This is a special post for quick takes by Pablo. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
Silver’s model and most other lines of evidence indicate that the US presidential race is as close to a tossup as it gets. But, as of this writing, you can buy Harris contracts on Polymarket for 38 cents. The explanation for this apparent mispricing seems to be that, over the past few days, a single pro-Trump trader has poured tens of millions of dollars into the platform. “Domer”, the author of the linked tweet and Polymarket’s most successful trader to date, claims that this effect has depressed Harris’s contract price by around five cents, though I am unable to independently confirm this claim.
Strong upvote because I literally wanted to write a quick take saying the same thing and then forgot (and since then the price has moved down even more).
I don't think the inefficiency is as large as in 2020, but like, I still think the overall theme is the same -- the theme being that the vibes are on the R side. The polling errors in 2016 and 2020 just seemed to have traumatized everyone. So basically if you don't think the vibes are tracking something real -- or in other words, if you think the polling error in 2024 remains unpredictable / the underlying distribution is unbiased -- then the market is mispriced and there's a genuine exploit.
if you think the polling error in 2024 remains unpredictable / the underlying distribution is unbiased
Is there a good reason to think that if polls have recently under-reported Republican votes?
I think the burden of proof goes the other way? Like, the default wisdom for polling is that each polling error[1] is another sample from a distribution centered around 0. It's not very surprising that it output a R bias twice in a row (even if we ignore the midterms and assume it was properly twice in a row). It's only two samples! That happens all the time.
If you want a positive argument: pollsters will have attempted to correct mistakes, and if they knew that there would be an R/D bias this time, they'd adjust in the opposite way, hence the error must be unpredictable.
That is, for a smart polling average; individual polls have predictable bias. ↩︎
pollsters will have attempted to correct mistakes, and if they knew that there would be an R/D bias this time, they'd adjust in the opposite way, hence the error must be unpredictable.
Exactly. Silver has discussed this dynamic in some of his old FiveThirtyEight articles. The key is to appreciate that polling error is not an effect one can naively predict by looking at past data, because it is mediated by polling agencies’ attempts to correct it.
One of the biggest online threats to rational discourse, “RationalWiki”, just reached a settlement with all but one of the eight plaintiffs suing them, and deleted the corresponding biographical entries. They are also considering pre-emptively removing all their other hit pieces—countless articles that have ruined careers, stifled research, and brought entire fields of inquiry into undeserved disrepute.
I think I am, all things considered, sad about this. I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech, and I declined being involved with them when some of the plaintiffs offered me to be involved on behalf of LW and Lightcone.
I do think RationalWiki is one of the better applications of the relevant law, but the law is too abuse-prone, and normalizing its use would cause much more harm than RationalWiki ever caused, that I don't think this was the right choice by the plaintiffs. I think it would have been a big personal sacrifice for the common good to not sue despite the high likelihood of success and the high ongoing personal harm incurred from RationalWiki actions, and so I have sympathy for the people who did sue, but I do think it's pretty bad and they overall likely still made the world worse.
I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech
Especially when the punishment is not only that you may lose the suit, but also the money you have to spend on your legal defense even when you win.
That said, RationalWiki is primarily a bullying (excuse me, snarky) website that most people only consider okay because they believe that the targets deserve it. (And they often do -- but the problem is, once you have a shiny powerful gun, it is too tempting to expand the scope.) When your mission is to attack people publicly, you better stick to the facts, and don't dismiss criticism with "but it is funnier this way", or the lawyers may have the last laugh.
normalizing [libel suits] would cause much more harm than RationalWiki ever caused . . . . I do think it's pretty bad and [this action] overall likely still made the world worse.
Is that your true rejection? (I'm surprised if you think the normalizing-libel-suits effect is nontrivial.)
Yeah, what would be my alternative true rejection? I don't think the normalization effect is weak, indeed I expect even just within my social circle for this whole situation to come up regularly as justification for threatening people with libel suits.
I see your point re: free speech, and I don't endorse any appeals to "I should abandon my principles because the other side has already done so" as constantly happens in politics. And I can absolutely understand why you wouldn't be interested in joining such a lawsuit, both due to free speech concerns and because the FTX litigation can't have been remotely pleasant.
That said, when people do stuff like dismissing x-risk because their top Google search result pointed them at RationalWiki, what exactly was the proper non-free-speech-limiting solution to this problem?
The FTX lawsuit was kind of reasonable IMO! Overall made me increase my trust in the court system for settling things related to bankruptcy.
