Crowdsourcing did not fail because what occurred was not crowdsourcing.

There is a distinction between, on the one hand, the emergent behavior which spontaneously arises from ungoverned social interaction and, on the other hand, the management practice of dividing and framing a problem such that it can be solved by large, loosely-affiliated groups of anonymous individuals working in parallel. The latter is crowdsourcing. The former, in the case of attempts to identify Boston Marathon suspects in online fora such as reddit, is a vigilante mob.

At least that interpretation is consistent with the conventional usage of the term "crowdsourcing" up to this point. Consider well-known examples such as the Mechanical Turk, the search for the wreckage of Steve Fosset's plane and prediction markets such as Iowa Electonic Markets. In all case the role of any individual in the crowd is predefined and constrained in advance by design. Constraints can include the dimension of response and the information to be evaluated.

Open source advocate Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar and The Art of Unix Programming has entered the Nature-Nurture debate, stating here:

And the part that, if you are a decent human being and not a racist
bigot, you have been dreading: American blacks average a standard
deviation lower in IQ than American whites at about 85. And
it gets worse: the average IQ of African blacks is lower
still, not far above what is considered the threshold of mental
retardation in the U.S. And yes, it’s genetic; g seems to be about
85% heritable, and recent studies of effects like regression towards
the mean suggest strongly that most of the heritability is DNA rather
than nurturance effects.

For anyone who believe that racial equality is an important goal,
this is absolutely horrible news. Which is why a lot of
well-intentioned people refuse to look at these facts, and will
attempt to shout down anyone who speaks them in public. There have
been several occasions on which leading psychometricians have had
their books canceled or withdrawn by publishers who found the actual
scientific evidence about IQ so appalling that they refused to print
it.

Unfortunately, denial of the facts doesn’t make them go away.

So it looks like communities which choose to harm the environment by banning plastic bags might be killing themselves off with bacterial infections.

Environmentalism is self-correcting.

Actual figures comparing private and government funding on climate issues are given here.

A few observations:

• -Last October, prior to Obama's reelection, Kimberly Strassel writing in the Wall Street journal documented Barack Obama's record of consistency and dedication to principle.
• -More recently Daniel Kessler has assessed the promises Obama made when selling Obamacare, concluding "Every one of the main claims made for the law is turning out to be false."
• -Gun and ammunition sales surged immediately following Obama's reelection.
• -We have just learned President Obama has secretly granted himself the power to assassinate U.S citezens without due process.

Some people, with reasonable cause, do not trust Obama. Their suspicions have been vindicated.

So I live in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. Google fiber is not in offered in Overland Park yet, but because it is close by and spreading I checked out the prices and signed up for email notification when their service becomes available in my area.

The prices. Holy cow. It's free. A one time $300.00 installation fee but then it is free. So I was wondering for months how is that possible? Is Google taking a massive loss? Did Google invent a new technology which allows them to undercut their competitors?

Then on a drive across town to the local Fablab I was listening to the local public radio station which just happened to be interviewing Susan Crawford, author of the recently published book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. As the summary at Amazon states:

This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access.

Well as you might guess from the subtitle of the book, what she finds out when she explores is that internet and cable service in the U.S. are regional monopolies. Even when multiple internet and cable service providers operate in the same city they divide up the city into regions of monopolistic coverage and only overlap on small percentages of territory.

So Google offers such spectacularly low prices by undercutting monopolists, having enough clout to overcome barriers to entry which block startups, and Moore's law has reduced the cost of providing internet service to something pretty close to free. The inflated prices for internet broadband service which we have paid in the U.S. have not followed Moore's law because service provider are monopolies. Now with the disruption of that monopoly in one regional market prices are back on track with Moore's law there.

In his novel Mostly Harmless the late Douglas Adams wrote:

“In astrology the rules happen to be about stars and planets, but they could be about ducks and drakes for all the difference it would make. It's just a way of thinking about a problem which lets the shape of that problem begin to emerge. The more rules, the tinier the rules, the more arbitrary they are, the better. It's like throwing a handful of fine graphite dust on a piece of paper to see where the hidden indentations are. It lets you see the words that were written on the piece of paper above it that's now been taken away and hidden. The graphite's not important. It's just the means of revealing the indentations. So you see, astrology's nothing to do with astronomy. It's just to do with people thinking about people.”

Is the practice of astrology acceptable to you on those terms?

Skeptics seem to divide into two categories. First, those who publicly reveal falsehoods and loudly denounce them as deceptions. Second, those who silently observe the willingness of the public to believe in absurd falsehoods and regard that as a financial opportunity.

As an example of the latter category, the golf industry has deceived the the public into the belief that hitting little white balls around in the grass with expensive sticks is very, very important. This falsehood is enormously lucrative. Tiger Woods earned $120 million from prize money and sponsorships during 2009. Between July 2011 and July 2012 the ten top-earning golf players made $236 million collectively.

A golf skeptic would claim that the positions of small white balls in grass fields is actually of no consequence whatsoever , that golfers are peddling flim-flam, and that the public is fooled out of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A golfing apologist would say it is a personal preference and fans should have the freedom to spend on golf because they enjoy it.

Parapsychology, like an interest in golfing, is a personal lifestyle choice. If we denounce parapsychology, religion and astrology as irrational does not consistency demand that we also denounce all other manner of irrational human behavior such as golf? You denounce some forms of irrational behavior but undoubtedly carve out exceptions for other forms which you tolerate or even practice yourself. So like you, I could carve out an an exception to what forms of irrational behavior I will tolerate by selling Mayan end-of-the-world advent calendars. Why are specifically both gullibility and its financial exploitation not acceptable life style choices in a society which generally tolerates unquestioningly the financial exploitation of irrational behavior?

