True, but the people who tend to push the idea tend to put the focus on others, not themselves. Or they have the power and virtue to overcome it through spiritual means, and the godless heathens don't.
But I see what you're saying.
Even in Nordic countries which have extremely high standards of living and strong social welfare measure, crime still exists. Albeit its a lot less than in the US.
There is unlikely for there to ever be a fully 100% crime free society in a community of more than 1,000 people.
Uh, if I put my money into this prediction market on the “person will
commit a crime” side, and someone gets arrested before they commit said
crime, won’t I lose my money? Why would anyone use this market for
anything other than trying to pay to put your enemies in prison?
The money gets refunded if they do get precrime-arrested and There is 1-epsilon random probability they ignore the recommendation to arrest them in order to see how it plays out. Epsilon is selected to be large enough to fund the prediction market.
So it doesn’t have the problem you described… but it does have the problem that the criminal justice system is literally operating off an RNG.
Also has the problem that you can now pay people to get others arrested at a high probability. (and who would ever put money on 'they will not do a crime'). (E: erugh, as you said in your other comment).
It also makes it so that the people best able to get others arrested are those who are able to lose large sums of money without becoming seriously disadvantaged. If I put $1k on Jeff Bezos to be arrested, there would be a large probability that I couldn't make rent. If Bezos put $1 billion on me to be arrested, there would be a much smaller probability for him to lose his money, and it wouldn't be a problem for him even if he did.
But then...if enough people agree with me, I only get my original money back, so what was the point of me betting it? Seems like this only incentivizes me to bet if I think that the person I'm accusing is someone that very little other people will suspect - but then, if I see someone putting money down that some innocent-seeming person will commit a crime, isn't the natural assumption that they have some kind of inside information (so you shouldn't bet against them)? I'm probably thinking about this more than Yud has here, but it really seems like the market part of it falls apart the minute you think about it for a couple minutes.
There is an epsilon probability that they ignore the markets recommendation to arrest them and let things play out in order to give you an epsilon chance of actually having the bet play out.
EY, Robin Hanson, and other tech bro types have thought about prediction markets long enough to get the basic math to work out… theoretically, over the long run, people who make correct predictions make money and people who make incorrect predictions lose money. Of course, the entire premise is still vulnerable to market manipulation by millionaires and billionaires willing to lose money. And the way memes and hype can make stock prices go crazy (Tesla for example) should illustrate that even in absence of wealthy market makers and manipulators stock prices are not actually rational aggregates of collective knowledge with lots of people gaining or losing money in the short run in an illogical way.
I like that he can envision a society where everyone obeys a fucking
prediction market to the extent that you minority report your way to
some sort of asinine precrime system of arrests, but not like, a better
system of intervening against possible future crimes than just arresting
people
At a bare minimum, you'd think they'd at least start with a Clippy-esque warning message. "Hey there! It looks like you're thinking about committing a crime..."
It's what happens if your thinking takes place in a vacuum. You can imagine something you saw on TV, but the idea crime is caused by environment would require you to pick up a book.
I think this is what happens when people eschew literature and prefer science fiction.
And I love science fiction.
It’s just that it seems he seems to be unaware that other people exist, are real, and have feelings.
It is though? In the end it works perfectly, crime rate dropped to 0, innumberable lives where saves, and the downside was that... One single crime would not be correctly solved?
Much like robocop, I feel that it was made by people who intuitively understood it was wrong but could not really articulate why.
The original short story has the three reports *all* conflicting, and the main character looks at all of them and decides to commit the murder anyway. It's much more critical and dystopian.
To be fair to Spielberg, I'm not sure that the changes were as much due to misunderstanding as due to wanting to make it marketable. To be balanced, however, perhaps that doesn't really justify making the story worse.
Doesn’t the precrime system only operate in one city? And require psychics? And there was a torture subplot I think, plus the constant surveillance thing, like with the optical scanners everywhere? Like, even if you grant the efficacy of the system to get crime down (in the DC metro area), it seems like an authoritarian way to do it. Which, not surprised that the rationalists are on board! Their favorite thing is to open the Overton window wide enough to let in the fashy authoritarian panopticon bullshit. If minority report had included corporal punishment it would probably be right after the sequences as their required reading.
It's funny, because to some extent this exists with how the IRS conducts audits. That system works\* and nobody has any issues with it\*\*.
[\*, \*\*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy)
Yeah every means of punishment for wrongdoing gets at least one caveat.
Makes people like Greater Yud and Siskind extra insufferable because they're obsessed with punishing people and good at cloaking it in pseudo-intellectual language. They clearly know the flaws, but they know their followers won't think of them.
