"In some cases, [Nate] Silver tends to attribute successful reasoning to the use of Bayesian methods..."

"... without any evidence that those particular analyses were actually performed in Bayesian fashion."

For instance, he writes about Bob Voulgaris, a basketball gambler,

Bob’s money is on Bayes too. He does not literally apply Bayes’ theorem every time he makes a prediction. But his practice of testing statistical data in the context of hypotheses and beliefs derived from his basketball knowledge is very Bayesian, as is his comfort with accepting probabilistic answers to his questions.

But, judging from the description in the previous thirty pages, Voulgaris follows instinct, not fancy Bayesian math. Here, Silver seems to be using “Bayesian” not to mean the use of Bayes’s theorem but, rather, the general strategy of combining many different kinds of information.

Is Nate Silver "concerned that during future elections, the accuracy of your predictions will lull readers into a mindset of 'it has been foretold, therefore I needn’t bother to vote'"?

Yes, "a bit."

Did Nate Silver "enjoy getting the ire of pundits (not the few who actually critiqued your method, models, or assumptions, but those who just dismissed your work wholesale)"?

At some point in the last few weeks of the election, I guess I decided to lean into the upside outcome a little bit in terms of pushing back at the pundits in my public appearances — as opposed to emphasizing the uncertainty in the model, as I had for most of the year....

Stupid poker analogy: part of playing well is in maximizing the amount of value you get from a hand in the event that things go well, in addition to mitigating your losses if they don't.

"Intrade Closes To U.S. Bettors, Bowing To Pressure From Regulators."

Legal hassles thwart a guilty pleasure.

“It is against the law to solicit U.S. persons to buy and sell commodity options, even if they are called ‘prediction’ contracts, unless they are listed for trading and traded on a CFTC-registered exchange or unless legally exempt,” said David Meister, director of the regulator’s enforcement division. The restrictions Intrade and TEN are accused with violating “enable the CFTC to police market activity and protect market integrity,” he added.

Got that? I notice "unless legally exempt." How about legally exempting it then?

"California grandmother steps forward just in time to claim $23 million lottery jackpot."

The 5 months had nearly passed, and the newspapers, hoping to prompt the ticket buyer into noticing, put up a blurry picture of the woman who seems to have bought the ticket:

On Thursday, someone texted [Julie Cervera] a photo of her daughter, Charliena Marquez, buying the winning ticket for her at a Palmdale Liquor store....

“I put my 99-cent glasses on, and I had to put two pairs on to see it,” said Cervera, 69, of Victorville. She recognized her daughter in the grainy photo, but she still couldn’t read the caption....

Cervera, a widow who has lived on disability for 20 years, said her family has been through difficult times recently. Last year her 47-year-old son Rudy was killed in a motorcycle accident, leaving four teenage children.

“I’d give it all up to have my son here again,” she said and began to cry...

“My grandkids are all going to be taken care of, and my (three) daughters,” she said. “I’m just so happy. I’m going to buy me a pair of Reeboks.” 

"Self-described Mich. ‘hillbilly’ claims $337M Powerball prize, vows to still eat at McDonald’s."

Donald Lawson says "I called her and said, ‘I got a surprise for you. I won $200,000 in the Powerball.’ She goes: ‘Oh my god. Yay!’ I said, ‘All right. Are you ready, Ma? Well, the truth is, I won $337 million and $4 in the Powerball. Ha, ha.”

Cool quote, but I want the quote where he calls himself a "hillbilly." I searched Google News for "hillbilly" and didn't find it, but I ended up with other hillbilly news. I found: "Here Comes the Hillbilly, Again: What Honey Boo Boo really says about American culture."

As Anthony Harkins observes in Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, one of the hillbilly’s signature moves is to peak, popularity-wise, just when Americans sense that things in general are headed south....

And such ridicule has always been politically coded: The hillbilly figure allows middle-class white people to offload the venality and sin of the nation onto some other constituency, people who live somewhere—anywhere—else. The hillbilly’s backwardness highlights the progress more upstanding Americans in the cities or the suburbs have made. These fools haven’t crawled out of the muck, the story goes, because they don’t want to.

