A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

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A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Pablo Stafforini on 2012-08-20T02:40:00

The Wayback Machine hosts a very limited archive of the old Felicifia -- the defunct forum once hosted at http://www.felicifia.com. Finding material there is very hard, but after some time I managed to uncover a handful of really interesting items. In the hope that this will motivate those in a position to resurrect the entire site, which contained dozens of posts like these, I am sharing them here with you:

* Brian Tomasik on expected investment returns.

* Gaverick Mateny on donating vs. investing.

* Mike Parker on the problem of predation (with comments by Brian, David Pearce, and someone posting under the pseudonym 'benthamite' ;) ).
"‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science." -- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Brian Tomasik on 2012-08-20T02:55:00

Wonderful, Pablo -- thanks! "A post recovered is a post written," you might say.

We've discussed trying to re-upload the whole archive, and I have the raw files on my computer from Seth, but I'm not knowledgeable about how exactly we would do it.

It's wonderful to have Gaverick's "Donate vs. Invest?" post. That ranks among the most cited and most influential Felicifia pieces of all time.

As far as "Expected Investment Returns," I've since learned more about the expected value of call options, and you can find the whole discussion here.

I sure wonder who that 'benthamite' fellow was. Oh well, he seems to have vanished. ;)
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Pablo Stafforini on 2012-08-20T03:06:00

Brian Tomasik wrote:"A post recovered is a post written," you might say.


Indeed. That is why I have been urging Seth and James to work on putting that material back online. Unfortunately, this seems to be more challenging than it seemed originally. If anyone here has the relevant technical skills and the time to help us, please contact me (pablo@stafforini.com).
"‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science." -- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby RyanCarey on 2012-08-20T04:21:00

One approach would be to re-upload them to the Felicifia wiki, a project that I had previously begun, but had stalled because it was time-consuming.
http://www.felicifia.com/index.php?title=Felicifia_Blog
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Pablo Stafforini on 2012-08-20T04:47:00

RyanCarey wrote:One approach would be to re-upload them to the Felicifia wiki, a project that I had previously begun, but had stalled because it was time-consuming.


I would happily devote some of my time to this project. But let us wait until we are relatively certain that there are no easier ways to put this material back online.
"‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science." -- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Pablo Stafforini on 2012-09-09T21:02:00

Update: archives of the old Felicifia are now online. See here.
"‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science." -- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Pablo Stafforini on 2013-06-08T14:34:00

Since it's not very easy to browse the old site, I'd suggest using Google to find relevant material. The links below will display posts and comments by the corresponding authors:

Brian Tomasik

Jason Gaverick Matheny

Carl Shulman

Seth Baum

David Pearce
"‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science." -- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Pablo Stafforini on 2013-09-24T14:31:00

Hey winwalk,

The reference to 'benthamite' was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. I am the user who posted under that pseudonym. :-)
"‘Méchanique Sociale’ may one day take her place along with ‘Mécanique Celeste’, throned each upon the double-sided height of one maximum principle, the supreme pinnacle of moral as of physical science." -- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
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Re: A couple of gems from the old Felicifia

Postby Arepo on 2013-10-08T12:22:00

I think winwalk might actually be a really clever spambot, though I'm not quite confident enough to do anything about it.

Winwalk, care to confirm or deny? (preferably with a sentence that would definitively pass a Turing test)
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