The way I think about the time value of resources invested in a project is
-- to first order -- just the probability of achieving the projected profit
times the projected profit. Note, I said "to first order". Of course, I do
understand the risk adjusted net present value calculation has a "discount"
factor that is usually interpreted as some sort of "interest rate"
(T-Bills, short term T-Notes, whatever APR you can actually get to
capitalize the project, etc.). But leaving that aside for the moment,
assuming you possess the resources in-hand, the rNPV can be calculated by
looking at the decision tree and associating with each decision a
probability of successfully executing the next branch -- then doing the
ordinary chaining multiplication ('AND') of the probabilities to discount
whatever value lies at the leaves of the tree, with pursuit of parallel
options of accomplishing the additive ('OR') sum-over-possible-outcomes.
This produces a natural 𝛾 for reinforcement learning without the,
relatively unprincipled, 𝛾.
But, I get it... the presence of opportunities to invest in T-Bills (or
any of Modern Portfolio Theory's so-called "risk free interest rate"
instruments) is a motivation for a "discount factor" like 𝛾. Indeed, once we
got launch services privatized <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boLdXiLJZoY>,
I had a bit of a run-in with my "libertarian" comrades over the
consequences of what we had accomplished because I wrote a white paper, "A
Net Asset Tax Based On The Net Present Value Calculation and Market
Democracy <http://ota.polyonymo.us/others-papers/NetAssetTax_Bowery.txt>".
You can imagine how horrified these "libertarians" were of asset taxation
(even though it replaced all other taxes) and my version of the
Unconditional Basic Income which I called "Market Democracy" (even though
it replaced all functions of government outside of defense and basic
administration of the branches of government). My fear, well-founded as it
turned out, was that the "capital welfare" of "risk free" instruments would
delay investment in commercial launch service technology until SOMETHING
shook the Wall Street money-tree to rain down on techies rather than merely
attracting hot chicks from their small-town midwest roots to migrate to
Manhattan and D.C. there to be coke sniffing corporate concubines until
they "hit the wall" in their 30's. But even in the tech sector, guys like
Bezos and Musk are a rare minority. Other network effect techie
billionaires aren't as adept at getting the hot chicks as the Wolves of
Wall Street, but they are certainly attracting parasites by the millions
from all over the globe to take control of those resources and impose their
worldviews via the information age's central nervous system. This started
under M$'s network effects but now is more obvious in Alphabet, Twitter,
Paypal, Ebay, Uber, etc. subsidizing insular contempt toward not just their
customers ("We don't care. We don't have to. We're The Phone Company.")
but toward their host populations.
So my idea was basically to shift "𝛾" out of the numerator of the rNPV
(relying exclusively on the aforementioned decision-tree discounting) and
into the net asset tax rate thereby turning Federal Reserve Notes into a
quasi demurrage currency -- as would happen in a fully-backed gold note
where you had to pay for the cost of security the physical gold. In this
case, it would be the cost of securing the foundation of property rights:
Civilization itself.
So when I look at Q policy formulations involving the compound
multiplication by '𝛾', it reminds me of why opening up the space frontier
may have been delayed by the 2 decades in which we had an opportunity to
avert massive bloodshed by creating a positive sum mentality for The Nation
of Settlers, rather than making them seek revenge on the urban elites for
all those children that were never born to the Boomers by former corporate
concubines, now-embittered cat ladies.
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Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI
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