Reading the comments, I’m not sure we’re addressing the question you’re asking.
Prediction market proponents have put a lot of thought into how to turn mind-killing open-ended questions (far-mode) into resolvable bets (near-mode), often by use of conditional wagers (chance of Y, wager valid only if X happens). This is a good mechanism for applying percentages to such questions.
However, it completely bypasses the point I think you’re trying to make, which is that all useful beliefs are of this form. Basically, you want a simple-example summary of Making Beliefs Pay Rent.
I’m not sure there exists such a single example—humans are very good at separating the signaling and identity “beliefs” from testable, resolvable “predictions”, and each of us has different topics with different ease of analysis. This means that it takes quite a bit of thought, study, and reflection to see how the word means different things, which shouldn’t be mixed.
I think the direction to go in these discussions isn’t so much to find a topc that’s often expressed as an identity-signal “belief” and push someone toward a prediction-probability-”belief”. Instead, you can ask “what choices are you making based on this belief, and what’s the cost if you’re wrong”? When you find topics on which the individual can admit that there is a concrete wager being made, then you can guide them to understanding how belief works.
And of course, if they can’t tie their belief to any decisions, or understand that the decisions would be different if the belief were incorrect, then you can point out that this kind of belief doesn’t help the holder of the belief.
Reading the comments, I’m not sure we’re addressing the question you’re asking.
Prediction market proponents have put a lot of thought into how to turn mind-killing open-ended questions (far-mode) into resolvable bets (near-mode), often by use of conditional wagers (chance of Y, wager valid only if X happens). This is a good mechanism for applying percentages to such questions.
However, it completely bypasses the point I think you’re trying to make, which is that all useful beliefs are of this form. Basically, you want a simple-example summary of Making Beliefs Pay Rent.
I’m not sure there exists such a single example—humans are very good at separating the signaling and identity “beliefs” from testable, resolvable “predictions”, and each of us has different topics with different ease of analysis. This means that it takes quite a bit of thought, study, and reflection to see how the word means different things, which shouldn’t be mixed.
I think the direction to go in these discussions isn’t so much to find a topc that’s often expressed as an identity-signal “belief” and push someone toward a prediction-probability-”belief”. Instead, you can ask “what choices are you making based on this belief, and what’s the cost if you’re wrong”? When you find topics on which the individual can admit that there is a concrete wager being made, then you can guide them to understanding how belief works.
And of course, if they can’t tie their belief to any decisions, or understand that the decisions would be different if the belief were incorrect, then you can point out that this kind of belief doesn’t help the holder of the belief.