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Metus comments on Contrarian LW views and their economic implications - Less Wrong Discussion

16 Post author: Larks 08 October 2014 11:48PM

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Comment author: Metus 09 October 2014 12:19:55AM *  12 points [-]

And I can think of examples for groups like Socialists, Neoreactionaries, etc. - cases where their positive beliefs have strong implications for economic predictions.

Usually the beliefs are impossible to put into practice because of legal constraints like rules against discrimination.

Can you think of any unusual LW-type beliefs that have strong economic implications (say over the next 1-3 years)?

Off the top of my head:

  • CFAR (and by extention LW) style rationality is practically useful. Watch out for companies trained by CFAR and invest in them
  • Effective Altruism is actually effective and raises the wellbeing of targeted people. Since wellbeing is correlated with economic activity, consider investing in regions where EA organisation are active.
Comment author: Larks 09 October 2014 02:34:12AM 8 points [-]

Usually the beliefs are impossible to put into practice because of legal constraints like rules against discrimination.

That's true of some of the beliefs yes, but not of all. For example, many socialists believe (or at least used to believe) that large organizations (states) could efficiently allocate resources across a wide range of industries, without making much use of market prices. If you believed that, you might like to invest in conglomerates (which many investors dislike because they think conglomerates are bad at capital allocation across industries) and vertically integrated firms (which make less use of market prices of intermediate goods than non-vertically integrated firms).

Thanks for the direct suggestion! The former would have direct relevance for venture capitalists.

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