I worked on one of the largest simulated markets on the web and offer the following advice:
- Use basic human motivation to encourage real participation. Points scored and virtual awards work well, but only if you can control system-gaming and inflation.
- Make sure that each account is connected to a confirmed email address or social network account.
- Spend time looking for people who are creating multiple accounts for the purpose of gaming your system (same IPS, repetitive names / passwords). Disable what appear to be the spoof accounts and email the core account about why you did it.
- Have a clearly defined policy for what is acceptable behavior and penalize as much bad behavior as is necessary. Make sure to show the community that there is enforcement.
- Maintain contact with helpful members of the community who can key you in on problematic individuals or exploitable flaws in the scoring system.
- I think that it is best to invest directly in securities (only resorting to index funds if you really must outsource your thinking). You'll learn the most if you make the big decisions.
- Learn how to analyze the public information available. Cash flows. Balance sheets. Income statements. Get an accounting book! Learn about the types of securities and alternatives to equity investing (especially the various kinds of bonds).
- Market prices are based on combination of innumerable emotional and rational reactions to the real value of the companies behind the shares. Only over the long term will the price reflect the real value of these businesses. At any point, the price can be completely outside of reason, so beware of and be ready to take advantage of the stupidity of crowds.
- Invest in types of businesses that you can understand, or plan on spending lots of time researching "in the field". Really focus on a few. When I was buying shares of Nabisco, I was spending late nights in the cookie aisle at Vons. When I started buying Apple, I spent serious time at their first toe-hold at CompUSA and later at their stores. I recently spent time at the Crocs stand at the mall to evaluate this company.
- Learn the different investment mental models and build one for yourself. Graham. Buffett. Munger. Lynch. Fisher.
- Learn about related fields. Psychology. Macroeconomics. Patent law. Whatever is important to industries that you are going to focus on.
- Keep investing. When you are 40 or 50 years old you might be half-good at it.
I believe that consciousness is the ability for a computing system to continually maintain and update several simultaneous contexts. These contexts may run highly detailed simulations (including the core "where I am") or more abstract thinking (including the current conversational or semantic context). For a human being, the "primary simulation" results in a powerful feeling of self, perhaps because the here and now that you are feeling is also the here and now that you are simulating.
While sustaining these contexts, the system is able to explore related information and can choose to break focus on a certain context, or to open a new context. Usually, a discarded context can be quickly restored, such as in the case of restoring an interrupted thought. Perhaps, then, contexts are continually run, stored, and restored. I don't know. What I do know is that the primary world simulation (with its continual sensory update) is rarely broken without the system electing to do so.
That would be "losing consciousness" :)
Whether received through sensory input or through memory in the form of stored simulations or related concepts, the constant exploration of related information influences the context that spawned it (and often the other contexts as well). This allows the computing system to update its assumptions as represented in simulation or conceptual frame, and then begin anticipating and exploring possible future contexts.
- Use basic human motivation to encourage real participation. Points scored and virtual awards work well, but only if you can control system-gaming and inflation.
- Make sure that each account is connected to a confirmed email address or social network account.
- Spend time looking for people who are creating multiple accounts for the purpose of gaming your system (same IPS, repetitive names / passwords). Disable what appear to be the spoof accounts and email the core account about why you did it.
- Have a clearly defined policy for what is acceptable behavior and penalize as much bad behavior as is necessary. Make sure to show the community that there is enforcement.
- Maintain contact with helpful members of the community who can key you in on problematic individuals or exploitable flaws in the scoring system.