MattG comments on Open Thread, Dec. 28 - Jan. 3, 2016 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Clarity 27 December 2015 02:21PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (144)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 January 2016 06:04:19PM 1 point [-]

Besides, searching for talent has costs. You're much better off searching for talent at top tier schools than at no-name colleges hoping for a hidden gem.

That's the signalling issue - I'm trying to create a better signal so you don't have to make that tradeoff

What "types of questions" do you have in mind? And wouldn't liquidity issues be fixed just by popularity?

Question Example: "How many units will this product sell in Q1 2016?" (Where this product is something boring, like a brand of toilet paper)

This is a question that I don't ever see being popular with the general public. If you only have a few experts in a prediction market, you don't have enough liquidity to update your predictions. With prediction polls, that isn't a problem.

Comment author: Lumifer 04 January 2016 06:11:30PM 0 points [-]

That's the signalling issue

Why do you call that "signaling"? A top-tier school has a real, actual, territory-level advantage over a backwater college. The undergrads there are different.

If you only have a few experts in a prediction market, you don't have enough liquidity to update your predictions. With prediction polls, that isn't a problem.

I don't know about that not being a problem. Lack of information is lack of information. Pooling forecasts is not magical.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 January 2016 06:16:51PM 0 points [-]

Why do you call that "signaling"? A top-tier school has a real, actual, territory-level advantage over a backwater college. The undergrads there are different.

Because you're going by the signal (the college name), not the actual thing you're measuring for (forecasting ability).

I don't know about that not being a problem. Lack of information is lack of information. Pooling forecasts is not magical.

I meant a problem for frequent updates. Obviously, less participants will lead to less accurate forecasts - but by brier weighting and extremizing you can still get fairly decent results.