Once, Robin Hanson made a post on his blog about what he’d do with $1M: try to get prediction markets used in companies. The theory of impact is that they are more likely to actually use the markets, and that it is more impactful than political discourse or prop bets. He suggested making a market of the form “If X CEO steps down and is replaced by Y, the stock price will go up by Z”, then trying to get a company to take its advice and end up proving it right, and then to try to make it something shareholders demand of any company.
Current markets have landed in the niche of generalized-sports-gambling. But this doesn’t mean other niches are impossible. I agree that it means funding should be directed to breaking into a new niche.
Prediction markets, or at least judgemental forecasting, has been used in companies before though? At least Google had a pretty substantive internal forecasting platform at some point.
And they tended to be quite successful, yet not get used or get shutdown, which Hanson attributes to cognitive biases and upsetting social hierarchies. But it’s possible for such things to get adopted—e.g. hospitals do hand washing now, and even checklists have spread. Thus the idea is to get some more high profile showcase of its usefulness, and for decisions that are worth much more.
Once, Robin Hanson made a post on his blog about what he’d do with $1M: try to get prediction markets used in companies. The theory of impact is that they are more likely to actually use the markets, and that it is more impactful than political discourse or prop bets. He suggested making a market of the form “If X CEO steps down and is replaced by Y, the stock price will go up by Z”, then trying to get a company to take its advice and end up proving it right, and then to try to make it something shareholders demand of any company.
Current markets have landed in the niche of generalized-sports-gambling. But this doesn’t mean other niches are impossible. I agree that it means funding should be directed to breaking into a new niche.
Prediction markets, or at least judgemental forecasting, has been used in companies before though? At least Google had a pretty substantive internal forecasting platform at some point.
And they tended to be quite successful, yet not get used or get shutdown, which Hanson attributes to cognitive biases and upsetting social hierarchies. But it’s possible for such things to get adopted—e.g. hospitals do hand washing now, and even checklists have spread. Thus the idea is to get some more high profile showcase of its usefulness, and for decisions that are worth much more.