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MrMind comments on Open Thread, Feb 8 - Feb 15, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Elo 08 February 2016 04:47AM

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Comment author: Lumifer 09 February 2016 04:30:17PM 6 points [-]

A cautionary statement about betting on your beliefs from Tyler Cowen:

Bryan Caplan is pleased that he has won his bet with me, about whether unemployment will fall under five percent. ... The Benthamite side of me will pay Bryan gladly, as I don’t think I’ve ever had a ten dollar expenditure of mine produce such a boost in the utility of another person.

That said, I think this episode is a good example of what is wrong with betting on ideas. Betting tends to lock people into positions, gets them rooting for one outcome over another, it makes the denouement of the bet about the relative status of the people in question, and it produces a celebratory mindset in the victor. That lowers the quality of dialogue and also introspection, just as political campaigns lower the quality of various ideas — too much emphasis on the candidates and the competition.

Comment author: MrMind 10 February 2016 08:37:36AM *  0 points [-]

The natural question is if there's a better betting scheme, one that would retain the compulsion to tell the truth but smooth the tribalism naturally present in the brain.
For example, one could bet on both outcomes and pay the log of of the probability of the wrong outcome but receive the log-prob of the outcome that is realized. Has this kind of scheme been alread analyzed?

Comment author: Lumifer 10 February 2016 03:57:11PM 1 point [-]

Not sure changing the payout schemes would help. The underlying issue which Tyler Cowen thinks is a problem is that making a bet freezes your position in time, so to say, and gives you a stake (if not monetary then a status stake) to defend. That does not depend on the details of how the bet is arranged. And you can't go around it because getting some skin into the game is precisely the purpose of betting from Robin Hanson's point of view.

Comment author: MrMind 11 February 2016 08:19:15AM 0 points [-]

That does not depend on the details of how the bet is arranged.

I would contest that's the case insofar as you have to bet only on one side, if you gain / lose stakes from both positions, possibly the " rooting for one outcome over another, it makes the denouement of the bet about the relative status of the people in question" would be diminished?

Comment author: Lumifer 11 February 2016 05:43:06PM 0 points [-]

if you gain / lose stakes from both positions

I don't understand. At resolution time the event will have a single outcome. That single event outcome will lead to a single bet outcome. You can have complicated payout schemes, but after netting the outcome will be a single fixed number.

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