prior probability

Updated 29 Sept. 2017:

1. Photos from Puerto Rico, via The Atlantic
2. Puerto Rico’s long-term problems, via Bloomberg View (Tyler Cowen)
3. Facts and observations about the Jones Act, via Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen)
4. The economics of natural disasters, via The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis (Kevin L. Kliesen)
5. A reverse Dutch auction of Puerto Rico’s public debts, via prior probability (F. E. Guerra-Pujol)
6. Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal in Puerto Rico, via PR51st
7. What if Puerto Rico becomes part of an already existing State?, via MR (Tyler Cowen)
8. Satellite images of the Island, before and after Maria, via Twitter (@NOAA)

As an aside, doesn’t the natural disaster that devastated our beloved Puerto Rico pose a difficult problem for our libertarian friends? After all, libertarians generally distrust government (and for good reason, we might add), but what happens when there is a national emergency or a natural disaster, like the one affecting the Island now?

Check out this fascinating blog post by Susan Schneider and Edwin Turner announcing a new method of detecting machine consciousness. Here is one tantalizing excerpt (edited by us for brevity):

“… could an artificial intelligence (AI) ever have experience, like some of the androids depicted in Westworld or the synthetic beings in Blade Runner? The question is not so far-fetched… As AIs grow more sophisticated, they are projected to take over many human jobs within the next few decades. So we must ponder the question: Could AIs develop conscious experience? *** Based on this essential characteristic of consciousness, we propose a test for machine consciousness, the AI Consciousness Test (ACT), which looks at whether the synthetic minds we create have an experience-based understanding of the way it feels, from the inside, to be conscious.” (Hat tip: John Danaher, via Twitter.)

Did you know there are no less than 10 separate addresses (see map below) in the leafy Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. associated with John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Onassis? My wife and I spent the day visiting some of these places; you can read about all 10 locations here.

Happy birthday, Mrs Robinson!

We just ordered our copy of Richard Posner’s new book (pictured below). Along with “Moral Machines” by Wendell Wallace, we will read Posner’s new book and report back soon. (For now, all we will say is this: we think Posner is onto something. Procedural rules can be very complex, so State and federal courts are very inhospitable to pro se litigants, i.e. regular people who aren’t able to afford an attorney. The question is: what, if anything, should we do about this legal failure?)

We are attending a symposium on “Internet freedom” at GW Law School in Washington, D.C. today (22 Sept.). My only complaint is that I wish the Federalist Society, which sponsored the conference, had invited Professor Larry Lessig, a champion of Internet regulation and “net neutrality,” to defend the social costs (see below) of Internet regulation. (Note: we will discuss the pros and cons of Internet regulation in future posts.)

Credit: Prof. Michelle P. Connolly

1. BFI: Are you a replicant?
2. Urban Dictionary: Voight-Kampff machine
3. All the tests: Voight-Kampff test questions
4. Google Scholar: Voight Kampf
5. YouTube: Ridley Scott’s favorite scene from Blade Runner (see below)

Estamos con la Ciudad de Mexico y la Isla de Puerto Rico.