The implications of such a result are overstated:

* It's easy to construct markets in which finding the optimal solution is NP-hard, and many real-world problems are already of that form--for example, any economic decision that involves an NP-hard optimization problem.

* Participants already don't find optimal solutions even given infinite computational resources simply because people lack the necessary information to find optimal solutions to begin with.

* NP-hardness is nearly useless in characterizing the difficulty of real-world problems anyway. Being NP-hard doesn't mean that problems of interest are necessarily hard. And many problems in P don't have practical algorithms for large problem instances.

It's interesting that simple 2 person games can be hard as well, but that doesn't fundamentally change what was already known: markets often don't function optimally because of computational limitations.

Human error? You missed the bit in TFA stating "The drivers can relax until they wish to leave the road train, at which point they signal their intention to the driver at the front." I would assume 'signal' != leaning on joystick by accident

Mechanical error? You missed the bit where you think a driver behind could avoid a wildly spinning car. An extreme mechanical failure is causing a rapid departure from a tight knit train is also unlikely to impact the car directly behind it anyway. More likely to leave car 3 wondering why there's suddenly a big gap in front of it, and a hole in the hedge.

In which companies is the same person doing both jobs?

Very small ones I suppose, so even there the big boss would know what is more important in the overall picture.

WTF are you talking about? Since the discovery of the uncertainty principle, we've known that classical determinism was crowd sourced from day one (via statistical mechanics).

Even without quantum indeterminacy, there's still algorithmic indeterminacy.

Chaitin's constant

If this is what free will amounts to, I don't see the day coming when the computers are beating down the doors saying "I want me some of that."

OTOH, I don't see any reason why a computer can't be programmed to make addled contributions to slashdot given the magnitude of the available training corpus.

Care to provide any supporting information for your assertion that organic farmers use "older and much more toxic" pesticides? Talk about pure bullshit...

Here's what the EPA has to say about it.

As for the issue of pesticide residue, I'm sure that the amount of pesticide residue for a given piece of produce usually falls below some FDA threshold, and I'm sure that washing produce helps even more. The point I was trying to make, though, was not that pesticides are eeeeevil. They have their place in agriculture, but there is growing evidence that they are being overused. In short, heavy use of pesticides (and fertilizers) is not sustainable agriculture.

When you need to dose the shit out of your plants (killing pollenating insects and doing other harm to the biosphere) to keep them from being eaten alive, you're doing it wrong. Your crops are too dense. When you need to pour on the fertilizer to make up for the fact that you've pulled all the nutrients out of the soil, you're doing it wrong. It's not sustainable. You're reliant on Monsanto for your engineered seed + RoundUp and Saudi Arabia for your petro-based fertilizers.

My concern is not based in some wooly-headed "o noes chemicals" fear. I would sign up to have a neighborhood-sized pebble-bed nuke plant next to my backyard if I could. I just believe that we can choose better ways to do things.

As I thought I made clear in my original post, my motivation for buying Organic food is not specifically for a perceived superiority in taste. High-quality produce is high-quality produce regardless of whether or not it's Organic. Meat, on the other hand, is a whole other ball of wax.

As an example, the "free range" chicken breasts I buy are far and away superior in taste and texture to the premium conventional breasts I buy every once in a while (depending on which grocery I get to). I usually make a chicken vindaloo several times a month (sometimes twice a week if we're fixated), and my wife can always tell when I've bought the Perdue chicken. I'd be willing to believe that it's simply a matter of freshness, but given the consistent discrepancy I'm not so sure. I know that often the factory chicken producers inject their meat with saline to plump it up, so maybe that's it... Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that one set of chickens is crammed into a pen so small they can't turn around and fed growth hormones their whole (short) lives, and the others are allowed to develop somewhat normally. I dunno. I don't really care -- I'm willing to pay more for chicken that tastes good.

As for steak... Have you ever had real grass-fed steak? The marbling is totally different. There's tons more flavor without needing to dress up the meat. If you haven't tried it, try to find some (e.g. at Whole Foods or a real butcher). Anyhow, I'm happy to pay more for the hunks of red meat we get once a month or whatever, knowing that I'm supporting sustainably-produced and local beef (Wolfe's Neck Farm).

My point, again, is not that I think progress is evil or that we should all return to hunter/gatherer society or something. I just think that if more people choose to support sustainable agriculture, it will be better for all of us in the long run. But I know that for some people "sustainable" or "organic" are watchwords for hippy libruls smokin' dope and trying to take away guns or whatever.

It has to be political

It is most definitely political and he's been making noise around the world about this for a few months.
It's not just google that he is complaining about, it's the BBC as well. He's attempting to make the internet look like a den of pirates and thieves and then prompt governments to nobble it so that he can make money.

I'm not saying one should not take human behavior into account, but at least they should get the boundary conditions right, and one of those is that our resources are limited.

That does not mean that additional wealth cannot be created without infusion of additional resources.

I know it's counterintuitive for most people with a "hard science" background... I struggled with it as an undergrad. But economics is not a zero-sum game. I give you $150 and you give me an hour of labor. We've both benefited by the trade. If we are really acting freely, we've both benefited (or we wouldn't have engaged in the trade), so we are both wealthier than we were before. This is the fundamental basis of perpetual economic growth... given a free market* in which to pursue trades, wealth increases as trades are made.

* Free as in some-kind-of-approximation-of-an-ideal-free-market, not free as in no-legal-restrictions-on-activity.

The emergent intelligence of the market will likely never be able to be simulated.

Right. A true believer must take it on faith.

Two quest givers? Is someone playing a used/downloaded version perhaps?

My point was imagine how much of things people actually want we could get for $680 billion. If you need the government to take people's money by force to pay for something, it's obviously not that important to people.

What do you mean fucked? There's plenty of wireless carriers that sell intenet access. If you are in a Metro area, sprint's speed can be quite competitive, and price-wise it's not bad to bump up to that level if you are already paying for a data plan on your phone. Plus there's always satellite internet.

The writing is on the wall for wired connections. DTV signals often are more clear than cable (due to cable's compression) and people are already canceling their land lines because they prefer to keep a cell phone.

George Orwell wondered why it was that only English-speaking intellectuals hated, rather than loved and were proud of, their home civilization. If he had taken the time to look at other distinctive traits of English-speaking cultures, he would have figured out why: no other civilization has a despised subculture for smart people. Anime is mainstream in Japan; enormous, borderline-crackpot philosophical theories are mainstream in Germany; Fernand Braudel, who wrote The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (including footnotes) from memory while he was imprisoned by the Nazis, would be among much more similar minds at Google than at Citigroup.

Note also that if Hodgman really thinks that jockdom wins wars, he hasn't heard of the Battle of Leuctra, to say nothing of the Vietnam War.

I, for one, don't want to pay a toll just to run to the grocery store.

It would be great to be able to opt-out of the crapware. I understand, the trial-ware and that kind of third party stuff generates income for the PC company, but I can imagine they lose some PC sales entirely, by bogging the PC down so much right from the start. Even the proprietary software that is well-meant and supposed to be helpful tips the scales to the side of inconvenience, when you take into account the long startup time and resources taken because of it. I realise this post is aimed at those who are bothered by the crapware and know the PC could do much better without, but are unwilling/unable to quickly and easily change that themselves.

Maybe eventually, but if you had RTFA you'd know that all current subscribers got their speeds doubled without an increase in cost...

But there is no "would have", because until the city decided to serve itself, the ISP had zero interest in rolling out fiber in that city.