I think there are many other institutions that are better suited to helping people navigate this kind of stuff. Google can deprioritize them in their search rankings. LLMs can provide reasonable fact-checks. A community-note like system could apply to Google Search results, or people over time switch towards platforms that provide them with community-note like systems.
Indeed, my sense is RationalWiki's influence had already been decreasing very heavily, and the period in which people did not have antibodies against them was pretty short. And I think that period would have been even shorter if people had written up what they were doing earlier (my sense is a Tracing Woodgrain's post on some of the core people involved was pretty helpful here).
I think I am, all things considered, sad about this. I think libel suits are really bad tools for limiting speech, and I declined being involved with them when some of the plaintiffs offered me to be involved on behalf of LW and Lightcone.
Appreciate you saying this. It raises my esteem for LW/Lightcone to hear that this is the route that you all choose. Perhaps that doesn't mean much since I largely agree with the view you express about defamation suits, but even for those that disagree, I think there is something to admire here in terms of sticking to principles even when it's people you strongly disagree with how are benefiting from those principles in a particular case.
I think calling them "one of the biggest online threats to rational discourse" seems like a wild overstatement. That said, I was surprised to learn that RatWiki had a much higher reach compared to LW until very recently (when going by google trends).
2I believe he means rationality-associsted discourse and it's not like there are so many contenders.
There's indeed been no one with that level of reach that has spread this much misinformation and started this many negative rumors in the space as David Gerard and RW. Whoever the second closest contender is, is likely not even close.
You can trace back to him A LOT of the negative press online that LW, EY and a ton of other places and people have got. If it wasn't for RW LW would be much, much more respected.
There's indeed been no one with that level of reach that has spread this much misinformation and started this many negative rumors in the space as David Gerard and RW. Whoever the second closest contender is, is likely not even close.
First place goes to David Gerard / RationalWiki -- not exactly the same thing, but a huge overlap. There are also other editors on RationalWiki, but most of them are much less active and not as hostile towards the rationalist community as David. David is also the driving force behind the SneerClub, plus he edits Wikipedia, which vastly expands his possibilities (he can write a "snarky" comment on RW, have a journalist quote it, then he can quote the journalist in Wikipedia, protect the article against changes, and remove all quotes that oppose his narrative).
The distant second place goes to Alexander Kruel, mostly for his historical achievements, because he is not active recently. (But a decade ago, about 2/3 of negative statements about the rationalist community could be traced back to David/RW and about 1/3 to Alexander's blog.)
There is no third place, IMHO. Everything else is just a blip on the radar, including the negative press recently sparked by the Zizians.
I think there is a vast difference between Gerard and Kruel, not just in the damage each has caused but also in their intellectual honesty and responsiveness to argument (null in the case of Gerard, decent in the case of Kruel, at least from my recollection).
1But a decade ago, about 2⁄3 of negative statements about the rationalist community could be traced back to David/RW and about 1⁄3 to Alexander’s blog.)
Does it matter if they are are true negative statements, or false ones?
Note that Alexander Kruel still blogs regularly on axisofordinary.blogspot.com, and from his Facebook account; he just doesn't say anything directly about rationalists. He mostly lists recent developments in AI, science, tech, and the Ukraine war.
I believe he means rationality-associsted discourse and it's not like there are so many contenders.
That would make more sense. Am curious if that was OP's intended meaning.
Nice link, the rationalist community should consider moving to Kazakhstan! ;)
I don't think this kind of comparison is important, because RW and LW are different types of websites. RationalWiki advertises itself as a resource for debunking pseudoscience, but I think that the numbers on that graph are mostly driven by their active involvement in hot topics of various culture wars: they have lots of articles on Trump, GamerGate, feminism, et cetera. On the other hand, Less Wrong actively tries to avoid all this, and tries to keep focus on mostly nerdy topics. (Also, the most popular LW writers have started their own blogs.)
So we basically have political clickbait competing for popularity with a nerdy walled garden, and if at the end of the day their numbers are similar... I think this is a pretty damning result for RationalWiki.
One of the biggest online threats to rational discourse,
If this is true, I'm relieved, because it means there are no serious threats. But I doubt it.. I hadn't heard the name for a number of years, and even in the heyday it only mattered in a tiny part of a tiny sub-community.
Audible has just released an audio version of Nick Bostrom’s Deep Utopia.
I was delighted to learn that the audiobook is narrated by David Timson, the English actor whose narrations of The Life of Samuel Johnson and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I had enjoyed so much. I wonder if this was pure chance or a deliberate decision by Bostrom (or his team).
That would make more sense. Am curious if that was OP's intended meaning.