Perception of the Concrete vs Statistical: Corruption
People react to statistics very differently than they react to concrete examples, even though statistical generalities mean that there exist many concrete examples. Of course there are systematic differences between generalities and individual examples. For example, a concrete example might not be representative. Indeed, it probably is not representative for the very reason that it is at hand. But there are many other ways that people react differently that seem to me worthy of study.
I will compare two stories of political corruption, one statistical and one concrete that seem to me to have had rather different responses. It wouldn’t terribly surprise me if people had failed to believe one or the other. (Which would you expect?) But both of these stories were largely accepted as explained by corruption. Yet within the domain of corruption, the explanations of exactly how it was done were very different, practically disjoint.
The statistical evidence is the study by Ziobrowski, Cheng, Boyd, and Ziobrowski of the stock portfolios of US Senators. They found that stocks held by Senators outperformed the market, with both purchase and sale significant events. People generally accept this as corruption. People usually attribute the result to “insider trading,” and debate several specific theories: that Senators purchase based on their knowledge of upcoming legislation, or corporate information that leaks out in hearings; more corruptly, that stock ownership influences legislation, or that corporate insiders bribe Senators with corporate information.
The concrete example is that Hillary Clinton made a lot of money on cattle futures. This, too, is generally accepted as corruption. But I have never heard anyone put forward any of the four theories above to explain what happened there. Nor have I seen the specific explanation of the cattle futures trades put forward as an explanation of the Senate data. The popular explanation is that Clinton never made any bets based on any information, but that the trades were falsified after the fact to provide a paper trail to launder a bribe.
Of course, it is possible to reconcile the reactions. Perhaps people have a much higher prior on the first four hypotheses than on the fifth, so that they only consider it when the first four have been ruled out; though they don't discuss the process of ruling them out. Or, perhaps, it reflects important differences between stocks and commodity futures. But I think it is more likely that the reactions are inconsistent, one of them worse than the other. I think it likely that the different reactions reflect the concrete versus statistical natures of the two claims and other aspects of the context. Insider information is a standard answer provided by the context of an economics journal. More generally, statistical summaries sound definitive, so they demand to be explained, not to be rejected. While people are more willing to call bullshit on a story, even though a statistic is just a bunch of stories. Even in the context of already accusing large numbers of people of corruption. But I don’t know what drives the difference. I propose it as a question, not an answer.
Would you notice if science died?
Would you notice if science died?
Science is a big deal. It would be worth knowing if it stalled, regressed, or died out, whether the body of knowledge or the techniques for generating more knowledge. You could practice by reviewing history and looking for times and places where it stumbled. In this exercise you have the advantage of hindsight, but the disadvantage of much less direct access to the raw data of the scientific practice of the time. But regardless of how it compares to the real task, this is practice. This is an opportunity to test theories and methods before committing to them. There is a limited amount of history to practice on, but it’s a lot more than the real event, the present.
Many say that they would notice if science died because engineering would grind to a halt or even regress. What does this heuristic say when applied to history? Does it match other criteria?
Many say that the Greeks were good at science and the Romans at engineering (perhaps also the Han vs the Song). This is not really compatible with the heuristic above. What options do we have to draw a coherent conclusion? Either science did not die, or engineering did not advance, or science is not so necessary for engineering; Either we are bad at judging science from history, or we are bad at judging engineering from history, or engineering is not a good heuristic for judging science. None of these are comforting for our ability to judge the future. The third is simply the rejection of the popular heuristic. The first two are the rejection of the exercise of history. But if we cannot judge history, we have no opportunity to practice. Worse, if we are unable to judge history, the present may be no easier.
One recourse is to posit that the past is difficult because of sparse information and that the future we experience ourselves will be easy to judge. But many people lived through the past; what did they think at the time? In particular, how did the Romans think they compared to the Greeks? Did they think that there was progress or regress? Did they agree with modern hindsight? They thought that the Greeks were good at science. Pop science books by Pliny and Seneca are really accounts of Greek knowledge. Similarly, Varro’s practical book of agriculture is based on dozens of Greek sources. And the Romans were proud of their engineering. Frotinus urged his readers to compared the Roman aqueducts to the idle pyramids and wonders of the Greeks. Maybe he should be discounted for his professional interest. But Pliny describes the Roman aqueducts as the most remarkable achievement in the world in the midst of account of Greek knowledge. Indeed, the modern conventional wisdom is probably simply copied from the Romans. Did the Romans endorse the third claim, that science was a prerequisite to engineering? I do not know. Perhaps the they held that it was necessary, but could be left to Greek slaves.
