Or something like that1. As per this article on Control Markets I am looking to experiment with them. This requires an organization of some sort. This post is my first step to the creation of the organization.
My skills are in technology and not UI or people particularly. So I have mainly been doing what I know2, working around my day job.
So I decided it probably wasn't the best path, I was likely to get distracted and lose focus by myself. So other people would be useful.
There are three rough ways this can be attempted:
- Try and create a swanky high profile website to spark interest: Get a co-founder type person/team. Stay stealthy and make a nice web app for managing funge for a charity based on exploring control marketers using personal funds to start with, get on social media. Raise money from donations to maintain infrastructure, refine the web app and possibly fund academic research on control markets when people can try it out for themselves. This webapp can then be open sourced for other people to use.
- Get the theory started: Start a small organization with volunteer Actors and bootstrap using a google spread sheet to record funge transfers and bids, initially, and then use lessons learnt from that process to inform the design of a webapp. Leading to
- Get someone who regularly wants to talk about control markets, just to keep focus.
So what is possible with people from lesswrong? And which would people advise? Or is there a different way to attack this problem.
I've thought about kickstarter, but I don't think it is within the ToS. Also I would want a decent demo/visuals before trying this style of thing.
I suppose there is also.
- Create a webapp. Sell it as the next big thing for management consultants. But this is so far outside my comfort zone, I don't know I could do it.
1 I would want to use a kitty for a logo if we went with this name. This is probably why I shouldn't be allowed to make these sorts of decisions.
2 I've been noodling around with a django backend using tastypie to make a restful API, I was thinking about using AngularJS on the client (which I would need to learn). Still needs a lot of work. I also have a bad habit of wanting to make it highly available/scalable and other such things that aren't appropriate at this point.
Sorry if I am unclear. I tend to communicate with computers more than humans, where you just need a specification and the implications are derived. I should learn that people don't tend to work like that....
Perhaps this will help:
In prediction markets people predict facts about the world they have little influence over.
In control markets each Actor predict how well Stakeholders will evaluate them, if that Actor is given control of certain part of an organisation. This prediction is represented by a bid of funge (an internal currency). Other Actors don't make predictions about that, but upon their own performance. There is no concept of odds that normally go along with prediction markets.
So for example, let us say we have a mailing list resource. Gavin and Brett both want control of the resource. It normally gets a funge feeback of 314. Gavin thinks he has a great idea to reduce the frequency of mailings and can get a feedback score of 360 so bids 200. Brett has no such great ideas so bids his usual 150. So Gavin will bid higher than Brett, but he will only pay what Brett thinks it is worth (due to the auction system chosen), so should make a profit. If Gavin's idea does less well than he thought he will lose funge overall.
There are lots of potentially interesting things I am glossing over here, things like internal resources, e.g. IT systems. Let us say this is being bid over by Bob and Jim. Bob wins. Bob then gets paid funge by people like Gavin, rather than getting an external performance review. If Bob makes a tweak that gets another 50 funge from the mailing list resource for Gavin, then Gavin is incentivized to give say an extra 25 fung to Bob so that Bob can outbid the more incompetent Jim for control of the IT systems and Gavin can ask him to make a different tweak in future.
Most of this isn't original anyway but derived from work on learning classifiers and the like, so works in computers.
I am a bit loathe to go into too much detail in how it will actually work in practice, a lot depends upon the scale it is being used at. Gavin and Brett may be different teams rather than individuals, for example.
(Edited for clarity)
I had suspected you were a sock of someone who had gone to one of CFAR's rationality workshops, and had decided to surreptitiously play the "Be Specific"/"Pitch an Idea to..Paul Graham?" game on LW (perhaps for fun, or to see if anyone would catch on, or as a way to run a "real-world" exercise?)
Then I checked your username, and saw you had 1000+ karma, which probably negates the theory that you are a sock, but doesn't necessarily negate the theory that you are playing the Be Specific game with us....