I’m not convinced this can’t be manipulated or at least won’t be very misleading, though.
You could imagine one party was betting at odds they consider very favourable to them, and the other party betting at odds they consider only slightly favourable, based on their respective beliefs. Then, even if they don’t change their credences, one party has more room to move their odds towards their own true credences, and so drag the average towards it, and take the intermediate payments,
If you can’t find better intermediate outcomes, it might be better to use a betting market and allow people to cash out early as odds change. Or, bet on how the odds on a market or Metaculus or whatever will change in a few years (with high enough volume so that it’s hard to manipulate).
You could imagine one party was betting at odds they consider very favourable to them, and the other party betting at odds they consider only slightly favourable, based on their respective beliefs. Then, even if they don’t change their credences, one party has more room to move their odds towards their own true credences, and so drag the average towards it, and take the intermediate payments,
Sorry, I’m confused. Isn’t the ‘problem’ that the bettor who takes a relatively more favourable odds has higher expected returns a problem with betting in general?
Hmm, ya, fair. Still, who pays who in the intermediate steps isn’t necessarily very informative about where the average credence is or where it’s going.
It is unless it’s clear that a side that made a mistake in entering a lopsided bet. I guess the rule-of-thumb is to follow big bets (which tends to be less clearly lopsided) or bets made by two people whose judgment you trust.
I don’t see how this follows. How would you know ahead of time that a bet is too lopsided in an adversarial setting with one side or both sides withholding private information, their true credences? And how lopsided is enough? Aren’t almost all bets somewhat lopsided?
Since one party will almost surely have more room between the implied credences of the first bet and their own credences, we should expect directional influence in the second bet or (set of bets) whether or not anyone’s beliefs changed. And if their credences aren’t actually changing, we would still expect payments from one side to the other.
Interesting. It reminds me of Glen Weyl’s property tax idea.
I’m not convinced this can’t be manipulated or at least won’t be very misleading, though.
You could imagine one party was betting at odds they consider very favourable to them, and the other party betting at odds they consider only slightly favourable, based on their respective beliefs. Then, even if they don’t change their credences, one party has more room to move their odds towards their own true credences, and so drag the average towards it, and take the intermediate payments,
If you can’t find better intermediate outcomes, it might be better to use a betting market and allow people to cash out early as odds change. Or, bet on how the odds on a market or Metaculus or whatever will change in a few years (with high enough volume so that it’s hard to manipulate).
Sorry, I’m confused. Isn’t the ‘problem’ that the bettor who takes a relatively more favourable odds has higher expected returns a problem with betting in general?
Hmm, ya, fair. Still, who pays who in the intermediate steps isn’t necessarily very informative about where the average credence is or where it’s going.
It is unless it’s clear that a side that made a mistake in entering a lopsided bet. I guess the rule-of-thumb is to follow big bets (which tends to be less clearly lopsided) or bets made by two people whose judgment you trust.
I don’t see how this follows. How would you know ahead of time that a bet is too lopsided in an adversarial setting with one side or both sides withholding private information, their true credences? And how lopsided is enough? Aren’t almost all bets somewhat lopsided?
Since one party will almost surely have more room between the implied credences of the first bet and their own credences, we should expect directional influence in the second bet or (set of bets) whether or not anyone’s beliefs changed. And if their credences aren’t actually changing, we would still expect payments from one side to the other.