are already wealthy and would have little to gain from such conspiracy. The enormous amount of money that millionaire athletes would have to wager to make manipulation worthwhile would raise suspicion among casinos and, consequently, law enforcement. Were corruption of this sort to be exposed, the conspiring players would not only forego their substantial future salaries, but would also serve time in federal prison.

So, it seems inarguable that point shaving by professional athletes must be far less prevalent than is point shaving by amateurs. Then why in major professional sports do heavy favorites also win yet fail to cover the spread more often than expected?

Admittedly, it is far easier for me to poke a hole in an intriguing theory than it is to come up with an alternative one that fully explains this odd statistical pattern. Nevertheless, I need a good answer to my question before I will become a believer in widespread point shaving.

Rick Borghesi

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Yesterday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story entitled “Betting web site’s computers seized.” Within hours, bloggers and other news outlets picked up the story and translated it into something akin to “Betcha shut down.”

Problem: the translation isn’t true. (WARNING: if tails of government bureaucrats running roughshod over its citizens turns your stomach, stop reading here.)

What’s Happening

What happened was this. Last Friday, Betcha’s attorneys and I met with the state Gambling Commission to address their concerns. They had us drive to their offices in Lacey, WA, about an hour from Betcha’s offices. The meeting lasted all of about five minutes, with it ending in a deputy commissioner handing us a pre-printed Cease and Desist order. I’ll attached a PDF copy of it later, but the gist of it was “shut down or else.” Why she couldn’t have told us this over the phone I am not sure — I suspect it had something to do with making my Friday afternoon a very expensive one. (Tax dollars hard at work.) At almost the exact same moment, Seattle lawyer Lee Rousso was, coincidentally, filing a lawsuit in state court asking the court to declare the state’s anti-Internet gambling ban unconstitutional. Although the law has previously been criticized on First Amendment grounds, and the Commission has taken positions in the past that appear pretty tough to square with any notion of free speech [], Mr. Rousso’s challenge is based on the Commerce Clause — that is, the law seeks to protect the in-state Native American casinos from out-of-state competition, and is therefore unconstitutional.

On Monday, I arrived to the offices early to unlock the doors so the raiders wouldn’t bust them down. (Not cheap to replace a busted down door.) A few hours later, Commission enforcers, indeed, showed up and took everything. Our books, our posters, my business cards — everything. (The warrant wasn’t limited – among other things, it included “stamps,” “printers,” “scanners,” “jewelry,” “envelopes”, “napkins”, “cardboard coasters” and “keys.”) No one from Betcha was there — not a good way to start the week, being on the business end of a roving commission. Ironically, my wife stopped by during the raid and chatted up Rick Herrington, the chief Raider (read: head of Commission enforcement.) When my wife asked Mr. Herrington whether they’d be selling our equipment on eBay, he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say “maybe yes, maybe no.” He then told her “Nick should have come to us first about this.” This exchange I find revealing: it seems that the Commission is more interested in ruining me and Betcha than anything else. Why? Because we’re near their turf.

As troubling was how the conversation continued. According to my wife, Mr. Herrington repeated several times “he’s breaking the law, he’s breaking the law.” When she told him that that was a judge’s decision, he replied “doesn’t matter, he’s still breaking the law.” (If that’s not guilty until proven innocent, I don’t know what is.)
On Tuesday, we petitioned a state court in Olympia to enjoin the Commission from this “seize and threaten now, ask questions later” approach. It almost never happens that a court will enjoin law enforcement from enforcing its version of the law, no matter how warped that version may be. This is an extraordinary remedy and we didn’t get it yesterday, although it wasn’t for lack of fantastic work by our lawyer.

The hearing wasn’t without substantial incident and irony. Apparently, although several people at both the Commission and Attorney General’s office had been served with our papers via fax, e-mail, and PDF, someone at the Commission did not receive an original copy of one of the documents, as required by the state service statute. As a result, we could not proceed until we could prove someone at the Commission had been served with an original copy of this document. We then had to race across Olympia to the Commission’s office in a nearby town to serve the Commissioner himself — personally. (Not a single person in the legal department was working on that glorious 94-degree Tuesday — go figure.) The irony — exactitude matters big time to the Commission when it comes to serving paperwork that they already had. But precision in reading a criminal statute that may result in me doing years in the Gray Bar Hotel, not to mention wiping out a fair bit of investor capital and no less than seven years of man work — nah.

What’s Next

In terms of next steps, the situation is this. We are pursuing an action to get a court to declare Betcha legal. If the law and/or the Constitution matters in Washington (open question, that), I am confident Betcha will prevail. In the meantime, however, we face a Cease and Desist Order from a Commission that appears hell-bent on destroying Betcha at all costs. We’re going to review it in detail later today and decide on a course of action. We may have to take the betting-for-money part of the site down until we get on the other side of the steamroller.

