We don't want to decide how to distribute goods so let's just let the market incentives decide -> we don't want to decide whether facts are true or false so...
That is actually a great summary. There are reasons not to want to decide how to distribute goods at too big of a scale (people are corruptible), but any time you see people who want to decide (e.g. leadership of a successful corporation), they are not using markets.
It's the "[put a bird on it!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNpIOlDhigw)" sketch from Portlandia, including the final ironic punchline, but with a dollar sign instead of a bird.
Oddly enough, in the first book of the Culture sf series, it is shown that the culture runs (partially) on a few human superpredictors, who basically act as oracle machines who pick the right options intuitively out of a small dataset (they are better than the various god AIs (minds) who are around, these AIs having massive higher amounts of data and processing power). Found it a weird coincidence between Rationalisms fondness of superpredictors and this series.
(Iirc Rationalists dont generally have read the culture series btw, that seems to be more a musk/bezos thing (musk seems to have read it as a kid and forgot a lot of it, but still thinks he is following going to bring humanity up to the Culture level (the culture is an mostly AI run post scarcity interstellar anarchist empire(ish) (contrary to normal empires factions are allowed to break off without trouble))
Yeah, that is true. Not really what is happening here btw, the ai are mostly superior in everything, just that rarely some humans do unexpected things or have an unexpected skill.
The Culture is pretty leftwing internally. The whole imperialist fringes of the culture are not really written as something positive imho.
It's not an inane idea, really. Predictions tether your beliefs to the world around you. If your predictions keep failing, you're wrong about stuff. It's nigh impossible for anyone to argue against the reality of climate change now, as we can plainly see that the predictions of IPCC models have come true. Which makes it reasonable to assume that they will keep being right. Which means we can *trust* the IPCC.
During the initial stages of the COVID pandemic, plenty of right-wing morons made poor predictions. Their predictions failed miserably, while the predictions of experts were proven to be far better. Which means we can (or at least that we should) trust the latter over the former.
Trust is in desperate decline these days. Predictions can, at least, serve as an objective basis by which we can allocate our limited supplies thereof. Right-wing grifters are generally untethered from reality and exposing this is a good thing. Prediction markets make it more difficult for participants to convince anyone that they've got it all figured out. If their predictions fail, they fail.
It reminds me of PredictIt where a bunch of traders made bank on Trump voters betting that Trump would be the president *after* the election.
If a good chunk of a market is occupied by crazy people, the market will do crazy things.
Eh, in light of the attempted coup and the % of the time coups succeed in the world, I'm not so sure the crazy people were necessarily *wrong*, just crazy.
They have great potential to provide valuable information in some areas. In general, the problem is that there's not a good way to get even vaguely reliable forecasts about a lot of things.
But this post is just absurd beyond belief...
> The idea is it forces you to “put your money where your mouth is”, at least in theory
That sounds like a great time for anyone who can make multiple bets.
Fuck the poorons(*), what do they know anyway.
*: some pro bitcoin person came up with this term to disparage the various anti bitcoin people/people who get scammed getting crypto.
In a prediction market, once you’re wrong a couple of times, traders
will stop updating on your reports and you’ll lose most of your power to
move the market.
All of these claims about the magic of markets just means he’s never actually interacted with traders ever. They are *very* prone to groupthink and herding behavior, even though they’ll bleat on endlessly about how they’re actually John Galt like figures.
You have to understand that by convention whenever a billionaire is present then so is their PA. You think they could make a trip across America without their retinue?
[Of] course there should be fire-the-head-of-a-military-school
prediction markets! Robin Hanson has long said that if he had a million
dollars, the first thing he would do is subsidize fire-company-CEO
markets. Why not give him a billion instead, and have him extend it to
military school principals?
Yeah, that’s a great idea! Nothing at all could go wrong
with betting on whether random people get fired. And, of course, it
would do great deal to incentivize thorough but fair investigative
reporting
I’m sure people will think up lots of perverse incentives it might
cause, and some them might even be true. But it’s not like our current
system doesn’t cause a lot of perverse incentives.