This idea that the hillbilly’s poverty is a choice allows more upscale Americans to feel comfortable while laughing at the antics before them. It also pushes some people to embrace the stereotype as a badge of honor. “Guitars, Cadillacs, hillbilly music / It’s the only thing that keeps me hangin’ on,” Dwight Yoakam once sang. For more contemporary examples of re-appropriation, you can attend any number of Tea Party rallies. The classist term “redneck,” originally coined to indicate those who worked so hard and so long in the sun that they sported sunburns in the designated anatomical location, likewise has been adopted in the name of all that’s good and holy.....

ADDED: Here's a different lottery story in the news today about a man who hadn't noticed he'd won $52 million. The money had gone unclaimed for a month, and the state circulated surveillance camera video of the winner buying the ticket:

A friend spotted the footage on the news and told Agnite, 'That's you!'

MIT researcher and undergrads figured out a way to win the lottery and — over 7 years — spent $40 million to win $48 million.

Daily Mail reports:

Officials at the Massachusetts state lottery knew one of their games had essentially been taken over by the group of highly-intelligent gamblers but did nothing because their syndicate generated $16million.

Their system became an almost full-time business as the sophisticated gamblers snapped up hundreds of thousands of lottery tickets at $2 each.

By 2005 they had essentially monopolised the game....

It is thought lottery officials found out about the loophole in 2010 - or maybe earlier - but did not act because it was bringing in so much money....

So much for the notion that the lottery is a "tax on stupidity"? Actually, it still was a tax on stupidity for everyone outside of this syndicate, and since it was draining money from the amount that would otherwise be distributed to the stupid people, the stupid people were being taxed at a higher rate than usual. And the lottery officials were negligent (in creating the loophole) and then knowing as they enjoyed getting the money that they raised taxing stupidity.

Come on, everybody — let's follow the Wisconsin recall primary returns.

Polls close in about an hour and a half, so come walk by the lake with me and Meade. We've just voted, and we're placing our bets — not with real money! — on the results:



UPDATE 1, 6:35 CT: Turnout in Madison is on track to be "one of the highest in state history for a partisan primary, adding to the already historic nature of the recall of Gov. Scott Walker."

UPDATE 2, 8:08: The polls have closed. I'm following the results at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, here, but nothing's in yet.

UPDATE 3, 9:55: Barrett obviously won... by a lot... so my prediction is shot all to hell. The most interesting number is Walker votes versus all the Democratic votes combined. The strong support for Walker is notable, since he wasn't really opposed, and Republicans could cross over and attempt to influence the Democratic race. So far, most of the evening, Walker has been ahead of that total Democratic vote. Right now, there are 496,936 votes combined for the Democrats, and Walker's lagging at 475,019 — which is 21,927 back, but the point is still clear. Why bother to come out and vote for Walker? Why not cross over and affect the competitive Democratic race?

UPDATE 4, 10:21: In the comments, B astutely analyzes:

The way the numbers are working out, It appears that the total vote for the dems will not even reach what would have been the 800k+ threshold figure to even have a recall. And that ignores any spoiler votes for Falk by Walker supporters.

Does make one wonder, doesn't it. Did that many people, around 200k, decide not to show up, change their minds, sign the recall petition just to get some jerk out of their face, or....

Perhaps we are seeing the real recall petition total here. The total when you can only vote once. And for yourself. Or at least not vote as often or for as many people as you could sign the petition..

"A $10,000 bet between Romney and Perry tops chatter at GOP debate."

Typical post-debate headline. It was the spin among the ABC commentators right after the debate too. Everyone had the same take on it: The amount of the bet is so much it reminds people that Romney's really rich, and that's bad.

I had 3 responses to that last night, and here they are, in the order that they crossed my mind:

1. When I heard Romney's "Rick, I’ll tell you what, 10,000 bucks?" my instant reaction was that it's gambling. Are Mormons allowed to gamble? And many voters frown on gambling or regard it as a sin. Is a bet like that, especially when made for rhetorical purposes, considered gambling by people who are opposed to bad gambling? Will this make people think Romney really isn't very religious, and, if so, will that help him in some quarters?