I think that this example should make people nervous about the heuristic about science and engineering. But people who don’t hold any such heuristic should be even more nervous.
I think I know what the answer is. I think that engineering did regress, but the Romans did not notice. They were too impressed by size, so they made bigger aqueducts, without otherwise improving on Greek techniques; and they failed to copy much other Greek technology. Perhaps the heuristic is fine, but it just passes the buck: how much can you trust your judgement of the state of engineering? On the other hand, I think that science regressed much more than engineering, so I do not think them as coupled as the heuristic suggests.
Would you notice if science died? How would you notice? Have you tried that method against history?
Some historical test cases: the transition from Greece to Rome; Han vs Tang vs Song; the Renaissance.
Actually existing prediction markets?
What public prediction markets exist in the world today? Have you used one recently?
What attributes do they have that should make us trust them or not, such as liquidity and transaction costs? Do they distort the tails? Which are usable by Americans?
This post is just a request for information. I don’t have much to say.
Intrade used to be the dominant market, but it is gone, opening up this question. The most popular question on prediction markets has been the US Presidential election. If a prediction market wants to get off the ground, it should start with this question. Since the campaign is gearing up, markets that hope to fill the vacuum should exist right now, hence this post.
Many sports bookies give odds on the election. Bookmakers are not technically prediction markets, but they are awfully close and I think the difference is not so important, though maybe they are less likely to provide historical data. They may well be the most liquid and accurate sources of odds. But the fact that they concentrate on sports is important. It means that they are less likely to expand into other forms of prediction and less likely to be available to Americans. I suspect that there are too many covering the election for an exhaustive list to be interesting, but feel free point to point out interesting ones, such as the most liquid, most accessible to Americans, or with the most extensive coverage of non-sports events.
Betting is illegal in America. This is rarely enforced directly against individuals, but often creates difficulty depositing money or using the sites. I don’t think that they usually run into problems if they avoid sports and finance. In particular, Intrade was spun off of a sports bookie specifically to reach Americans.
Here are a few comments on Wikipedia’s list. It seems to be using a strict market criterion, so it includes two sports sites just because they are structured as markets. Worse, it might exclude bookies that I would like to know about. Not counting cryptocurrency markets (which I would like to hear about), it appears that there are no serious money prediction markets. The closest is New Zealand-based iPredict, which is limited to a total deposit of US$6000, and it takes a 18 months to build up to that. The venerable Iowa Electronic Markets (restricted to federal elections) and the young NZ PredictIt have even smaller limits, in return for explicit legality in America. It includes two play money markets: Microsoft and Hypermind. Finally, it mentions the defunct play-money Scicast, most notable for its different topic: science and technology. Hypermind and Scicast came out of the IARPA contest. Not on the list, I should mention PredictionBook, which is close to being a play-money prediction market, but tuned in different directions, both in terms of the feedback it provides to participants and the way it encourages a proliferation of questions.
Update: In the previous paragraph, I discarded two sports bookies from Wikipedia's list. I did so because I thought that they had very little non-sports offerings, but in both cases I did a poor job of navigating them and underestimated the numbers. Smarkets still seems too small to be interesting, but Betfair does have solid political offerings and is rightfully at the top of the list.
As of March 2016 my recommendations are:
- Betfair (see also) is the best real market.
- PredictIt is open to Americans
- Metaculus is a play money market
- Good Judgment Project (Tetlock) is another
- PredictionBook is useful for complementary purposes, such as recording one's predictions, especially ones that do not correspond to questions on other sites. It is not so useful for integrating other people's predictions or scoring accuracy.
The Cold War divided Science
What can we learn about science from the divide during the Cold War?
