Venn diagrams are deficient in that for 4+
factors small-brain individuals can gaze upon the diagram and still know
what the fuck you are talking about. “If you can’t arbitrarily obfuscate
an idea and bamboozle all onlookers, you don’t understand it well
enough.” – Albert Einstein
if theorists of prediction markets are desperate enough to name any
of their diagrams or equations or whatever after Scott Alexander then I
don’t think the technology is going very far
Sports betting, Scott. It’s a prediction market that’s something like
200 billion dollars of real money industry, and it’s so easy to use and
create markets on that my third grade class literally ran a real money
March Madness bracket. And unlike some other use-cases, it’s actually in
a field where success/failure is 100% quantifiable!
Now, what fascinating insights or world-changing developments have
come from that, other than “giving sports commentators some new nonsense
to talk about when the game is boring”?
edit: wait, I forgot about the actual benefits of prediction markets
as seen in sports betting - giving the people involved in the thing
you’re trying to predict a financial incentive to try and manipulate
the results
outside of the standard accepted grounds in a way that ends up being
really shitty for everyone else.
and now we have market-efficient and largely accurate odds for every match that is played. You can't see why that would be incredibly useful for stuff that matters more than sports?
Sports are pretty much bounded as a domain, lot of other betting market stuff isnt. I dont think it will predict stuff that well, and it introduces the incentive to manipulate stuff to make even more money of prediction markets. See also how Rationalists failed to understand the book 'seeing like a state'. (Some searching in the history here prob helps).
It all feels a bit like an intelligence trap.
(E: Dont think it is a bad question though, 'if sports betting works why not expand that to other fields')
> (E: Dont think it is a bad question though, 'if sports betting works why not expand that to other fields')
Well, I think the issue is that sports betting "works" in that it makes a lot of money, and provides some additional forms of entertainment for people watching sports. But it's not really clear that it works in terms of _improving_ how people play sports, and it's not really clear that passing those effects to other fields would really be helpful.
Right I assumed it was meant here as 'prediction markets tend to give correct predictions' working in that way, I didn't consider all the other things you said which are valid and important points, esp if you take it away from something like entertainment.
Never say never, I guess, and maybe this is something I need to read more about, but from what I've seen, it hasn't been particularly useful within sports - sports teams aren't making decisions based on what the money line is doing. Improvements in teambuilding etc have come more from Moneyball-style analyses by the teams themselves, often using private or proprietary data not available to the public.
Personally, I also look at the rise of things like 538 and the sudden increase of attention being paid to polling and predictions as a net negative as well. From what I can see, having people focus on and react to the likelihood of outcomes rather than the actual event being discussed hasn't led to any real efficiencies - it's just created a new set of problems, and a lot more financial incentives for people to behave badly.
Anyway, my real point is that it's always surprising to me that Rationalists don't talk about this existing example more when discussing prediction markets - and I'm not sure if that's because they're Nerds^tm who aren't aware of it, or if it's just that it hasn't had the massive world-changing implications that they want to ascribe to prediction markets.
> Personally, I also look at the rise of things like 538 and the sudden increase of attention being paid to polling and predictions as a net negative as well. From what I can see, having people focus on and react to the likelihood of outcomes rather than the actual event being discussed hasn't led to any real efficiencies - it's just created a new set of problems, and a lot more financial incentives for people to behave badly.
In a completely different context, I came across Rebecca Solnit's phrase "[the tyranny of the quantifiable](https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/12/13/rebecca-solnit-counter-criticism/)" for the first time this morning. It's one of those perfect phrases that's helped me crystallize a million disparate criticisms into one succinct concept.
What exactly are these “real money” prediction markets? A google
search tells me:
Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market platform thatallows
you to stake tokens on the outcome of current events likeelections,
sports, and current events, while earning
cryptocurrency [Ethereum] foryour correct insights.
Augur is a decentralized prediction market platform built on the
Ethereum blockchain
FTX is a Crypto Derivatives Exchange
Great I am really excited to waste energy,
degrade the environment and contribute to global warming on “real
money”.
I am going to make a prediction, 70-80% chance that one of these
exchanges is going to have a rugpull or hack
or shady
business dealings like all of these Ethereum and cryptocurrencies
businesses. Just being Bayesian.
Nature’s 4-day simultaneous Alexander cube
This, but every corner is labeled “totally useless”.
Venn diagrams are deficient in that for 4+ factors small-brain individuals can gaze upon the diagram and still know what the fuck you are talking about. “If you can’t arbitrarily obfuscate an idea and bamboozle all onlookers, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
if theorists of prediction markets are desperate enough to name any of their diagrams or equations or whatever after Scott Alexander then I don’t think the technology is going very far
What did the poor Lambda Cube ever do to them?
Sports betting, Scott. It’s a prediction market that’s something like 200 billion dollars of real money industry, and it’s so easy to use and create markets on that my third grade class literally ran a real money March Madness bracket. And unlike some other use-cases, it’s actually in a field where success/failure is 100% quantifiable!
Now, what fascinating insights or world-changing developments have come from that, other than “giving sports commentators some new nonsense to talk about when the game is boring”?
edit: wait, I forgot about the actual benefits of prediction markets as seen in sports betting - giving the people involved in the thing you’re trying to predict a financial incentive to try and manipulate the results outside of the standard accepted grounds in a way that ends up being really shitty for everyone else.
What exactly are these “real money” prediction markets? A google search tells me:
Great I am really excited to waste energy, degrade the environment and contribute to global warming on “real money”.
I am going to make a prediction, 70-80% chance that one of these exchanges is going to have a rugpull or hack or shady business dealings like all of these Ethereum and cryptocurrencies businesses. Just being Bayesian.
Clearly they need to add a ‘actually gives good predictions’ 4th dimension. Go all hypercube, I christen it the ‘other scott’(*) cube.
*: no not that scott, the other one.
Is that trying to be a venn diagram or semiotic square? I mean either way, George Harrison is right: it’s been done.
the other fun part here is that Augur doesn’t work very well because way too few people can be bothered to participate in practice
and that’s even before you get to the ambiguous claims with large bets riding on them, which then go to six rounds of dispute resolution
Graphic design is my passion
Tfw ur jealous of category theorists