If there was an other-worldly feel to the news last week that the Pentagon was investing in an online futures exchange to reward terrorist atrocities, then the following few days have been even stranger.
Rather more than any 'sexed-up dossier', which is a dispute about the integrity of intelligence material, this episode tells us far more than we would have dared to guess about the protagonists and their motivations, and what they think 'intelligence' really is. While we've seen economists and pundits rush to the defense of the aborted 'terror casino', very few commentators have examined the curious ideological motivations behind the ill-fated Policy Analysis Market, which at times appear determined to outdo any occultist. The phrase "not of this world" might spring to mind as you read on.
Although the disgraced Iran Contra felon Admiral Poindexter duly carried the can - by Wednesday well-placed sources were leaking that he is to leave his post at the Pentagon's R&D division, DARPA - the idea was actually initiated before Poindexter arrived.
So let's meet the brainchild behind PAM, the blond haired and photogenic Robin Hanson, assistant economics professor at George Mason University. With phlegmatic good grace, Hanson announced the news on the Extropian Bulletin Board, that PAM had been axed. Hanson isn't himself an "Extropian", he says, but many of his followers are, so maybe it's a good time you were introduced. And since they're being touted as the radical out-of-the-box thinking that US foreign policy needs, we must not delay.
Yo! Hey! Meet the Extropians
"I am a 6 foot, 185 pound, 40 year-old, well-educated, married white male American, with two children. I have a wife Peggy, and sons Tommy and Andy," announces Hanson on his personal <http://hanson.gmu.edu/home.html>home page. All well and good so far, although you might be wondering why we needed to know his exact weight. Or that he's white. Both those details, and the fact that he's "well-educated" are pretty superfluous in Extropian circles, where the disciples are uniformly white and well educated. We're not sure if they all weigh 185 pounds, but they're certainly very, very rich.
How did it start?
more at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32170.html