Oh, well, there you go! I would like to apologize to Scott Codex
Alexander Ten for my sarcastic remark. It turns out that my objection
was anticipated and fully addressed. I look forward to his help
establishing a communist state in the USA. I know he’ll say that
Communism has perverse incentives, and some of them might be true. But
it’s not like capitalism doesn’t cause a lot of perverse incentives.
It's hilarious how lazy Scott has been getting. Back a month ago he was saying "[there's actually a huge amount of evidence but I can't be bothered to show sources](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/nas87b/theres_actually_a_huge_amount_of_formal_academic/)", now he's just tossing around whataboutisms to avoid answering the obvious massive problems his proposals would likely cause.
There is research showing that including financial incentices into creative fields actually makes people less creative (no I will not show this research ;) (iirc it was some very basic test where they let people do simple puzzles for fun or cash and they were slower and less creative in the latter case)). Nice to see it happen to Scott. Double nice because iirc I predicted this would happen a while back. (Look at me Scott, im the prediction market now).
I think you may be thinking of Glucksberg's work on the "candle problem." But since this is a paper from the 60s and I'm on mobile:
> (no I will not show this research ;)
This is always the path these writers take. The need to keep ginning up controversy on a week in week out basis slowly and reliably turns them into cranks.
> Nothing at all could go wrong with betting on whether random people get fired.
Hasn't Scott been one of the people complaining about "cancel culture" as a huge threat to our society? And now he's saying everyone should have direct financial incentives to cancel people?
>I look forward to his help establishing a communist state in the USA. I know he'll say that Communism has perverse incentives, and some of them might be true. But it's not like capitalism doesn't cause a lot of perverse incentives.
Excuse me, as a communist I would ask you to never again group the likes of Scott Alexander together with us, thanks
>'all my substack grifter friends are capturing the full value of their labor, and they are journalists right?'
there's a lot that sucks about this this this is the part that got me. [professional journalists are dropping like flies](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008/), and smaller local newsrooms are being gutted by big national conglomerates. the idea that things are \*better\* because a handful of writers are making big bucks on substack is ludicrous
SA is at the point where he would prefer literal Black Mirror-like
social score on any person of some importance (“First of all, of course
there should be fire-the-head-of-a-military-school prediction market”)
than having jurnalists doing stuff, essentially because the latter might
not like his scientific racism and his incel whining (“the news might
diverge into an”infotainment” industry where people tryto get clicks by
accusing each other of being racist pedophiles”).
I don’t know if this arrives to the level of “opening the gates of
hell through rationalization” as much as Yarvin and his “I want absolute
company monarchy because I feel unsafe in a bad LA neiborhood”, but it
comes quite close
I’ve said this before in SneerClub and I’m sure I’ll say it again,
but seriously, have any of these nerds ever looked into the existence of
sports betting? We have billions of dollars going into prediction
markets based on fields where there are actually easily measurable
metrics, and while in the end Vegas ends up being pretty accurate with
their lines, it’s not clear that this has led to teams making better
decisions, or sports media reporting becoming more accurate or nuanced,
or any of the other benefits that people seem to want to grant to
prediction markets. As far as I can tell, the only winners seem to be
the bookmakers and the leagues who sign marketing deals with them.
Also - pretty much anyone who bets on sports will tell you that the
lines are always messed up when the betting involves a team that has a
large fanbase - i.e. lots of people will bet based on their fandom
rather than their actual beliefs about the outcome. There’s no reason to
believe this wouldn’t be the same for markets around politics or news or
whatever other concept you want to use them for.
> As far as I can tell, the only winners seem to be the bookmakers and the leagues who sign marketing deals with them.
As it ever was: The way to make money is to convince other people you know how to make them money...
> Also - pretty much anyone who bets on sports will tell you that the lines are always messed up when the betting involves a team that has a large fanbase - i.e. lots of people will bet based on their fandom rather than their actual beliefs about the outcome
This same thing happens in prediction markets with Andrew Yang fans.
Ow lol wtf, his great profit model, actually just hurts the public.
That is who are going to pay for the shorts via the stock market.
(Remember everybody’s pensions are in stocks, that is one of the methods
the system is set up so we dont fuck with it).
It doesnt hurt the ceos allowing the fraud (who just get paid big
salaries) that much.
