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Eugine_Nier comments on Prediction market sequence requested - Less Wrong
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Comments (44)
In case the link to my comment inadvertently implies otherwise:
I also agree it would be fantastic to have sequences which explain economics from first principles, especially the results of informed consensus, such as the value of markets, which are not yet non-expert consensus. Educating people, even on controversial topics, would be much less mind-killing than starting from the question of how we can fix all those mistaken people. Keep the Principle of Charity in mind.
When you compare market- and non-market-oriented economics you're talking about centuries-old disagreements that contributed to wars and the Cold War, mistakes that led to massive famines, philosophies that underpin whole political parties, and concerns that still have angry people marching and camping out in political protests in cities around the globe. If you think that the topic isn't political or that its connection to politics was a sudden development, you haven't been paying attention. Maybe no amount of careful reasoning from first principles will convince Charlie Stross (or anyone already committed to anti-market beliefs) that those "smugly self-satisfied hypercapitalists" might be on to something after all, but it's important to at least write while keeping in mind that your audience and theirs overlap.
The same is true of religion, but that doesn't stop us from talking about it.
Yeah. I'd guess the key difference between religion-on-LW and economics-on-LW is a more boring one: opinion homogeneity. As of a year ago we had something like consensus on atheism (92.3% atheist & agnostic vs. 6.3% deist/pantheist/theist) but a more even split on politics, a proxy for economic opinions (32.3% libertarian, 27.1% socialist & communist, 34.5% liberal, and 2.8% conservative).
Were 92% of us libertarian, but >25% theist, we might regard economics as a basically solved issue that rarely caused arguments, while repeatedly bickering about theism and wondering why theism was relatively mindkilling.
This is because of selection effects more than anything else.
I would advise you to be careful about deciding whether an issue is solved on the basis of whether the people on the other side of it happen to hang out in the same place you do.
I'm describing what could happen on a counterfactual LW, not what should happen.
I don't intend to decide whether an issue's solved on the basis of whether people I hang out with agree with me. But I recognize that I'm human (as are you), with the accompanying cognitive biases, and the reference class forecast isn't a sunny one.
You're absolutely right, but how would we avoid talking about it if we wanted to?
Religions are typically anti-reductionist in some way. You generally can't can't discuss how to take reality apart into pieces without conflicting with someone's religion.
Religions typically specifically deal with eschatology. There's little room for agreement about instrumental rationality or existential risk if your utility function is overwhelmed by "what happens to their souls for eternity after death" or if you consider the fate of humanity to be an actual fate decided by higher powers rather than our own actions.
(There might still be room to talk about religion more politely, though.)