Matt Nolan

Bleg: Generation war

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Every generation likes to complain about the one above it.  However, Generation X’s distaste for the Baby Boomers seems intense.

This isn’t a new thing, although the recession helped to intensify it I can remember these sorts of angry debates going on when I was a child (I am Gen Y, so I’m not taking sides here).

Every person I’ve spoken to who is in Gen X seems to believe that baby boomers have taken all their resources and run off with them.  At the same time baby boomer get annoyed because there has been significant improvement in both technology and civil liberties from when they were growing up – and yet Gen X continues to complain that they don’t have enough.

Is this just an example of people whining at each other, as they always do, or does one of the sides have a case here?

Will Taylor

Google buys Motorola: Vertical integration or Android IP play?

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So Google has just bought Mobile handset maker Motorolo Mobility (see announcement on the Google blog), a move that sees Google  vertically integrating into phone hardware.

My initial reaction to this was a worry that by vertically integrating to compete against Apple, this might discourage non-integrated phone makers (such as Sony, Samsung and HTC) from using Android. The argument being that by virtue of the vertical integration, Motorola would have an advantage over other phone manufacturers who use Android (e.g. closer hardware/software integration ala the Apple model).

However, signs point to this being a patent play in response to RIM, Microsoft et al buying up the Nortell patents (which Google has complained to the Antitrust authorities about). The worry being that threats of legal action or patent fees will make Android costly to install on phones.  By acquiring Motorolo’s IP this gives Google something to fight back with (i.e. the ability to threaten to counter-sue).

So hopefully Motoroloa continues to be run as a separate company competing against Sony/Samsung/HTC etc., while Google’s control of Motorola’s patents gives these companies some more legal certainty.

For more reading check out Chris Keal’s piece at the NBR and a pretty detailed piece at the WSJ

UPDATE: A neat info-graphic which shows “who is suing who” in the smartphone wars (HT: @d7street and the NBR article already linked)

 

Matt Nolan

And back

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Apologises for my delay.  Just before Easter I said to myself I wouldn’t blog or read a blog until I wasn’t working a weekend – I only expected that to go on for 2 weeks, but then a lot of work kept turning up.  As I’m anticipating not working on the upcoming weekend I’ve decided I’m allowed to blog again 😉

Given that a lot of the work I do is business planning, and given that business planning is seen as an investment, and given that investment tends to “lead” the economic cycle – I can conclude that the fact I’ve been flat out is pointing to an economic recovery.  About time.

Now, I haven’t read any blogs – I’ve especially missed Kiwiblog, Offsetting Behaviour, Anti-Dismal, and Marginal Revolution.  I won’t actually be able to start reading them again until next week – so for now any posts from me are just going to be things off the top of my head.

I also haven’t had the chance to read comments for when I disappeared – I will do that when I get a chance, and do posts to reply.

The quantity of posts will be fairly limited in the short-term, as my presentations schedule is pretty full on.  Quantity will increase over time.

For today, feel free to just get annoyed about what I wrote in the Dom Post on Saturday – which is up on stuff here (and the Infometrics site here).

jamesz

NZAE conference

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Well, the NZ Association of Economists conference is done for 2011. It’s a chance for all economists to get together and talk nerdy without fear of social reprisals, although the food is another popular topic of conversation — it was pretty good this year, if you’re wondering. There were plenty of great presentations and star turns from both Tim Harford and Ricardo Reis. The latter hung around for most of the conference and even attended the dinner, which left me completely starstruck!

Of course, it is also a chance for bloggers who normally interact only through the interwebs to talk in person and this conference was no exception: as the sole representative of TVHE I was accosted and lambasted by both Eric and Seamus from Offsetting Behaviour for our lack of recent activity. As Matt has previously mentioned, things have been a bit busy for us at work lately but blogging is Matt’s second highest priority so he’ll be back just as soon as he has a free hour or two.

In lieu of a post about Serious Issues I thought I’d let you know what the bloggers at NZAE got up to. Read more

Matt Nolan

Seeing the future and determinism

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As an economic forecaster, the idea of “seeing the future” is no doubt of interest to me.  Combined with the fact that I have compared economic forecasting to tarot card reading, it would seem that I have a prior belief that the ability to see the future exists – but in fact, I very much don’t.

In essence, my prior belief is that the future is not predetermined per see, but that there are current factors that influence future outcomes that are observable – as a result, we can use knowledge about the causal or empirical relationship between these factors to get some idea regarding what could happen and some of the risks around it.

However, in the face of genuine uncertainty I would believe we have no knowledge.  This specific view also indicates that the distinction between free will and determinism is unobservable – as there is no way to disentangle the relationship between cause and effect in a way that tells us whether there is choice, or whether the causal mechanism in itself determines the future.

Yet, a recent study that appears to show a mildly statistically significant relationship between people’s predictions of what will happen and what does happen BEFORE what occurs has been in any way determined.  In essence, there is complete uncertainty but people’s ability to judge what will happen in the face of this is greater than we would expect from chance! [ht Chris Blattman, Marginal Revolution *].

To me, this also provides a test of determinism vs free will – at least along some level of interaction.  Why?  If it is possible for people to “see the future” before it is ex-post determined then the future must in some sense exist before it appears to exist.

In the face of free will, we can still judge what will happen on the future given information, but we would not expect people to outperform chance in the face of no information.  In the face of determinism we would expect the ability to judge the future with no information would be related to the strength of the precognitive ability of the person – if, among people, this is on average greater than zero we would expect a statistically significant deviation from chance.

This is all very interesting, but I would like to see the results replicated and further testing done before I even begin to shift my posterior probability regarding such things.

Matt Nolan

Neuroscience, determinism, and free will

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The title sounds serious, but I am (sadly) not capable of steering into too much detail in this subject matter.  However, given that I have a rising interest in neuroeconomics I felt I should type something out about this quote (ht Andrew Sullivan):

Dualists about the mind and brain – those who hold that there are thinking substances like souls in the world as well as all the ordinary physical stuff – say that the mind sees and thinks and wants and calculates. Contemporary neuroscience dismisses this as crude, but Hacker argues that it just ends up swapping the mind with the brain, saying that the brain sees and thinks and wants and calculates. He says, “Merely replacing Cartesian ethereal stuff with glutinous grey matter and leaving everything else the same will not solve any problems. On the current neuroscientist’s view, it’s the brain that thinks and reasons and calculates and believes and fears and hopes. In fact, it’s human beings who do all these things, not their brains and not their minds. I don’t think it makes any sense to talk about the brain engaging in psychological or mental operations.”

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