Why don’t you think that’s useful? It seems like at least some smart people thought about it carefully, which is a great start. Are you referencing some other thread? If so, please share?
I’m referring to this post from last month (and I assume that post is why habyrka is tagging mabramov).
Sure, maybe there’s some usefulness in that it got smart people thinking about the question. And it gave us a figure of 8%.
But I don’t really understand what a person is to do with that number. What utility follows from that? And why is it worth, as @mabramov emphasises, nine-figure EA funding?
My reaction to an 8% probability of a pandemic is currently “doing nothing,” so in some sense I agree with you. If it was >50%, I would probably read up more on hantavirus and think about preparations I could make now (maybe at that point, I would have picked up on ambient freaking-out even without the prediction market, but I do like having a precise number). Maybe I “should” in fact be preparing for hantavirus even at an 8% probability, but I only have so much willpower and time in the day.
Notably, I can’t immediately think of any important decisions in my life that I made differently due to prediction markets. But someone whose job depends on making quick decisions based on global events, e.g. some government role in biosecurity, would probably find calibrated estimates on this kind of thing quite useful.
Why don’t you think that’s useful? It seems like at least some smart people thought about it carefully, which is a great start. Are you referencing some other thread? If so, please share?
I’m referring to this post from last month (and I assume that post is why habyrka is tagging mabramov).
Sure, maybe there’s some usefulness in that it got smart people thinking about the question. And it gave us a figure of 8%.
But I don’t really understand what a person is to do with that number. What utility follows from that? And why is it worth, as @mabramov emphasises, nine-figure EA funding?
Thanks for clarifying.
The use is that I don’t have to figure it out for myself! This saved me at least an hour, probably more.
My reaction to an 8% probability of a pandemic is currently “doing nothing,” so in some sense I agree with you. If it was >50%, I would probably read up more on hantavirus and think about preparations I could make now (maybe at that point, I would have picked up on ambient freaking-out even without the prediction market, but I do like having a precise number). Maybe I “should” in fact be preparing for hantavirus even at an 8% probability, but I only have so much willpower and time in the day.
Notably, I can’t immediately think of any important decisions in my life that I made differently due to prediction markets. But someone whose job depends on making quick decisions based on global events, e.g. some government role in biosecurity, would probably find calibrated estimates on this kind of thing quite useful.