I really buy the argument Sinclair makes about reducing trivial inconveniences here. Let’s make a model.
Ambiguity has two main negative effects, according to me:
Reducing precision in the prediction, because some of the prediction is based around interpretation of the creator’s foibles rather than a “true” resolution of a better-specified question.
Making the forecaster’s lives worse, because they want to be forecasting world events, not guessing as to the creators behavior in unclear situations.
Let’s set 1. aside for now. 2. seems like a big deal for sure. But also big is the drag on creating prediction markets imposed by Metaculus-style process. The way to balance these two seems to me to be a question that hinges on what you want your impact to be. If you’re trying to make the world as good a place as possible, you might have quite a strong preference for there being plenty of markets that can be made with low overhead. If the experience for forecasters is bad enough, then you won’t get predictions on those questions, but my empirical belief is that Manifold is striking a better balance right now than Metaculus.
As for 1., again, we can answer it according to, what’s most useful for our goals, and again, I want to claim Manifold is doing well here.
I really buy the argument Sinclair makes about reducing trivial inconveniences here. Let’s make a model.
Ambiguity has two main negative effects, according to me:
Reducing precision in the prediction, because some of the prediction is based around interpretation of the creator’s foibles rather than a “true” resolution of a better-specified question.
Making the forecaster’s lives worse, because they want to be forecasting world events, not guessing as to the creators behavior in unclear situations.
Let’s set 1. aside for now. 2. seems like a big deal for sure. But also big is the drag on creating prediction markets imposed by Metaculus-style process. The way to balance these two seems to me to be a question that hinges on what you want your impact to be. If you’re trying to make the world as good a place as possible, you might have quite a strong preference for there being plenty of markets that can be made with low overhead. If the experience for forecasters is bad enough, then you won’t get predictions on those questions, but my empirical belief is that Manifold is striking a better balance right now than Metaculus.
As for 1., again, we can answer it according to, what’s most useful for our goals, and again, I want to claim Manifold is doing well here.
tl;dr There are real tradeoffs here.
I like the post btw!