I’d actually go more specific: Will the stock market will rise TOMORROW (alternately: in 3 days / next Thursday / etc.)? There’s a lot more doubt on a smaller time scale (or, at least, that’s my impression looking at the little squiggly graphs?), whereas general trends of “it will go up/down over the next month/year” are an area that plenty of people seem willing to assert unwarranted confidence in. I’d expect (or at least hope) that very few people would put > 90% odds on it going up/down on a daily basis.
It also strikes me as a very CLEARLY uncertain answer—even someone who believes it will rise over the next month, year, and decade will probably concede that it’s variable for tomorrow. But, at the same time, it’s not a simple 50⁄50 - if you believe it will rise over the next year, you’re probably going to assume a higher chance of it going up tomorrow too.
(I haven’t touched the stock market in two decades, so I might be making a stupid mistake in reasoning here)
Alternatively, a specific stock could work, possibly over a longer time-frame, and I think it would be easier to have an interesting discussion (if that is one of the goals) about it. Someone who doesn’t follow the market extremely closely probably won’t have anything to say about why they think the market has a certain probability of going up/down next Tuesday, but people should generally be able to form a coherent (even if not particularly accurate) impression of a major company’s prospects from general knowledge.
In order to avoid mind-killing, it would be best to avoid AAPL or any company in a politically charged sector (energy, banking, defense, healthcare), but that leaves plenty of room. I would be most inclined to go with GOOG, because everyone is very familiar their products.
Asserting p(GOOG goes up over the next year) > 0.9 doesn’t seem that absurd to me. Asserting p(GOOG goes up tomorrow) > 0.9 does seem a bit absurd to me.
I’m not sure whether one is ACTUALLY more absurd than the other, but it intuitive FEELS to me that an economist OUGHT to be able to make long-term predictions about major, stable stocks with 90%+ confidence.
Even if this intuition is wrong (and I’d love to hear if it is!), I think many people will share this intuitive reaction. The goal is after all to select an example which is both factually correct AND intuitively appealing to people. So, an unintuitive but true statement would lack that “gut reaction” value.
One good feature of using Intrade predictions: rather than having to count on the audience’s agreement that there exist smart people on both sides, you can simply point to a well-traded contract hovering around 50% and note that even if many of the traders are irrational, there are enough smart rich people to buy it up/down if the answer really were obvious to the intelligent.
Many of these sorts of questions (both broad economic and political outcome type questions) have obvious political implications. Thus, they are likely to be very mind-killing.
Without doubt, so one would have to choose carefully.
That said, I would expect that, even on the most politically charged topics, people would be more comfortable with uncertainty regarding predictions than regarding other beliefs. For example, it’s probably easier to have a mentally nonlethal discussion about whether Obama will be re-elected than one about whether he should be.
That’s exactly the kind of questions the Good Judgement Project is asking, but only about events in other nations. I don’t think most Americans care much about who will be elected president of the Philippines or whether peace talks between x and y nations will resume before May 1st.
I’d think that, especially (but not only) in a presidential election year, this question would be corrupted by politics. If the current administration represents My Team, then it is certainly handling the economy well, and therefore, the stock market will rise and unemployment will fall.
If it smells like it might earn them money people will drop signaling in favor of actually instrumental behaviors FAR more readily. I think this is a winner.
How about “The stock market will rise over the next month/year/decade”, or “unemployment will go up”, or some similar economics question?
I’d actually go more specific: Will the stock market will rise TOMORROW (alternately: in 3 days / next Thursday / etc.)? There’s a lot more doubt on a smaller time scale (or, at least, that’s my impression looking at the little squiggly graphs?), whereas general trends of “it will go up/down over the next month/year” are an area that plenty of people seem willing to assert unwarranted confidence in. I’d expect (or at least hope) that very few people would put > 90% odds on it going up/down on a daily basis.
It also strikes me as a very CLEARLY uncertain answer—even someone who believes it will rise over the next month, year, and decade will probably concede that it’s variable for tomorrow. But, at the same time, it’s not a simple 50⁄50 - if you believe it will rise over the next year, you’re probably going to assume a higher chance of it going up tomorrow too.
(I haven’t touched the stock market in two decades, so I might be making a stupid mistake in reasoning here)
Alternatively, a specific stock could work, possibly over a longer time-frame, and I think it would be easier to have an interesting discussion (if that is one of the goals) about it. Someone who doesn’t follow the market extremely closely probably won’t have anything to say about why they think the market has a certain probability of going up/down next Tuesday, but people should generally be able to form a coherent (even if not particularly accurate) impression of a major company’s prospects from general knowledge.
In order to avoid mind-killing, it would be best to avoid AAPL or any company in a politically charged sector (energy, banking, defense, healthcare), but that leaves plenty of room. I would be most inclined to go with GOOG, because everyone is very familiar their products.
Asserting p(GOOG goes up over the next year) > 0.9 doesn’t seem that absurd to me. Asserting p(GOOG goes up tomorrow) > 0.9 does seem a bit absurd to me.
I’m not sure whether one is ACTUALLY more absurd than the other, but it intuitive FEELS to me that an economist OUGHT to be able to make long-term predictions about major, stable stocks with 90%+ confidence.
Even if this intuition is wrong (and I’d love to hear if it is!), I think many people will share this intuitive reaction. The goal is after all to select an example which is both factually correct AND intuitively appealing to people. So, an unintuitive but true statement would lack that “gut reaction” value.
Indeed, predictions as a general category:
“[Insert candidate] will win the next election for [insert office].”
“[Insert speculative technology] will be widely available by [insert year].”
“The next major earthquake in California will occur within the next 10 years.”
One good feature of using Intrade predictions: rather than having to count on the audience’s agreement that there exist smart people on both sides, you can simply point to a well-traded contract hovering around 50% and note that even if many of the traders are irrational, there are enough smart rich people to buy it up/down if the answer really were obvious to the intelligent.
Many of these sorts of questions (both broad economic and political outcome type questions) have obvious political implications. Thus, they are likely to be very mind-killing.
Without doubt, so one would have to choose carefully.
That said, I would expect that, even on the most politically charged topics, people would be more comfortable with uncertainty regarding predictions than regarding other beliefs. For example, it’s probably easier to have a mentally nonlethal discussion about whether Obama will be re-elected than one about whether he should be.
Easier—yes.
Actually easy to have that conversation without mind-killing—in many cases, probably not.
Agreed.
That’s exactly the kind of questions the Good Judgement Project is asking, but only about events in other nations. I don’t think most Americans care much about who will be elected president of the Philippines or whether peace talks between x and y nations will resume before May 1st.
I’d think that, especially (but not only) in a presidential election year, this question would be corrupted by politics. If the current administration represents My Team, then it is certainly handling the economy well, and therefore, the stock market will rise and unemployment will fall.
If it smells like it might earn them money people will drop signaling in favor of actually instrumental behaviors FAR more readily. I think this is a winner.