http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11934

UPDATE: Fortune. + More.

[Download this post to watch the video, if your feed reader does not show it to you.]

- In February 2001, Fortune magazine named ENRON the “most innovative company”.

- In October 2007, Robin Hanson, on the Overcoming Bias blog, re-published the falsehood that James Surowiecki (and 3 other book authors in their respective book) made a mistake about Francis Galton in his book, The Wisdom Of Crowds.

- In January 2008, the “BetFair Prof” (Leighton Vaughan-Williams) claimed, on the BetFair blog, that the “betting markets” foresaw the Republican race in the Michigan primary.

- In January 2008, Risk magazine named SOCIETE GENERALE (recently busted by one of its traders, which lead to a loss of 7.2 billion dollars) the “equity derivatives house of the year”.

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TAKEAWAY: Either by complete incompetence or by lack of investigation means, journalism is not up to its lofty goal —telling the truth to people.

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(Via Marc Andreessen.)

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Jerome Kerviel, soon to be named “person of the year” by Risk magazine?

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[...] The [Silicon] Valley residents see themselves as true entrepreneurs, entirely focused and dedicated. Marc Andreessen, 36, the co-founder of three companies in the Valley (Netscape, Opsware and Ning), concedes that San Francisco is generating more start-ups these days. “But in general, the nerds with minimal social lives like me are well down in the Valley, and the cool kids with the trendy glasses and Prada shoes who like to go to parties are in San Francisco,” Mr. Andreessen said in an e-mail message. “You can guess who has the leg up in building companies.”

David Pennock:

Academic papers largely influence … other academics. In a cycle that often seems set up to do little else than impress one another within a insular niche. Ok, I’m exaggerating the skeptic’s side of the coin, but it does seem rare that an academic paper has a truly large impact on the wider world (though I’m sure inevitably [influence] is a power law). If you want to influence the world, talk to the world. Blogging is one route. Also, I agree with the comment by Eliezer Yudkowsky that blog posts are not like newspaper articles. The best posts will be continually rediscovered through links and search engines. You’ve created one of the most vibrant and participatory blogs I’ve seen covering a serious subject: many kudos. One example of your breadth of reach: I noticed that tech celeb Marc Andreessen has you listed among his “interesting writers”: see http://blog.pmarca.com/ .

To build on David Pennock’s argument (if I may), I’d say that I begin to see academic papers referring web postings (including blog posts) and publishing their deep links (URLs) in the appendices.

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Previous: SHOCK WAVE: ROBIN HANSON THREATENS TO QUIT BLOGGING.

UPDATE: Robin Hanson…

I seem to have failed to communicate, as all these comments seem to have missed the point. Yes, blog posts can influence people, but the question is whether that influence feeds back much into more related intellectual insights that accumulate over the long run.

Previous: If I’m mainly the equivalent of a newspaper columnist, rather than a part of a community of modular thinkers, this is to me a waste. So, given that these are my goals and concerns, should I quit blogging in favor of more traditional academic publications?