How does the fictional character Peter Venkman portrayed by Bill Murray in the 1984 hit film Ghostbusters compare to actual parapsychology researches?

When offerring a $1 million reward to anyone who successfully demonstrates proof of the paranormal you risk failing to debunk some paranormal claims, not because paranormal activity actually exists, but because the ruse is either so technologically advanced or clever that investigators fail to identify the means of deception. How concerned were you about this possibility and have you ever had any "close calls" where you almost failed to discover the trick?

from the Wikipedia article Libertarian Theories of Law

It is a liberal trope that free markets are an uncontrolled dog-eat-dog social order in wich all forms of corporate treachery, deceit, and fraud are explicitly sanctioned by a laissez-faire philosophy embodied in law. In fact, it is the opposite; Free markets are strictly and invariably governed by the single dictum that all and only voluntary transactions are permissible. An essential implication of governance under that system is the enforcement of contracts.

Consider, for example, if you and I were to voluntarily agree to the sale of a bushell of apples to you for $10.00. I provide the apples but you fail to pay me $10.00. Your failure to pay me would result in an involuntary transaction prohibited under the laws of a free mareket. I would have voluntarily agreed to the exchange of a certain amount of apples for a certain amount of money. The actual exchange of apples for no money was involuntary on my part. Therefore, to enforce the mandate that only voluntary transactions are permissible, to enforce freedom, the government must intercede by compelling you to pay the agreed amount. In a free market, governments enforce contracts because involuntary transactions are inconsistent with freedom.

Consider cell phone contracts. If you purchase a cell phone and sign a contract agreeing not to unlock the service, but you do unlock service, then you have violated the contract. To enforce freedom the government must compel you not to unlock your phone because by unlocking your phone you are compelling the company with wich you signed a contract to engage in an involuntary transaction. It never agreed to provide you with an unlocked phone at the price which you paid for it. If you force the corporation to engage in an involuntary transaction by violating the terms of your contract then you have curtailed its freedom by compelling it to engage in a transaction to which it did not agree.

There are three ages of selfishness. The first, infantile selfishness, makes no distinction between "I want," and "I should have." The second, adolescent entitlement, is a conviction that your parents must give you anything you ask for and allow you to do anything you wish. The third, liberalism, substitues "government" for "parents." Those who violate their cell phone contracts by unlocking their service in the name of "freedom" are in fact acting selfishly and violating the freedoms of others. To some, freedom means they get whatever they want. It is infeasible to build any system of governance upon that definition for societies with population greater than one.

Based on the evidence presented in the study, the conclusion that faculty have a lower regard for female job applicants than for male job applicants is at best an unsupported assumption and at worst a misinterpretation of the evidence. Furthermore, the study results are consistent with faculty holding beliefs favorably biased toward women and against men.

To rate job applicants on the basis of jobs applications one must hypothesize a relationship between the application and the applicant. One must explicitly, or implicitly through action, supply a general answer to the question: Given an application, how well will the applicant perform on the job?.

The only definite conclusion which can be reached from this study is that faculty hypothesize different relationships between application and applicant for male than for female applicants. But here is the kicker: The "bias" exhibited in this study is consistent with a belief among hirers that women job applicatns tend to look better on paper, not worse, than male applicants. Faculty offering lower salaries to women could be operating in the belief that women are better than men at presenting themselves.

If Professor Jane Doe believes the following to be true:
"Women are usually awesomely fantastic at presenting themselves, so if this female applicant looks looks like a 10/10 on paper, she is really probably an 8/10"
"Men are terrible ignoramuses at presenting themselves, so if he looks like an 8/10 on paper, he's probably a 10/10".

Those statements 1) Evidently display belief favorably biased toward female and against male applicants 2) Are consistent with the study results.

So, the traditional interpretation is flawed, because it is not a conclusion, but an assumption; there is no reason whatsoever to favor it over a handicapping explanation.

Someone should study what are the assumption of the faculty about the relationship between jobs applicants and job applications. And separately, if there is a difference in those assumptions between male and female job applicants, how accurate are they?

Seriously, why should I care at all about this? What will make this any better than regular Ubuntu?

That is literally true.

The same case could be made that voters have no place in democracy. And is: Those seeking to concentrate political and economic strength in the hands of the few and powerful pose governance as a choice between decision making by wise and altruistic "experts" or by the ignorant and selfish common people. The myth of benevolent despotism is as old as the hills.

But that rhetoric was busted long ago. "Industrial Policy" is a euphemism for corporate welfare. "Expert tribunals" are typically comprised of those expert in only cronyism and graft if not incompetent ideologues. So the plan is that a small group of politically appointed experts will assign penalties and grant awards of billions of dollars. What could possibly go wrong?

For those who are not aware, the plan to enact all-powerful government controlled by the benevolent and wise has never really worked out . The actual course has been to grant government powers and then debate our preference for rule by the corrupt few or the incompetent many. (See TFA and surrounding comments.) Perhaps instead we should all consider before granting more power to government that it will not be wielded by wise and benevolent philosopher kings. Those with the knowledge that government power by any system is often misapplied and abused are less willing to grant power to government.

Fundamentally, the choice between administering patent law with "expert tribunals" or trial by jury is a false dichotomy, for we could remedy the problem as well by abolishing patents.