[OPE] Digital investor worlds

Ian, thanks for your extensive comment, but in what sense can a computing
device exercise moral judgement, e.g. whether to kill off or not to kill off
a human being? (cf. the drones debate).

Anders, thanks also for your comment - but couldn't we regard the new
techniques as a two-edged sword: both enriching speculators but also
progressively creating new human powers of prediction, be it with the motive
of gaining wealth?

When capitalism crashes, the bourgeoisie bewails the inability for
mathematical models to have provided adequate forecasts, resulting in a loss
in the value of their capital, but it seems to me that really the human
ability for forecasting is getting better all the time. It is more that
(leaving aside the problem of complexity) the forecasts are often highly
political - i.e. their publication or adoption has to reckon with the
material interests involved, and more specifically with competing business
interests, which may involve business confidentiality and secrecy.

BTW I acknowledge that the production of social statistics involves a
phenomenological step
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(science)#Phenomenology_in_social_statistics

Jurriaan

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Received on Tue Jan 18 08:47:31 2011