2. When I heard commentators calling attention to the $10,000 amount, I was surprised, especially since they were all harping on the same point. (Presumably, tweets got the meme going.) The amount, if anything, seemed small to me, and not because I'm rich. When people are essentially saying "I'm absolutely sure I'm right" — which Romney was — they'll often say "I'll bet you a million dollars." Kids say that. You have to say a large amount, because the point is that you know you're not going to lose it. It's like saying "I'll eat my hat." You don't name an item that won't be too hard to eat. If anything, the problem with $10,000 was that it's not enough to make the point. But I think Romney made the number small to seem more like a modest, regular guy. Plus "I'll bet you a million dollars" sounds childish.

3. Finally, what's wrong with a candidate being wealthy? Candidates for President are men and women in the later stages of their careers. They are presenting themselves as highly competent and knowledgeable about economic matters. If they're not rich, why should we trust them managing our prosperity? The main reason some good candidates aren't rich is that they've spent their careers in government. Fine. But Romney hasn't, and indeed, that's his pitch: He's experienced in the private sector. If so, he'd better be rich. We should want someone who's worked for decades in private business but hasn't gotten rich to switch over to being President of the United States? We want the United States to grow richer! Rich is good. The commentators who imply that rich isn't good are letting their leftism show.

"Friendly bet on #Packers #Saints game w/ @BobbyJindal."

"We put up WI cheese & beer, looking 4ward 2 getting some seafood after #Packer win."

Tweets Gov. Walker, whose tweeting style is more tweety than that of Gov. Jindal, who tweets"

I bet WI @GovWalker some fresh LA seafood that the Saints beat the Packers tonight. He agreed to send us WI beer and cheese when we win!

Feel free to talk about the big game all you want, right here.

"WI Supreme Court validates Walker union law — now will Quinn pay up on Bears-Packers bet?"

"[I]t's time to put some pressure on Illinois' hapless governor, Pat Quinn."

Here's some pressure on Quinn from last April:

Quinn was scheduled to fulfill the bet on Feb. 21 at Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin, a food bank in Milwaukee. But he canceled because Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin were at each other's throats at the time. Plus, Walker was trying to steal Illinois jobs....

I asked Walker's office if they'd like to publicly condemn Quinn for his foot-dragging and perhaps throw him under the Packers team bus. They didn't seem too upset...

There's one other bet that hasn't been satisfied yet. We're still waiting for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the city we vanquished in the Super Bowl on Feb. 6, to lend us the Renoir painting, "Bathers With Crab," as they promised. We want our "lounging, fleshy females," as our art critic described it.

We want our lounging fleshy females...



... and our fleshy governor from the south. In a soup kitchen. Pronto!

Let's talk about morality.

America has a strong consensus about a lot things even as we are divided on others:



What surprises you the most here? Are you surprised that 80% of Americans say suicide is morally wrong? I've often had to struggle with commenters on this blog when I have taken the firm position that suicide is murder, but I think America mostly agrees with me. There is generally an outpouring of sympathy when someone commits suicide. Why don't we express our moral opprobrium toward the self-murderer? I think it's because that person is gone, and we feel sorry for those who are left behind. They are the victims.

Doctor-assisted suicide is an important subcategory of suicide, and the Gallup report says that it "emerges as the most controversial cultural issue in Gallup's 2011 Values and Beliefs poll." But what is notable is that support for assisted suicide has been dropping and has reached its lowest level of support in 8 years.

A million nights in Vegas?

A screen-grab from yesterday's CNN.com has us distracted by the number 319:

"Will Barack Obama depart as President of the United States?"

You can bet on it.

Rush Limbaugh is "just saying"... what?

From yesterday's show:

State-Controlled AP: "Obama Backs Down After Anti-Vegas Remarks." By the way, I'm just saying, just a little side note here, but gambling is forbidden in the Koran. Just a little aside. Just saying. President Barack Obama known for having a way with words but some lawmakers from Nevada wish he would pipe down about trips to the city after sparking a firestorm of criticism from Nevada's elected officials for suggesting that people saving money for college shouldn't blow it in Vegas. Obama told US Senate majority leader Dingy Harry in a letter he wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas. I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money to have fun. And no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations. Obama says he always enjoys his visits to Vegas. He's going out there this month or later this month. White House spokesman referred to Obama's letter to Reid, said the administration had no further comment. And again the Koran prohibits -- gambling is forbidden in the Koran, I'm just saying.

