You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

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

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.