Thank you for writing this post. This is a phenomenon I've also noticed, and it applies not just to arguing but to anything to do with reasoning about groups of people. Mistakes of the type "mistakenly attributed characteristic of group to person" are common. As you said in a comment, the way that we group people is usually very lossy. This is especially frustrating for those who have to deal with the same mistaken assumption being made about them often. Making inferences about specific people based on group generalizations is useful sometimes, but acting on them wrongly often has steep costs in misunderstanding and conflict. It's good to be reminded to keep close track of where you're making this type of inference.
Thank you for the suggestion! I moved the context out of the footnote.
I agree that most of the bets here are accurate indications of probability; most are in the range of 20-1000 dollars, and also there is a culture of honesty that seems like it would prevent offering a bet that didn't reflect someone's probability of an event while representing that it did.
The most common case I see where betting odds and probability don't match is with really small values.
It seems to be encouraged here to spontaneously do friendly betting in person. From my experience, this usually involves pretty small values (0-10 dollars) paid in...
I worry about "predictive" history classes being even more like indoctrination than current ones, if implemented with tests on obscure historical examples as you suggest. Explicitly teaching students about general historical lessons which extend to the future can easily turn into politics. There are strong incentives to pick and choose historical examples which generalize to the lessons the teacher or administration supports politically.
Current history classes at least have the strength that they teach students how to conduct research about kno... (read more)