I don’t really understand the conclusion. If your betting fund is 100$ we are back to small stakes betting. For many rationalists, a ‘real deal’ Kelly fund would need to be five or six figures. I do think you should consider fractional Kelly betting in some situations and am in favor of your worldview strongly influencing your investment portfolio. But even 25% Kelly betting your savings is a huge amount of work, you need to think you have a pretty good edge.
I am honestly unsure what the right norms are for ‘doing this for real’.
The final section is supposed to be for people who consider the argument and still don’t feel up to large-stakes bets.
But yeah, I’m still very unsure what the right norms would be, too.
But even 25% Kelly betting your savings is a huge amount of work, you need to think you have a pretty good edge.
The kind of bet I encounter when hanging out with rationalists is like:
does [mathematical object] have [property]?
did [x] happen before or after 1950?
is the number of smokers in America above or below [number]?
Etc.
IE, these are just factual questions which can either be looked up, or convincingly estimated from lookup-able info, or proven/disproven by thinking about it enough.
The disagreements are often substantial enough that, if taken at face value, they’d imply significant Kelly bets.
I think I have even more opportunities like this when talking to non-rationalists (IE, larger factual disagreements), but don’t personally try to turn these into bets (but some people take this approach).
Obviously even if you personally decide to use Kelly in such situations, other people might not be willing; but then the Kelly prescription is just to get as large a bet out of them as you can.
Thanks for giving details of the disagreements you are considering. The only community with norms even remotely conducive to large bets of this type is probably the poker community? There is a lot of big betting on ‘props’. I don’t know how often they bet on factual disagreements. But there have been a lot of big bets on random stuff like ‘can X person do Y pushups’ or ’does Scott think God exists. For a certain well known player doing pushups and a well known Scott both bets are real.
I don’t really understand the conclusion. If your betting fund is 100$ we are back to small stakes betting. For many rationalists, a ‘real deal’ Kelly fund would need to be five or six figures. I do think you should consider fractional Kelly betting in some situations and am in favor of your worldview strongly influencing your investment portfolio. But even 25% Kelly betting your savings is a huge amount of work, you need to think you have a pretty good edge.
I am honestly unsure what the right norms are for ‘doing this for real’.
The final section is supposed to be for people who consider the argument and still don’t feel up to large-stakes bets.
But yeah, I’m still very unsure what the right norms would be, too.
The kind of bet I encounter when hanging out with rationalists is like:
does [mathematical object] have [property]?
did [x] happen before or after 1950?
is the number of smokers in America above or below [number]?
Etc.
IE, these are just factual questions which can either be looked up, or convincingly estimated from lookup-able info, or proven/disproven by thinking about it enough.
The disagreements are often substantial enough that, if taken at face value, they’d imply significant Kelly bets.
I think I have even more opportunities like this when talking to non-rationalists (IE, larger factual disagreements), but don’t personally try to turn these into bets (but some people take this approach).
Obviously even if you personally decide to use Kelly in such situations, other people might not be willing; but then the Kelly prescription is just to get as large a bet out of them as you can.
Thanks for giving details of the disagreements you are considering. The only community with norms even remotely conducive to large bets of this type is probably the poker community? There is a lot of big betting on ‘props’. I don’t know how often they bet on factual disagreements. But there have been a lot of big bets on random stuff like ‘can X person do Y pushups’ or ’does Scott think God exists. For a certain well known player doing pushups and a well known Scott both bets are real.