Prediction markets can be used to encourage crime. (At least if you consider assassination a crime, but also just the case of "I put 4 million bucks on 'tomorrow Scott will steal a hamburger'", which will encourage Scott to bet against that and steal a hamburger today).
I saw a diss in a heinlien book against Americans saying that the majority of them were mere technicians and their education amounted to very little.
In this case his lack of education has amounted to the same as many peoples educated selves: so lacking in insightfulness, creativity, and general thoughtfulness that to even imagine a world that supports people in avoiding crime in the first place isn’t even on the table for discussion.
Envisioning a ratfic of Thomas More's utopia where as soon as More's author avatar starts asking why we keep implementing policies obviously making crime worse Yudkowsky jumps in and tells the story of an island where market superforecasters determined who should be punished.
By high-functioning he means utopia that runs off of author fiat.
I have a bunch of smug clever replies, but the sheer stupidity of
this prediction market application overwhelms the humor… Millionaires
and billionaires already find ways of twisting the justice system
through donations to police and DAs and judges, this would cut out the
middle man and let them directly buy arrests on people. In general, the
ideas of public policy prediction markets suffer from this: rich
individuals and corporations will take losing bets to steer policy in a
way that makes them individually richer.
I wonder if he is asking to crowd source his dath Ilan world building
for the Mad Investor Chaos series (dath ilan teenager isekai’d into DnD
Pathfinder setting)? It’s going to take the his Cheliax audience .5
seconds to realize the sheer potential for injustice of such a proposal…
which I suppose means they will like it? Unless it is too injust even
for lawful evil asmodeus worshippers?
People who are super fans of the market like this have obviously never actually traded. Because every market has manipulations and large players drive the direction of the market.
So yeah having that dynamics being in charge of the criminal justice system…
No, don't be so lowerclass, this isn't *gambling*. This is predicting the future, and you will work hard to make a good prediction so you don't lose your money. Unlike betting, which is for stupid people, and trading which is for rich people, this is for smart people, so it's different and better.
No, because that's not convoluted enough for #lw
This has novel negative outcomes such as options on outcomes leading to things like stalking and later assaulting a celebrity you like because you bet money you didn't have that they would have a baby within a year.
> This has novel negative outcomes such as options on outcomes leading to things like stalking and later assaulting a celebrity you like because you bet money you didn't have that they would have a baby within a year.
The invisible hand at work.
It's exactly that, yes. A lot of people betting on whether something will or won't happen, winners split the money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
Let me ask you a similar question, Elie. If I gave you a specialized
revolver with 20 chambers, and only filled one of them with a bullet,
spun it, and handed it to you, would you pull the trigger on your own
skull? What if it made stock prices go up?
No, because then they would not be able to commit the crime, and the
95% of people who bet on them committing the crime would be out of luck,
and you’d be interfering with their bets, you asshole.
I agree with the sentiment but that's a little mean to us lumpenproles :p. Besides, according to most relevant criteria Yud isn't unemployed, he very much is receiving money for doing what he does. Which is making the world worse, so if anything I wish he was *less* employed.
he's not a lumpen by any stretch, he's a well-connected able-bodied person who's made a living peddling bullshit that is not useful and is actually net negative for society, unlike the many people who work and actually perform socially useful labor. by that definition he's unemployed. the lumpens at least have that dignity, this guy doesn't
Nah I totally agree about Yud, I meant that being employed and doing labor that's useful for society aren't the same thing. One can be a hard worker and be shit for society - cops of course, but plenty of people who just work for evil companies too - or be unemployed and do lots of positive things. So saying that what Yud is doing is "privileged unemployment" as an insult sounds a bit workerist; I think, like you I suppose, that he's being paid to be a shit, but comparing him to lumpen is insulting to them, not to him.
yep agreed, perhaps "unemployment" was the wrong term, and lumpen is too noble a designation for him. i think a useful distinction is labor (that fetches an income on the market, and that which doesn't at the home in private life) that's part of social reproduction, and parasitic rentier "work" like Yudkowsky's. he's part of a certain class of layabout ideologue whose lifestyle is funded by the misery of others, like cops, other dishonest "thinkers", and the other leeches living off the excesses of militarism and surveillance society. these people need the boot.
First few times I read about Yudkowsky (about 10 years ago when HPMOR was published) he was always framed as this school dropout who taught himself everything and became an author and Rationalism/AI guy through his own doing. Are you telling me he had some sort of leg up to get to where he is?
Oh sorry, I thought you were the other person. Well there is no reason to doubt that Yud is a self-taught high school dropout, but his projects do get a lot of Peter Thiel's money and he has appeared on panels with him so in my books that does count as being somewhat well-connected. But it's very possible that he became well-connected as a result of his fame rather than the other way around, I don't know the guy's history that much.
