Brian Christian Quotes
To see what happens in the real world when an information cascade takes over, and the bidders have almost nothing but one another’s behavior to estimate an item’s value, look no further than Peter A. Lawrence’s developmental biology text The Making of a Fly, which in April 2011 was selling for $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping) on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. How and why had this—admittedly respected—book reached a sale price of more than $23 million? It turns out that two of the sellers were setting their prices algorithmically as constant fractions of each other: one was always setting it to 0.99830 times the competitor’s price, while the competitor was automatically setting their own price to 1.27059 times the other’s. Neither seller apparently thought to set any limit on the resulting numbers, and eventually the process spiraled totally out of control.
Brian Christian
Quotes to Explore
I constantly remind people that crime isn't solved by technology; it's solved by people.
Patricia Cornwell
I would watch anything with Meryl Streep in it.
Olivia De Havilland
When people are like, 'What do you think of this vampire craze?' - well, I don't really feel like it ever ended, personally, 'cause I've always been into them, like 'Underworld.'
Kat Graham
The claim that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked because fundamentalists hate our prosperity and freedom is a ridiculous lie.
L. Neil Smith
You'll hear 'Hippie,' or, 'Get a haircut.' I like it. I think it's funny because they think we've never heard that before. So, like, good one.
Jacob deGrom
If you're going to give people authority and hold them responsible and ultimately accountable for their performance, you've got to get out of the way.
Randy Lerner
You could make a case that women addicted men to their sexuality and then withdrew their sexuality until we provided them with a source of income.
Warren Farrell
There are a lot of people who will tell you I'm very ruthless. I'm very fierce. If I feel I'm right, if I feel I've been violated, then I am like a warrior from hell!
George C. Wolfe
The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.
Irving Howe
Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.
Madame de Stael
We put water down into the earth to push up gas, then we say, 'Ooh, we're having a water crisis.' This is foolishness, and this kind of foolishness, where we try to excuse human behavior, is dangerous.
Mae Jemison
Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
B. F. Skinner
Every time I make a record, it's a gem with different facets, and every time I like to explore a different side. The core is the same, it never changes, but I try to create a different shape.
Stéphane Paut
To see what happens in the real world when an information cascade takes over, and the bidders have almost nothing but one another’s behavior to estimate an item’s value, look no further than Peter A. Lawrence’s developmental biology text The Making of a Fly, which in April 2011 was selling for $23,698,655.93 (plus $3.99 shipping) on Amazon’s third-party marketplace. How and why had this—admittedly respected—book reached a sale price of more than $23 million? It turns out that two of the sellers were setting their prices algorithmically as constant fractions of each other: one was always setting it to 0.99830 times the competitor’s price, while the competitor was automatically setting their own price to 1.27059 times the other’s. Neither seller apparently thought to set any limit on the resulting numbers, and eventually the process spiraled totally out of control.
Brian Christian