Now, I listen to the show enough to know this is the sort of thing Rush would — especially if challenged — call a "media tweak" — perhaps even his "Media Tweak of the Day" (though there was some big competition in yesterday's show):

You know, what we do here on this program is, purposely, play the media like violin, like a Stradivarius. And I love tweaking them.  I love irritating them, and I love upsetting them and all you do is take words uttered by liberals and apply them to current events.  It was Harry Reid who looked at Obama and said he's a "light-skinned" guy that "doesn't speak in a Negro dialect."...

Before I said all of this I made a prediction, because this was my Media Tweak of the Day -- and it's getting too easy.  I mean, you're illustrating how easy it is to outrage these people.  I enjoy it.  This is a great success.  When people start squealing like pigs is when I know I've hit a home run.  This is what I said yesterday...

The people that listen to this program laugh and chuckle every day at this stuff, because we're just needling the media. They talk about me all the time and I can create it any time I want.  It's made you mad, and you believe things they take out of context that don't completely say what I fully said, and you get mad.

That gambling/Koran remark — used twice — was clearly designed to stoke the notion that Obama is a Muslim. And obviously, Rush never said that, so there's really nothing to deny. He can say he's "just" throwing something out there to bait his haters in the media, who will rip his remarks from context. But he really is responsible for stirring things up. He knows — and must intend — that his remarks will fuel the Obama-is-a-Muslim theory.

And his repeated use of the inane non-qualifier "just sayin'" makes me... makes me want to show you that time Jon Stewart did that "Just Sayin'" routine, which — like Rush — took a shot at mainstream media:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN's Just Sayin'
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

By the way, the competition for yesterday's "Media Tweak of the Day" was the Rahm Emanuel monologue, a tweak that peaked with:

Normally if you call somebody a retard, you apologize to them for calling them a retard.  But he has apologized to the retarded people for daring to lump them with Democrats.  It's hilarious.  So in an effort, ladies and gentlemen, to quell rising questions about the endless apologies necessary from Democrats, Obama is taking a short bus, little yellow bus full of "retards" -- "F-ing retards" -- to Las Vegas for the weekend.  Senator Harry Reid expressed appreciation for the gesture and hoped that none of the "F-ing retards" spoke with a Negro dialect.  Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, will also be with the delegation in Las Vegas, bringing some undereducated children from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.  The goal is to teach them not to gamble with their college fund.  I mean that's what we have learned from what is happening with this administration.  If this were Republicans making these statements, there wouldn't be any forgiveness.  There would be calls for resignation.  There would be calls for public humiliation.  There would be calls for fines.  

He later took a call from a woman who complained about the use of the term "retarded," and his explanation went like this:

But the point I was making was that Emanuel compares Democrats to retarded people and then apologized to the retarded people, which, in turn is not a complimentary thing to say about the Democrats, either.  It's sort of like if I would compare Obama to a rat and somebody said, "Don't do that, you're insulting rats."  This is the same thing.  Rahm Emanuel is comparing Democrats to retarded people.  People say, "Don't insult retarded people that way."  That's my take on it....

Now, if you read the whole thing — and especially if you listen to the whole thing — you can tell that Rush is taking devilish delight in saying "retard" and "retarded" over and over again. He was a bit undone by the female caller, who — like Sarah Palin — has "a son with developmental disabilities." He tried to cover it up with bluster, but I think I could tell that he knew he'd gone too far, had too much fun in a way that really did hurt people like her.

UPDATE: Did Sarah Palin understand Limbaugh's game?

I asked Palin spokesperson Meghan Stapleton for comment on Rush’s rant, and she emailed me this:

“Governor Palin believes crude and demeaning name calling at the expense of others is disrespectful.”

That's too generic to answer the question, and I don't accept the title of the blog post I'm linking to: "Palin Camp Rips Limbaugh, Hits His 'Retard' Comment As 'Crude And Demeaning.'"

