imaxwell comments on OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light - Less Wrong

10 Post author: XiXiDu 18 November 2011 09:58AM

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Comment author: imaxwell 18 November 2011 04:58:25PM 3 points [-]

It sounded like a bad idea at first, but if the bet is 1 upvote / 1 downvote vs. 89 upvotes/89 downvotes, it could actually be a good use of the karma system. The only way to get a lot of karma would be to consistently win these bets, which is probably as good an indicator for "person worth paying attention to" as making good posts.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 18 November 2011 05:11:58PM 2 points [-]

I think we should just have a separate prediction market if for some reason we'd rather not use predictionbook.

Comment author: Craig_Heldreth 18 November 2011 07:52:36PM 3 points [-]

The last time I looked at prediction book the allowed values were integers 0 - 100 which makes it impossible to really use it for this. Here the meaningful values are is it .00001 or is it .0000000001?

I liked this fellow's take.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 18 November 2011 10:31:23PM 0 points [-]

Miley Cyrus is claiming > 1%, so your objection to PB does not apply. MC might like to distinguish between 1.1% and 1.0%, but this is minor.

If you're recording claims, not betting at odds, then rounding to zero is not a big deal. No one is going to make a million predictions at 1 in a million odds. One can enter it as 0 on PB and add a comment of precise probability. It is plausible that people want to make thousands of predictions at 1 in 1000, but this is an unimportant complaint until lots of people are making thousands of predictions at percent granularity.

An advantage of PB over bilateral bets is that it encourages people to state their true probabilities and avoid the zero-sum game of setting odds. A well-populated market does this, too.