In this case, everybody seems pretty sure that the price is where it is because of the actions of a single person who's dumped in a very large amount of money relative to the float.
I think it's clear that he's the reason the price blew out so dramatically. But it's not clear why the market didn't 'correct' all the way back (or at least much closer) to 50/50. Thirty million dollars is a lot of money, but there are plenty of smart rich people who don't mind taking risks. So, once the identity and (apparent) motives of the Trump whale were revealed, why didn't a handful of them mop up the free EV?
That's not a rhetorical question; I'm interested in your answer and might be convinced by it. But right now I don't see sufficient reason to be confident that the market is still badly distorted, rather than having legitimately settled on ~60/40.
Can't this only be judged in retrospect, and over a decent sample size? If all the markets did was reflect the public expert consensus, they wouldn't be very useful; the possibility that they're doing significantly better is still open.
(I'm assuming that by "every other prediction source" you mean everything other than prediction/betting markets, because it sounds like Polymarket is no longer out of line with the other markets. Betfair is the one I keep an eye on, and that's at 60/40 too.)
Code by Charles Petzold. It gives a ground-up understanding of how computers actually work, starting slowly and without assuming any knowledge on the reader's part. It's basically a less textbooky alternative to The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken, which is great but probably a bit much for a young kid.
Meanwhile hedonic utilitarianism fully bites the bullet, and gets rid of every aspect of life that we value except for sensory pleasure.
I think the word 'sensory' should be removed; hedonic utilitarianism values all pleasures, and not all pleasures are sensory.
I'm not raising this out of pure pedantry, but because I think this phrasing (unintentionally) plays into a common misconception about ethical hedonism.
Can you elaborate on why that might be the case?
It's based on a scenario described by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons.
I don't have the book handy so I'm relying on a random pdf here, but I think this is an accurate quote from the original:
Suppose that I am driving at midnight through some desert. My car breaks down. You are a stranger, and the only other driver near. I manage to stop you, and I offer you a great reward if you rescue me. I cannot reward you now, but I promise to do so when we reach my home. Suppose next that I am transparent, unable to deceive others. I cannot lie convincingly. Either a blush, or my tone of voice, always gives me away. Suppose, finally, that I know myself to be never self-denying. If you drive me to my home, it would be worse for me if I gave you the promised reward. Since I know that I never do what will be worse for me, I know that I shall break my promise. Given my inability to lie convincingly, you know this too. You do not believe my promise, and therefore leave me stranded in the desert. This happens to me because I am never self-denying. It would have been better for me if I had been trustworthy, disposed to keep my promises even when doing so would be worse for me. You would then have rescued me.
(It may be objected that, even if I am never self-denying, I could decide to keep my promise, since making this decision would be better for me. If I decided to keep my promise, you would trust me, and would rescue me. This objection can be answered. I know that, after you have driven me home, it would be worse for me if I gave you the promised reward. If I know that I am never self-denying, I know that I shall not keep my promise. And, if I know this, I cannot decide to keep my promise. I cannot decide to do what I know that I shall not do. If I can decide to keep my promise, this must be because I believe that I shall not be never self-denying. We can add the assumption that I would not believe this unless it was true. It would then be true that it would be worse for me if I was, and would remain, never self-denying. It would be better for me if I was trustworthy.)
Got it, thanks! For what it's worth, doing it your way would probably have improved my experience, but impatience always won. (I didn't mind the coldness, but it was a bit annoying having to effortfully hack out chunks of hard ice cream rather than smoothly scooping it, and I imagine the texture would have been nicer after a little bit of thawing. On the other hand, softer ice cream is probably easier to unwittingly overeat, if only because you can serve up larger amounts more quickly.)
I think two-axis voting is a huge improvement over one-axis voting, but in this case it's hard to know whether people are mostly disagreeing with you on the necessary prep time, or the conclusions you drew from it.
If eating ice cream at home, you need to take it out of the freezer at least a few minutes before eating it
I'm curious whether this is true for most people. (I don't eat ice cream any more, but back when I occasionally did, I don't think I ever made a point of taking it out early and letting it sit. Is the point that it's initially too hard to scoop?)
Pretty sure it's "super awesome". That's one of the common slang meanings, and it fits with the paragraphs that follow.
I think this is a non sequitur. Everything you value can be described as just <dismissive reductionist description>, so the fact that emotions can too isn't a good argument against valuing them. And in this case, the dismissive reductionist description misses a crucial property: emotions are accompanied by (or identical with, depending on definitions) valenced qualia.