Meanwhile, Limbaugh crowed about the media taking his bait... and claims Sarah Palin as a fan:

[O]ne of the years I'm out at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic a guy comes up to me and says, "My daughter is a huge fan, would you sign a book for me?" and it was a copy of my book and it was to Sarah Palin, long before she was governor of Alaska.  I've had a couple chats with her... So they're trying to goad her into denouncing me like they did Emanuel, but she knows that all I'm doing is quoting Emanuel and highlighting that it's these people who say this kind of stuff.  

She knows? Somebody tell her spokeswoman.

There's not always a word for the thing you want to say.

But it's slightly maddening when you feel there's a word, and you just can't pull it out of your brain. A colleague of mine is looking for a word that expresses a phenomenon embodied in these 3 examples:

1. I go to the track and place a bet on a horse because its name is the same as my son's and the jockey is wearing #5, which is my son's hockey jersey number.

2. I can't decide what to order for lunch so I decide that I'll order whatever the person in front of me orders.

3. I'm not sure what color car to purchase so I decide to purchase the color of the next car that drives by my house.

Now, I think #1 is distinctly different from 2 and 3, because in #1, she knows what the answer is when she adopts the rule. In #2 and #3, she excitingly adopts the rule and locks herself into a result that is unknown. But all 3 are about adopting a rule to make a decision while knowing that there is nothing about the rule that will improve the quality of the decision. One could superstitiously believe that the rule would make the decision good or religiously believe — in examples 2 and 3 — that God knew you'd adopted the rule and was giving you a sign about what was the right decision. And one could think that the rule would generate randomness where somehow a nonrandom decision seemed bad. But basically, the decisionmaker is being playful or poetic.

So is there a word for this?

And do you have any good examples of using this sort of decisionmaking — colorful and exciting rules you've made for yourself? Obviously, there are a lot of standard ways approaches like rolling the dice or consulting the Magic 8 ball, but how about some weird stuff? Or why not make up a rule for yourself about something right now and do it? Got a decision to make? Make it based on something strange and as-yet-undetermined. And tell us about it.

***

This made me think of "Slacker" — one of my favorite movies. We see 2 women walking along the sidewalk. One says: "The next person who passes us will be dead within a fortnight." But that's not a case of the phenomenon my colleague means – not unless we're supposed to view the speaker as a murderer choosing a victim. The standard interpretation is that she's a psychic.

ADDED: Someone in the comments mentions Dadaism, and that reminds me of "A Book of Surrealist Games." I think example #3 could be seen as a sort of surrealist game. The more we talk about these examples, the more I think they are 3 different things. Several commenters have said that #1 is superstition, and I think it is either superstition — in the form of overvaluing a coincidence — or a sentimental delight in coincidence. #2 seems to be conformity or a rational bet based on a tiny amount of evidence. Someone who is eating here is eating that, so maybe he knows what's good. Only #3 is surrealist and dangerous — but nowhere near as much as if you'd chosen the color of your car based on something other than the color of someone else's car. Chances are it will be an ordinary car color, and at least someone else has seen fit to get a car that color. That said, I saw a bright purple car 2 days ago. It looked like hell. And I love the color purple. It just looks like hell on a car.

"The Internet is an environment. You can't be addicted to the environment."

That's one position. The other is that internet addiction is a big problem:

"The Internet problem is still in its infancy," said lead study author Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist and director of the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic at Stanford. No single online activity is to blame for excessive use, he said. "They're online in chat rooms, checking e-mail every two minutes, blogs. It really runs the gamut. [The problem is] not limited to porn or gambling" Web sites....

Excessive Internet use should be defined not by the number of hours spent online but "in terms of losses," said Maressa Hecht Orzack, a Harvard University professor and director of Computer Addiction Services at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., founded in 1995. "If it is a loss [where] you are not getting to work, and family relationships are breaking down as a result around it and this is something you can't handle, then it's too much."

Since the early 1990s, several clinics have been established in the United States to treat heavy Internet users. They include the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, in Bradford, Pa., and the Connecticut-based Center for Internet Behavior....

Uh-oh, I'm sensing convoluted recovery-movement styles of deploying power. I'm siding with the guy who says you can't be addicted to an environment.

(Bonus gripe: I've had it with "Caught in the Web" as a headline for articles about the internet.)

ADDED: La Shawn Barber has this post on internet addiction... with lots of comments.