Pension funds are also the least likely to buddy up with some of
these research groups to do some checking up on which these researchers
are looking into (and then just avoiding those stocks).
There is also the whole ‘but what if they make it up’ shit.
If current-day schools care enough about gender equality to hire a
chief diversity officer
Lol, ah yes the chief diversity officer. [Laughs in sjw]. And he is
right prediction markets will be as least as effective as CDOs.
The problem with markets is that they only work properly if they are
transparent, this market fetishization seems to forget that.
In the far future, the news might diverge into an “infotainment”
industry where people try to get clicks by accusing each other of being
racist pedophiles, and a prediction-market-movement industry where
people try to generate true information on important issues. Then
everyone could just ignore the first thing and go about their lives.
> Then everyone could just ignore the first thing and go about their lives.
Is anyone supposed to believe Siskind won't be complaining about the liberal media and leftist indoctrination right to his deathbed?
Imagine what his bosses would say if he changed his tune. 'Gosh sorry, I all worried about the conservatives destroying democracy now, Mitch's double dealing proves they cant be trusted and they should be expelled from the garden', he would be kicked out pretty fast.
i’ve never really understood the rationalist obsession with prediction markets
Yes, this seems perfectly reasonable, and no glaring counter examples jump immediately to mind.
Yeah, that’s a great idea! Nothing at all could go wrong with betting on whether random people get fired. And, of course, it would do great deal to incentivize thorough but fair investigative reporting
Oh, well, there you go! I would like to apologize to Scott Codex Alexander Ten for my sarcastic remark. It turns out that my objection was anticipated and fully addressed. I look forward to his help establishing a communist state in the USA. I know he’ll say that Communism has perverse incentives, and some of them might be true. But it’s not like capitalism doesn’t cause a lot of perverse incentives.
those pesky newsrooms with their political agendas >:(
‘all my substack grifter friends are capturing the full value of their labor, and they are journalists right?’
SA is at the point where he would prefer literal Black Mirror-like social score on any person of some importance (“First of all, of course there should be fire-the-head-of-a-military-school prediction market”) than having jurnalists doing stuff, essentially because the latter might not like his scientific racism and his incel whining (“the news might diverge into an”infotainment” industry where people tryto get clicks by accusing each other of being racist pedophiles”).
I don’t know if this arrives to the level of “opening the gates of hell through rationalization” as much as Yarvin and his “I want absolute company monarchy because I feel unsafe in a bad LA neiborhood”, but it comes quite close
(jock warning):
I’ve said this before in SneerClub and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but seriously, have any of these nerds ever looked into the existence of sports betting? We have billions of dollars going into prediction markets based on fields where there are actually easily measurable metrics, and while in the end Vegas ends up being pretty accurate with their lines, it’s not clear that this has led to teams making better decisions, or sports media reporting becoming more accurate or nuanced, or any of the other benefits that people seem to want to grant to prediction markets. As far as I can tell, the only winners seem to be the bookmakers and the leagues who sign marketing deals with them.
Also - pretty much anyone who bets on sports will tell you that the lines are always messed up when the betting involves a team that has a large fanbase - i.e. lots of people will bet based on their fandom rather than their actual beliefs about the outcome. There’s no reason to believe this wouldn’t be the same for markets around politics or news or whatever other concept you want to use them for.
Ow lol wtf, his great profit model, actually just hurts the public. That is who are going to pay for the shorts via the stock market. (Remember everybody’s pensions are in stocks, that is one of the methods the system is set up so we dont fuck with it).
It doesnt hurt the ceos allowing the fraud (who just get paid big salaries) that much.
Pension funds are also the least likely to buddy up with some of these research groups to do some checking up on which these researchers are looking into (and then just avoiding those stocks).
There is also the whole ‘but what if they make it up’ shit.
Lol, ah yes the chief diversity officer. [Laughs in sjw]. And he is right prediction markets will be as least as effective as CDOs.
The problem with markets is that they only work properly if they are transparent, this market fetishization seems to forget that.
Wow his writing has gotten worse.
E: forgot to mention
Nice topical reference there. but a bit culture war specific.