You can rest assured, however, about our resolve. The government bureaucracy has been running roughshod over the citizens of this country for far too long. [] Prosecutors make up facts, legislators make it a crime to play poker in your own home, bureaucrats rewrite the laws, logic and the dictionary — and we’re all left at their mercy. The frog is boiling and the water’s getting hotter every day. I pledge to the friends and users of Betcha.com that I will do my part to turn the heat down. If that means rotting in jail, so be it.

The text above appeared on Nick Jenkins’ blog at Betcha.com. Visit the original blog post to see all the links inserted in his text, and which don’t appear above.

Previous: IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG. NICK JENKINS’ BETCHA.COM GETS BUSTED THREE WEEKS AFTER LAUNCH.

Problem: the translation isn’t true. (WARNING: if tails of government bureaucrats running roughshod over its citizens turns your stomach, stop reading here.)

What’s Happening
What happened was this. Last Friday, Betcha’s attorneys and I met with the state Gambling Commission to address their concerns. They had us drive to their offices in Lacey, WA, about an hour from Betcha’s offices. The meeting lasted all of about five minutes, with it ending in a deputy commissioner handing us a pre-printed Cease and Desist order. I’ll attached a PDF copy of it later, but the gist of it was “shut down or else.” Why she couldn’t have told us this over the phone I am not sure — I suspect it had something to do with making my Friday afternoon a very expensive one. (Tax dollars hard at work.) At almost the exact same moment, Seattle lawyer Lee Rousso was, coincidentally, filing a lawsuit in state court asking the court to declare the state’s anti-Internet gambling ban unconstitutional. Although the law has previously been criticized on First Amendment grounds [1|2], and the Commission has taken positions in the past that appear pretty tough to square with any notion of free speech (an example), Mr. Rousso’s challenge is based on the Commerce Clause — that is, the law seeks to protect the in-state Native American casinos from out-of-state competition, and is therefore unconstitutional.

On Monday, I arrived to the offices early to unlock the doors so the raiders wouldn’t bust them down. (Not cheap to replace a busted down door.) A few hours later, Commission enforcers, indeed, showed up and took everything. Our books, our posters, my business cards — everything. (The warrant wasn’t limited – among other things, it included “stamps,” “printers,” “scanners,” “jewelry,” “envelopes”, “napkins”, “cardboard coasters” and “keys.”) No one from Betcha was there — not a good way to start the week, being on the business end of a roving commission. Ironically, my wife stopped by during the raid and chatted up Rick Herrington, the chief Raider (read: head of Commission enforcement.) When my wife asked Mr. Herrington whether they’d be selling our equipment on eBay, he shrugged his shoulders, as if to say “maybe yes, maybe no.” He then told her “Nick should have come to us first about this.” This exchange I find revealing: it seems that the Commission is more interested in ruining me and Betcha than anything else. Why? Because we’re near their turf.

As troubling was how the conversation continued. According to my wife, Mr. Herrington repeated several times “he’s breaking the law, he’s breaking the law.” When she told him that that was a judge’s decision, he replied “doesn’t matter, he’s still breaking the law.” (If that’s not guilty until proven innocent, I don’t know what is.)

On Tuesday, we petitioned a state court in Olympia to enjoin the Commission from this “seize and threaten now, ask questions later” approach. It almost never happens that a court will enjoin law enforcement from enforcing its version of the law, no matter how warped that version may be. This is an extraordinary remedy and we didn’t get it yesterday, although it wasn’t for lack of fantastic work by our lawyer.

The hearing wasn’t without substantial incident and irony. Apparently, although several people at both the Commission and Attorney General’s office had been served with our papers via fax, e-mail, and PDF, someone at the Commission did not receive an original copy of one of the documents, as required by the state service statute. As a result, we could not proceed until we could prove someone at the Commission had been served with an original copy of this document. We then had to race across Olympia to the Commission’s office in a nearby town to serve the one of the Commissioners himself — personally. (Not a single person in the legal department was working on that glorious 94-degree Tuesday — go figure.) The irony — exactitude matters big time to the Commission when it comes to serving paperwork that they already had. But precision in reading a criminal statute that may result in me doing years in the Gray Bar Hotel, not to mention wiping out a fair bit of investor capital and no less than seven years of man work — nah.

What’s Next
In terms of next steps, the situation is this. We are pursuing an action to get a court to declare Betcha legal. If the law and/or the Constitution matters in Washington (open question, that), I am confident Betcha will prevail. In the meantime, however, we face a Cease and Desist Order from a Commission that appears hell-bent on destroying Betcha at all costs. We’re going to review it in detail later today and decide on a course of action. We may have to take the betting-for-money part of the site down until we get on the other side of the steamroller.

You can rest assured, however, about our resolve. The government bureaucracy has been running roughshod over the citizens of this country for far too long. (Check out this book or BoilingFrog.com, among other sites, for some examples.) Prosecutors make up facts, legislators make it a crime to play poker in your own home, bureaucrats rewrite the laws, logic and the dictionary — and we’re all left at their mercy. The frog is boiling and the water’s getting hotter every day. I pledge to the friends and users of Betcha.com that I will do my part to turn the heat down. If that means rotting in jail, so be it.

Cross-posted from the Betcha.com blog