I have one example in mind: America held that coal and oil were fossil fuels, the stored energy of the sun, while the Soviets held that they were the result of geologic forces applied to primordial methane.
At least one side is thoroughly wrong. This isn't a politically charged topic like sociology, or even biology, but a physical science where people are supposed to agree on the answers. This isn't a matter of research priorities, where one side doesn't care enough to figure things out, but a topic that both sides saw to be of great importance, and where they both claimed to apply their theories. On the other hand, Lysenkoism seems to have resulted from the practical importance of crop breeding.
First of all, this example supports the claim that there really was a divide, that science was disconnected into two poorly communicating camps. It suggests that when the two sides reached the same results on other topics, they did so independently. Even if we cannot learn from this example, it suggests that we may be able to learn from other consequences of dividing the scientific community.
My understanding is that although some Russian language research papers were available in America, they were completely ignored and the scientists failed to even acknowledge that there was a community with divergent opinions. I don't know about the other direction.
Some questions:
- Are there other topics, ideally in physical science, on which such a substantial disagreement persisted for decades? not necessarily between these two parties?
- Did the Soviet scientists know that their American counterpoints disagreed?
- Did Warsaw Pact (eg, Polish) scientists generally agree with the Soviets about the origin of coal and oil? Were they aware of the American position? Did other Western countries agree with America? How about other countries, such as China and Japan?
- What are the current Russian beliefs about coal and oil? I tried running Russian Wikipedia through google translate and it seemed to support the biogenic theory. (right?) Has there been a reversal among Russian scientists? When? Or does Wikipedia represent foreign opinion? If a divide remains, does it follow the Iron Curtain, or some new line?
- Have I missed some detail that would make me not classify this as an honest disagreement between two scientific establishments?
- Finally, the original question: what can we learn about the institution of science?
Games People Play
Game theory is great if you know what game you're playing. All this talk of Diplomacy reminds me of this memory of Adam Cadre:
I remember that in my ninth grade history class, the teacher had us play a game that was supposed to demonstrate how shifting alliances work. He divided the class into seven groups — dubbed Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Russia — and, every few minutes, declared a "battle" between two of the countries. Then there was a negotiation period, during which we all were supposed to walk around the room making deals. Whichever warring country collected the most allies would win the battle and a certain number of points to divvy up with its allies. The idea, I think, was that countries in a battle would try to win over the wavering countries by promising them extra points to jump aboard.
That's not how it worked in practice. Three or four guys — the same ones who had gotten themselves elected to ASB, the student government — decided among themselves during the first negotiation period what the outcome would be, and told people whom to vote for. And the others just shrugged and did as they were told. The ASB guys had decided that Germany would win, followed by France, Britain, Belgium, Austria, Italy and Russia. The first battle was France vs. Russia. Germany and Britain both signed up on the French side. Austria and Italy, realizing that if they just went along with the ASB plan they'd come in 5th and 6th, joined up with Russia. That left it up to Belgium. I was on team Belgium. I voted to give our vote to the Russian side, because that way at least we weren't doomed to come in 4th. And no one else on my team went along. They meekly gave their points to the French side. (As I recall, Josh Lorton was particularly adamant about this. I guess he thought it would make the ASB guys like him.) After that, there was no contest. Britain vs. Austria? 6-1, Britain. Germany vs. Belgium? 6-1, Germany. (And we could have beaten them if we'd just formed a bloc with the other three losers!) The teacher noticed that Germany and France were always on the same side and declared Germany vs. France. Outcome: 6-1, Germany.
The ASB guys were able to just impose their will on a class of 40 students. No carrots, no sticks, just "here's what will happen" and everyone else nodding. I have no idea how that works. I do recall that because they were in student government, for fourth period they had to take a class called Leadership. From what I could tell they just spent the class playing volleyball out in the quad. But I guess they were learning something!
What happened? Why did Italy and Russia fall into line and abandon Austria in the second battle?
This utterly failed to demonstrate the "shifting alliances" that Adam thought the teacher wanted. Does this happen every year?
Yes, the students were coerced into "playing" this game, but elsewhere he describes the same thing happen in games that people choose to play. Moreover, he tells the first story to illustrate his perception of politics.
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