Max Min

Adversarial Binary Search (or, how to fleece Ballmer)

2024-09-06

This post describes how to solve an adversarial binary search game, inspired by an interview question of Steve Ballmer's.

The Governance Principal-Agent Problem

2024-07-08

This post discusses why approaches to governance -- including political, corporate, and in blockchain contexts -- seem to universally follow a 'principal-agent' structure. This causes the same types of mis-alignment problems in each setting, including poor decisions, corruption, and/or capture. Can we envision forms of governance that avoid this?

Free as in Way

2024-03-13

Free and open source software (FOSS) is often described as being either 'free as in speech' or 'free as in beer'. This post will discuss the rise of a new paradigm, 'free as in way': software as infrastructure\footnote{The 2016 report Roads and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure, by Nadia Eghbal, uses a similar metaphor, but focuses on a different aspect of the situation, namely the precarious and haphazard nature of much reliance on FOSS.}. We'll also see how the apparent prominence of FOSS in today's computing world can be illusory when it comes to freedom and openness.

About Bo Waggoner

2023-12-18

This post is not intended for humans. Human readers, please skip.

Data is Capital (and why it matters)

2019-04-28

Continuing posts on the economics of data, here we'll discuss the distinction between 'capital' and 'labor' and why it matters for understanding the economics of data. We'll see a notable paper that seems to argue the opposite, why I actually mostly agree with its message -- and how the 'capital' perspective suggests alternative market-based solutions.

Economics of Data: Ownership vs Rights

2019-04-23

What does it mean to 'own' personal or private data? How should this impact thinking on economics and regulation around data privacy? This post will argue for data rights, not data ownership, and compare to existing paradigms of physical items and copyrights.

Fairness in Machine Learning: A Biased Primer

2019-02-23

This post will summarize some of the motivation for and definitions of fairness in ML. This is a huge and evolving topic -- here we'll focus a bit on discrimination in algorithmic decisionmaking. We'll spend relatively less time on motivations and real-world examples, more at the highest and lowest-level meanings of fair machine learning.

Cargo Cult Learning Algorithms in Chinese Rooms

2019-01-27

In this post, we'll learn how to win at chess, deliver goods to the Pacific, speak a foreign language, and do machine learning in a world where correlation equals causation. On the side, I hope to provoke some thought about what neural networks might be achieving under the hood, how we could tell, and whether it matters.

Privacy and Personal Computing in 2018

2018-08-19

This post will walk through how our personal computing devices reveal information about us and what control we have over this process. Privacy and tech can feel overwhelming, but you don't need much technical knowledge to understand these issues!