All of jackc's Comments + Replies

Note that it says "the degree of uncertainty remaining is insufficient to render the market interesting" AND <5% or >95%.

This seems reasonable to me. Note that degree varies by market - an absolute probability by itself wouldn't be a good rule. If it was already very unlikely (e.g. "Will a nuclear bomb be detonated in NYC this year"), then for the degree of uncertainty to become uninteresting it has to become much more unlikely in a way that rules out most of the previous probability space.

I've thought about this type of case a decent amount, a... (read more)

Also, on the Petrov day market, let's suppose the question had been "What % of Petrov Day will elapse before someone uses the big red button to take down Less Wrong's frontpage for the rest of the day?" ("for the rest of the day" is the only change.) I would consider this reasonably unambiguous - if LW decides to bring the page back up because it was a "mistake" then it shouldn't resolve yet. But I suspect that people would have bet on that nearly the same as the actual question, and your hypothetical user who saw the site was down at 10% would also have b... (read more)

I agree that ambiguity is bad, and most Manifold markets are probably too imprecise and ambiguous. My usual style is trying to be fairly precise in the forecasting questions I write, and I definitely second your recommendations!

However, I want to point out that the problem isn't just ambiguity, but really complexity. The more you try to nail down the resolution criteria, the more likely it becomes for there to be a serious mismatch between the top-line summary of the question (the question that you are actually interested in answering) and the detailed dec... (read more)

I've made several updates to my guide to incorporate your input. I'll be trying the 7500 and 2291s next. Thanks again!

Thanks! I didn't realize that Zoro was owned by Grainger, that makes me feel much better about them. I also had a decent experience buying from them, it was still much slower than Amazon but not too bad. I'll add a recommended link to them.

And to add to my last comment, just to explain why I wrote things the way I did, I think the more important thing in terms of recommendations to a general audience is that in my personal experience, most people I've talked to have indeed upgraded to an N95, but extremely few people I've talked to have actually ended up wearing a P100 elastomeric. They have a ton of advantages, but most people simply don't want to use them. So in my mask article I explain the advantages, but in my general advice article I feel like it's more useful to simply say upgrade to a N95 or P100.

I agree with most of your points, especially about poor seal for typical N95s, but in my personal experience, I am often wearing a mask intermittently, not wearing it for the whole day, and in that context I typically prefer to use a N95 which I can fold and put in my pocket - that convenience is very important for me. I definitely do recommend an elastomeric P100 for long-duration wear where the convenience factor is not an issue. And I found it basically impossible to make myself audible in a loud crowded environment, although it's fine in quieter enviro... (read more)

I mostly agree with you and go into that in detail on https://firstsigma.github.io/masks but I think the "average" reader (especially one who is still wearing cloth/surgical) is better served by a recommendation to upgrade to N95 first. I find that P100s are great for many situations, but they do have their downsides.