That's hilarious, especially the last line about him fixing the world. I thought you were joking but it literally does argue that *rich people sparkle*. I hadn't seen this one, thanks, but I had read many years ago the well-known [previous article](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kXSETKZ3X9oidMozA) in which he tries to deal with possibly not being as smart as John Conway. The funny thing is the top comment warning EY that in the future he will come to find these posts embarrassing. This turns out to be false, since EY hasn't really changed. It's also weird that at the time of writing these he was almost 30, not some young smart kid posting immature stuff on the internet.
Can’t you simply game prediction markets by dumping a lot of cash in
it? (E: that was the point behind assasination prediction markets,
people put money in so they can plausible denial cause people to be
murdered)
Guess the guy who was called a pedo by musk really was a pedo.
Somebody should learn the map isn’t the territory.
It’s almost like he can’t imagine griefers and trolls would instantly
brigade his precious prediction market specifically to f-up
their enemies. Just like Reddit or Twitter only with real world
consequences …
He really should have spent more of the past 30 years reading
comp.risks and worrying about security instead of reading EXTROPY-L.
In a high-functioning Social Media App, if a twitter poll asserts 95%
probability that I should stop thinking about stupid bullshit and go to
sleep . . .
(please don’t ask why high functioning societies perpetuate the material conditions where serious crime is a problem in this scenario)
Uh, if I put my money into this prediction market on the “person will commit a crime” side, and someone gets arrested before they commit said crime, won’t I lose my money? Why would anyone use this market for anything other than trying to pay to put your enemies in prison?
I like that he can envision a society where everyone obeys a fucking prediction market to the extent that you minority report your way to some sort of asinine precrime system of arrests, but not like, a better system of intervening against possible future crimes than just arresting people
By high-functioning he means utopia that runs off of author fiat.
I have a bunch of smug clever replies, but the sheer stupidity of this prediction market application overwhelms the humor… Millionaires and billionaires already find ways of twisting the justice system through donations to police and DAs and judges, this would cut out the middle man and let them directly buy arrests on people. In general, the ideas of public policy prediction markets suffer from this: rich individuals and corporations will take losing bets to steer policy in a way that makes them individually richer.
I wonder if he is asking to crowd source his dath Ilan world building for the Mad Investor Chaos series (dath ilan teenager isekai’d into DnD Pathfinder setting)? It’s going to take the his Cheliax audience .5 seconds to realize the sheer potential for injustice of such a proposal… which I suppose means they will like it? Unless it is too injust even for lawful evil asmodeus worshippers?
The only problem with those planets in Star Trek who waged a computer-simulated war with each other was that they didn’t have cryptocurrency.
Is “prediction market” just a euphemism for betting that a certain event will or won’t happen?
Let me ask you a similar question, Elie. If I gave you a specialized revolver with 20 chambers, and only filled one of them with a bullet, spun it, and handed it to you, would you pull the trigger on your own skull? What if it made stock prices go up?
so, it’s a place you can go to pay to get someone arrested? that’s what he is proposing, right?
Just realized that eliezer basically just figured out how to reinvent swatting in a rationalist utopia, so that’s sorta impressive, at least
No, because then they would not be able to commit the crime, and the 95% of people who bet on them committing the crime would be out of luck, and you’d be interfering with their bets, you asshole.
this guy is such a fucking charlatan it’s incredible. this is what unemployment looks like when you have the right connections
In order to stay sane, I’m going to assume the capital C in Civilization means he’s talking about the game.
Can’t you simply game prediction markets by dumping a lot of cash in it? (E: that was the point behind assasination prediction markets, people put money in so they can plausible denial cause people to be murdered)
Guess the guy who was called a pedo by musk really was a pedo.
Somebody should learn the map isn’t the territory.
Go to sleep
It’s almost like he can’t imagine griefers and trolls would instantly brigade his precious prediction market specifically to f-up their enemies. Just like Reddit or Twitter only with real world consequences …
He really should have spent more of the past 30 years reading comp.risks and worrying about security instead of reading EXTROPY-L.
Ah, but any objection you raise for how this might go wrong, could never happen in a TRULY high functioning society.
In a high-functioning Social Media App, if a twitter poll asserts 95% probability that I should stop thinking about stupid bullshit and go to sleep . . .
Go to sleep, Eliezer
link to poll
So literally Jackson’s Whole, where somebody pays for an arrest order on you, and the arresting goons ask if you want to outbid?
Uh, bad news for Eli here.
Wow. Just wow
What if the world was made of pudding.