dlthomas comments on Buy Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2008 09:42PM

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Comment author: thomblake 10 January 2012 06:19:19PM 1 point [-]

If you are getting the insurance by placing bets, then people will be buying the candidates they don't like. If lots of people don't like a candidate, that is not a sign that the candidate will do well.

But speculators should be able to get free money from those buying insurance, which will even it out some.

Comment author: dlthomas 10 January 2012 06:43:23PM 1 point [-]

To the extent that they can distinguish, yes, and this may very well leave the markets performing well enough (and perhaps still better than anything else). It does necessarily add noise, however, which I understood to be the original point - it makes things less accurate.