Hypotheses for the global lack of adoption of prediction markets/probabilistic methods
From the hypothesis you outline, the ones that sound the most plausible, or like they hit more the nail in the head, are:
Null hypothesis! Governments aren’t that competent. I have some thoughts on how “strong optimizers”, e.g., a Machiavelli, a Bismark, just aren’t that common, and are becoming less common.
We can see this happening in Britain, where Dominic Cummings pushed for prediction markets/forecasting tournaments for governmental decision-making, and this got translated into a totally inoffensive forecasting platform with totally milquetoast questions which don’t affect decisions.
Prediction markets not being ready for prime-time
But, to some extent, all your hypothesis have something to it. It’s also not clear how one would go about differentiating between the different hypotheses. “Good judgment”, sure, but we still don’t really have the tools for thought to be reliably able to distinguish between these kinds of hypothesis, and I dislike punditry.
Prediction market experiments and other cool things
In your last newsletter, you remarked, “It’s kind of interesting how $40k [given away by Astral Codex Ten Grants] feels like a significant quantity of all the funding there is for small experiments in the forecasting space. This is probably suboptimal.” What prediction-market experiments would you be most interested to see run?
More on this to come in the next edition of the newsletter!
Yes, but I haven’t really done the math to compare to other interventions
Ditto. Also, last time I checked I think Hanson was still excited about it. I guess I’d be more excited about, e.g., prediction markets on topics of great importance to OpenPhil/EA, but that might be a bit myopic (?)
Yes, I just asked that yesterday to their head of engineering, and he seemed pretty receptive. No stock markets, though, and they still have to get their respective licenses at least on the US.
I think that description of QURI is too much of a simplification, I’d make some emphasis on software that is scalable (guesstimate, metaforecast), and on research that is more exploratory. That said, I’m betting heavily on the QURI side of things, though I do keep an eye on forecasting/prediction markets.
More Wagner
I wrote this post casually, but let me know if you think it would be good to rework as a top-level post
Yes, but I’d be more interested in getting something more comprehensive/structured; these points seem pretty scattered. To be clear, I do greatly prefer scattered thoughts over nothing.
Copying my answer from the forum
Hypotheses for the global lack of adoption of prediction markets/probabilistic methods
From the hypothesis you outline, the ones that sound the most plausible, or like they hit more the nail in the head, are:
Null hypothesis! Governments aren’t that competent. I have some thoughts on how “strong optimizers”, e.g., a Machiavelli, a Bismark, just aren’t that common, and are becoming less common.
We can see this happening in Britain, where Dominic Cummings pushed for prediction markets/forecasting tournaments for governmental decision-making, and this got translated into a totally inoffensive forecasting platform with totally milquetoast questions which don’t affect decisions.
Prediction markets not being ready for prime-time
But, to some extent, all your hypothesis have something to it. It’s also not clear how one would go about differentiating between the different hypotheses. “Good judgment”, sure, but we still don’t really have the tools for thought to be reliably able to distinguish between these kinds of hypothesis, and I dislike punditry.
Prediction market experiments and other cool things
More on this to come in the next edition of the newsletter!
Yes, but I haven’t really done the math to compare to other interventions
Ditto. Also, last time I checked I think Hanson was still excited about it. I guess I’d be more excited about, e.g., prediction markets on topics of great importance to OpenPhil/EA, but that might be a bit myopic (?)
Yes, I just asked that yesterday to their head of engineering, and he seemed pretty receptive. No stock markets, though, and they still have to get their respective licenses at least on the US.
I think that description of QURI is too much of a simplification, I’d make some emphasis on software that is scalable (guesstimate, metaforecast), and on research that is more exploratory. That said, I’m betting heavily on the QURI side of things, though I do keep an eye on forecasting/prediction markets.
More Wagner
Yes, but I’d be more interested in getting something more comprehensive/structured; these points seem pretty scattered. To be clear, I do greatly prefer scattered thoughts over nothing.