AND: Eugene Volokh raises the alarm about an even more widespread problem: Communication Addiction! All I can say is that I take some solace in our society's brilliant success at stemming the spread of Thinking Addiction. This rare but distastrous disease can be hard for friends and family to detect as the sufferers may appear to be doing nothing at all or to be engaged in some relatively innocuous activity such as walking or doodling. These addicts fall prey to a dangerous sense of well-being or euphoria; they crave more and more time to think, often to the exclusion of family and friends; they may feel empty, depressed or irritable if they don't have time to think; often they lie to employers and family about activities -- e.g., "What are you thinking about?" "Nothing."; they have trouble stopping thinking; and this thinking may even interfere with school and work.

"Internet addiction disorder."

There are therapists who diagnose and treat Internet addiction disorder.

[A] leading expert in the field is Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, the director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. She opened a clinic for Internet addicts at the hospital in 1996, when, she said, "everybody thought I was crazy."

Dr. Orzack said she got the idea after she discovered she had become addicted to computer solitaire, procrastinating and losing sleep and time with her family.

Well, playing computer solitaire obsessively really is a problem. But just strip it out of your computer and move on. You won't get the shakes or anything. If you're at the point of spending a lot of money or checking into an institution to cure your problem, step back and reason it through. You could simply get rid of your internet connection or your computer and eliminate the problem. The same applies to the "addiction" to watching television. You always have the option to remove the TVs from your house. Then you'll need to find something else to do. Don't plunge into indulgent notions of yourself as weak and diseased.

"I think using the Internet in certain ways can be quite absorbing, but I don't know that it's any different from an addiction to playing the violin and bowling," said Sara Kiesler, professor of computer science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. "There is absolutely no evidence that spending time online, exchanging e-mail with family and friends, is the least bit harmful. We know that people who are depressed or anxious are likely to go online for escape and that doing so helps them."

It was Professor Kiesler who called Internet addiction a fad illness. In her view, she said, television addiction is worse. She added that she was completing a study of heavy Internet users, which showed the majority had sharply reduced their time on the computer over the course of a year, indicating that even problematic use was self-corrective.

She said calling it an addiction "demeans really serious illnesses, which are things like addiction to gambling, where you steal your family's money to pay for your gambling debts, drug addictions, cigarette addictions." She added, "These are physiological addictions."

Yeah, I agree with Kiesler. Or maybe you just think I just haven't gotten to the first step of admitting I have a problem. I think if you find yourself passionately absorbed in something, the question should be whether it is a good thing, not whether you are passionately absorbed.

"Despite being ostensibly about gambling and gangsters, Revolver is full of obscure references to Kabbalah..."

"... with strange mentions of numbers and bizarre references to 'ego versus the light' - both Kabbalah allusions."

Is Madonna to blame for the depletion of all value from the once-admired Guy Ritchie?

Central City, Colorado.

A gold-mining town, turned gambling town:

Mental exercises.

An Instapost this morning:

THE WORLD MEMORY CHAMPIONSHIP COMPETITION is going on now at Oxford University. The current champion is Ben Pridmore, 28, who can memorize a pack of cards in 32.13 seconds. I wonder if the people who actually have the best memories use their super power to do things like memorizing packs of cards. Shouldn't they want to fill their heads with things that will be beautiful or useful to think about – volumes of great literature or the complete tax code and regulations, perhaps? But no. Competition is intrinsically rewarding. My question is like asking the fastest runner why he competes in the Olympics instead of running around looking at the trees and flowers or traveling back and forth to work.

I'll bet you think that people like Pridmore must be lacking in other mental qualities, like that fellow in "The Mind of a Mnemonist." Most relatively smart people want to be even smarter but are still not all that concerned about not having an extremely strong memory. Yet having a great memory would be awfully useful!

What would you memorize if you had a superpower for memorizing?

Would you perform memorizing stunts for the public's entertainment? Would you enter some line of business (or form of gambling) where memorizing something would give you a great edge? Would you pursue memorizing as matter of pure pleasure or enlightenment?

If you could choose a great mental power – not a supernatural power, but just get into the top 0.0001% of human abillity – would you chose memory? If not, what power would you prefer and would you be worried that extreme memory powers would degrade some other aspect of life?