cameron merkley: life & times

In the second part of his essay, Heidegger addresses the question, “What task is reserved for thinking at the end of philosophy?”

In "The Scrum Papers", Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber say "In this paper we introduce a development process, Scrum, that treats major portions of systems development as a controlled black box." The basis for this is "Concepts from industrial process control are applied to the field of systems development in this paper. Industrial process control defines processes as either `theoretical' (fully defined) or `empirical' (black box). When a black box process is treated as a fully defined process, unpredictable results occur."

Can complexity thinking advance management and help fix capitalism? The answer is that it can, although not in the way that most complexity scientists expect.

This concept of a harness to help coordinate independent processors via feedback loops, while having the feedback be reality-based from real data coming from the environment is central to human groups achieving higher level behavior than any individual can achieve on their own. Maximizing communication of essential information between group members actually powers up this higher level behavior.

Ad execs are reinventing their business models with a focus on agility. What can you do to be faster and more flexible?

Sometimes, clients just don't know what they want. A lot of times they have a rough idea of the problem they're trying to solve and the project they want you to work on, but even those rough ideas aren't enough. Other times, they may not actually know exactly what they want, just that they'll "know it when they see it."

A corollary of this Austrian view of the VIX is that under a system with simultaneously a gold standard (i.e. commodity backed currency) AND a 100% reserve requirement (i.e. no credit multiplier), the weight of implied correlations in the determination of a forward looking implied volatility index should be irrelevant.

Various insights into markets, trading and mass psychology.

Birds do it, bees do it, schools of whale-avoiding Atlantic herring do it. So do hockey teams, emergency departments, and volunteer firefighters. In social groups like these, collaborative efforts and collective decision-making happen “in the moment” and contribute significantly to survival and success.

As the value of real estate has skyrocketed, owners have become enamored of the wealth their homes are creating, with many concluding that real estate is now a safer and better investment than stocks. It turns out, though, that the last five years - when homes in some hot markets like Manhattan and Las Vegas have outperformed stocks - has been a highly unusual period.