[extropy-chat] Futures Past

Robin Hanson rhanson at gmu.edu
Mon Oct 10 12:24:55 UTC 2005


At 08:07 AM 10/10/2005, Brett Paatsch wrote:
>Robin offered to add a bit of method to an exercise, which would I
>expect, had added some enjoyment to it for Robin in the next iteration.
>I took a quick look at Greg's claims Robin. I think they'd take a bit
>of work to put into a form that could be operationalised the way you
>want. It would be possible but I'm not personally keen to do it.
>If I was going to spend time on *that* exercise I'd be kicking myself
>for not spending the time trying to make your for real money betting
>idea move along a bit further.
>On the other hand if someone else puts the work into forming the
>claims into something that can elicit easy, sensible measurable responses
>I might be interested in making some guesses as just guesses.
>My feeling is that I can do good analytic work and make good predictions
>only if I am motivated to do some real research and
>to think seriously about the issues. I'd be keen to do that and to
>test my predictive powers against those of others but it wouldn't
>be much fun to do if there wasn't some prospect of also building
>a betting market. I want the added value of seeing something useful built.

When choosing where to put in effort one should consider not only how cool
the result would be, but also how many people of what quality are already
working on that result.  Lots of good people are making predictions and
developing betting markets.  Very little effort goes into analyzing past
predictions, and only modest ability is required to make progress there.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323 





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