Posts

In proper chronological order

to be written down at some point: on credit socialism; on a Bitcoin-based banking system; on market socialism, on moral deserts. 20240402_ On miscellaneous lesser ideas 20240209_ On an alternative prediction scoring rule (200 words, allocate a prediction pool based on the product of the probability and sum contributed) 20231009_ On an alternative measure of the need for money (300 words, the volume of play involved in a fair lottery is indicative of either too much or too little money in circulation) 20230705_ On semi-useful retrodiction (200 words, knowledgeable parties on the probability of past events within basic logical rules) 20230705_ On the One Son policy (300 words, having sons to be subject to a transferable permit system) 20230526_ On the simplest acceptable justice system (1300 words, combine juries and Russian Roulette to get the most bang for the buck in terms of a justice system) 20230503_ On a simple military force planning model (300 words, graph total military p
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On a cryptocurrency of dynamic supply

The main idea: two joint cryptocurrencies are programmed such that one can be exchanged for the other as long as their product remains constant, thus tracking the minimal necessary volume of circulation required by a growing economy in a decentralized fashion.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 30.09.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.  1 Setting the stage 1.1 The economy under the division of labour is a massive and massively complex system with immense degrees of freedom. Commie silliness notwithstanding, only money, an emergent computer of comparable capability, is equal to the task of daily optimising resources such as to fulfill demand to the greatest degree possible. Money alone can run such calculations at any reasonable speed. 1.2 Calculations need to be run in the moment as well as in time, hence the true and core function of money as a uni
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On a credible alternative to liberal democracy

The main idea: Fred Gohlke’s idea of iteratively setting up groups of 3 people who vote on each-other’s progression to ever-higher tiers presents the only credible alternative to liberal democracy. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 22.11.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. 0.1 The Tryptic Model of elections featured in part 2 of this post is not mine at all, but was devised by Fred Gohlke as practical democracy , to which system I'm making relatively minor changes mechanics-wise and explaining in my own words below. Still, though the system is almost unchanged, the context to which I apply Gohlke's idea couldn't be more different, the original tweak to empower real democracy made into a full alternative to liberal democracy. Thus, all resulting errors, departures from the original design or broader implications readers may choose to draw re
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On rank-ordering very complex datasets

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The main idea: the concept of the efficient frontier can be generalized such as to allow the rank-ordering of extremely complex datasets based on a large set of mutually contradicting criteria. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 24.01.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1.1 Say you have a list of things you’d like to compare with regards to a number of criteria. Obviously, if all things are such as to be ranked in the same order across all of these criteria, comparisons are easy. What to do when entities are ranked differently with regards to different criteria though? 1.2 To make this less esoteric, let’s take a simple example: I wish to purchase a used vehicle, and the only relevant considerations are its price (the lower the better), its production year (the more recent the better) and its mileage (the lower the better). I have this narrowed
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On removing abnormal claims from reserving triangles

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The main idea: iteratively replacing the highest deviating cell in a reserving triangle with the expected result for that cell removes without ignoring abnormally large claims.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 27.10.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1.1 In a previous post I discussed a general method for removing outliers from a dataset given that one has a model. Let's try now to apply this to non-life claims reserving by triangles. 1.2 The cumulated triangle below includes one obvious outlier incurred in 2018, and emerging one year after. 1.3 Having a model of the data arranged in triangle form means breaking down the triangle into a vertical (exposure) and horizontal (pattern) component. These two are dependent on the choice of reserving method, with the additive method being an obvious example of splitting the triangle into two dimensio
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On better measuring gains in the standard of living

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The main idea: the area under an assumed linear demand curve is a far better approximation of utility gains than current GDP accounting practices.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This post was originally posted on 04.11.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1 The Nominal 1.1 I was inspired to think of this when reading this post (h/t Astral Codex Ten ). All of the relevant critique of the post itself can be found in the comments, but it helped me realize there is something off with real GDP as a measure of standard of life. I will take the opposite view of Less Wrong though, and state that real GDP accounting overestimates gains in standard of life. 1.2 Let's take a simple economy that only produces and consumes widgets. I am not interested in nominal – real distinctions here, so I need not assume any more than one product class, and will stick to inflation not being a thing in
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On aligning agents and insurers

The main idea: pay agent commissions in a temporary staggered fashion that allows for claims to materialise and capture some of the agent’s underwriting intuition.    0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 01.05.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. 1.1 There is an obvious conflict of interest non-life insurers will suffer from when they pay agents a commission to sell policies: an agent getting a fixed percentage of the premium will have an interest in maximising revenue per unit of time, whilst the insurer’s interested in maximising profit per unit of time. In other words, agents have no reason to care about which clients will cause more or fewer claims. If they know, they conveniently forget. 1.2 Most if not all insurers try to mitigate this issue by centralising underwriting, such as to leave no power in the hands of the agent when it comes to the deci
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