Graduate student Ben Spigel’-s comment on Richard Florida’-s blog:
About a decade ago, a group of cognitive scientists looking at Bell Labs found that all things being equal, the chances of two scientists collaborating was 4 times higher if they had offices in the same hallway, than if there was a turn in the hall between them. Basically, people are lazy about talking to other people. There’-s a noticeable drop in communication when you have to turn your neck to see someone.
Reminder:
Robin Hanson in a comment on Marginal Revolution:
This is important work for organizational sociology, but not for prediction markets, as this does little to help us find and field high value markets.
Reminder:
Robin Hanson:
Info Value = the added accuracy the markets provide relative to other mechanisms, times the value that accuracy can give in improved decisions, minus the cost of maintaining the markets, relative to the cost of other mechanisms.
A highly accurate market has little value if other mechanisms can provide similar accuracy at a lower cost, or if few substantial decisions are influenced by accurate forecasts on its topic.
Related Links:
Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google – (PDF file – PDF file) – by Bo Cowgill (Google economic analyst), Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) and Eric Zitzewitz (Dartmouth College)
Author Profile -Editor and Publisher of Midas Oracle .ORG .NET .COM —- Chris Masse’-s mugshot —- Contact Chris Masse —- Chris Masse’-s LinkedIn profile —- Chris Masse’-s FaceBook profile —- Chris Masse’-s Google profile —- Sophia-Antipolis, France, E.U. Read more from this author…-Read the previous blog posts by Chris. F. Masse:
- Are David Pennock’s search engine prediction markets the worst marketing disaster since the New Coke?
- Midas Oracle is incontestably [*] the best vertical portal to prediction markets.
- Comment spam paid by Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures-Bet2Give
- BetFair Games needs a Swedish provider to develop its gambling offerings.
- When Markets Beat the Polls – Scientific American Magazine
- Robin Hanson has some fanboy in India. Great. Tiny caveat: The parroting Indian writer does not acknowledge Robin Hanson by name.
- Molecular Nanotechnology