cousin_it comments on Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute - Less Wrong

29 Post author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 March 2012 12:41AM

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Comment author: William_Quixote 07 September 2012 03:27:04AM 1 point [-]

Rationality is hard to measure. If LW doesn't make many people more successful in mundane pursuits but makes many people subscribe to the goal of FAI, that's reason to suspect that LW is not really teaching rationality, but rather something else.

if prediction markets were legal, we could much more easily measure if LW helped rationality. Just ask people to make n bets or predictions per month and see 1) it they did better than the population average and 2) if they improved over time.

In fact, trying to get intrade legal in the US might be a very worthwhile project for just this reason ( beyond all the general social reasons to like prediction markets)

Comment author: cousin_it 07 September 2012 08:22:23AM 1 point [-]

Very nice idea, thanks! After some googling I found someone already made this suggestion in 2009.

Comment author: William_Quixote 07 September 2012 05:40:49PM *  0 points [-]

If other people have suggested this before, there may be enouph background support to make it worth following up on this idea.

When I get home from work, I will post in the discussion forum to see if people would be interested in working to legalize prediction markets ( like intrade) it the US.

[EDITED: shortly after making this post, I saw Gwern’s post above suggesting that an alternative like prediction book would be just as good. As a result I did not make a post about legalizing prediction markets and instead tried prediction book for a month and a half. After this trial, I still think that making a push to legalize predictions markets would be worthwhile]