Short time limits don’t mean that agents can’t meaningfully assign probabilities to the truth of scientific theories—they just decrease the chances of the theories being proven wrong within the time limit a bit.
What is a time limit? Do actual bets on this sort of thing in Britain stipulate a time limit? As a Yank, I have no idea how betting ‘markets’ like this like this actually work.
Prediction markets/betting markets like Intrade or Betfair pretty universally set time limits on their bets. (Browse through Intrade sometime.) This does sometimes require changing the bet/prediction though—from ‘the Higgs boson will be found’ to ‘the Higgs boson will be found by 2020’. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you.
Short time limits don’t mean that agents can’t meaningfully assign probabilities to the truth of scientific theories—they just decrease the chances of the theories being proven wrong within the time limit a bit.
What is a time limit? Do actual bets on this sort of thing in Britain stipulate a time limit? As a Yank, I have no idea how betting ‘markets’ like this like this actually work.
Prediction markets/betting markets like Intrade or Betfair pretty universally set time limits on their bets. (Browse through Intrade sometime.) This does sometimes require changing the bet/prediction though—from ‘the Higgs boson will be found’ to ‘the Higgs boson will be found by 2020’. Not that this is a bad thing, mind you.