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komponisto comments on Nonmindkilling open questions - Less Wrong
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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."
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.
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.