If you are also the worst at politics
This has been said many times but it must be said many more. Please excuse the fact that this post breaks its own advice.
I am the worst at politics. I always make people dig their heels in on the opposite stance. I could give many examples. Even here on LW where people are about as like-minded to me as I can find online.
Most of the meager success I’ve had getting people to do things has been among my friends and family. But I still can’t convince people to get over their grudges with each other.
The tiny remaining proportion of my ‘political success’ was due to me accidentally getting someone else to champion my cause instead of me.
You know it’s occurred to me many times that when I say “hey everyone, X should happen” it tends to make the opposite more likely. But I usually can’t help myself. It’s like when you’ve made 100 bad bets in a row on the stock market but somehow it’s impossible to simply start making the opposite trades.
When Robin Hanson says anything, it seems a big opposition magically appears. Full of people who never heard the idea before. Who might’ve been on the in-favor side had somebody else said it. He has been posting incredibly unique and insightful (IMO) political ideas for 20 years. What has come of it? Besides perhaps some fun prediction websites.
Anyway, if you are like me politics-wise, and if (unlike me) you genuinely have fantastic ideas for ways to make AI go super well (if certain people can be convinced to do certain things), then maybe you should take a long breath before you start posting your ideas around. Maybe don’t post your ideas at all. Maybe internet credit for starting an idea is worth actually nothing. Maybe try to make friends with somebody who knows how to say things so that people will listen. Maybe you’re hurting your team with all these shots from half-court. Take a moment and really consider this deeply.
And thank you to the silent vast majority of readers who (unlike me) are already avoiding indiscriminately posting political thinkpieces every 5 minutes.
fwiw I actually think the state of prediction markets has, at this point, meaningfully improved my decisionmaking. (i.e. during the Ukraine nuclear scare, having explicit prediction markets tracking likelihood of nuclear strike made it a lot easier to set triggers for evacuation plans. And seeing the prediction markets on various AI related capabilities has been helpful for orienting to the world)
This is new info to me, thanks
I’m not sure about the premise that people are opposed to Hanson’s ideas because he said them. On the contrary, I’ve seen several people (now including you) mention that they’re fans of his ideas, and never seen anyone say that they dislike them.
My model is more that some ideas are more viral than others, some ideas have loud and enthusiastic champions, and some ideas are economically valuable. I don’t see most of Hanson’s ideas as particularly viral, don’t think he’s worked super hard to champion them, and they’re a mixed bag economically (eg prediction markets are valuable but grabby aliens aren’t).
I also believe that if someone charismatic adopts an idea then they can cause it to explode in popularity regardless of who originated it. This has happened to some degree with prediction markets. I certainly don’t think they’re held back because of the association with Hanson.
Hmm I was mainly thinking of the”redistribute sex” phrasing fiasco, slatestarcodex being contra hanson on healthcare, tyler cowen being contra hanson on the self evaluated property tax, and the brutal quote tweets. But maybe these are in fact symptoms of success and I have it partially backwards… Hmm
That case (I didn’t follow the others) seemed like it was mostly about confusion over what Hanson’s position even is. Maybe because Hanson and/or people misunderstanding him tried to compress it into short tweets.
Tyler regularly disagrees with his colleagues. If he were one of them he might think to himself “Alex is the best truth-tracker, so I should check what he thinks on the issue”, but Tyler doesn’t regard truth as something to optimize for.
Who is the new charismatic leader of prediction markets?
Not a direct answer to your question but:
One article I (easily) found on prediction markets mentions Bryan Caplan but has no mention of Hanson
There are plenty of startups promoting prediction markets: Manifold, Kalshi, Polymarket, PredictIt, etc
There was a recent article Why prediction markets aren’t popular, which gives plenty of good reasons but doesn’t mention any Hanson headwind
Scott Alexander does regular “Mantic Monday” posts on prediction markets