[extropy-chat] silent night

[Hal Finney]

Often in debates online we run into a problem where people feel that
their positions are being misrepresented and that the other side is
erecting strawman arguments.  These disputes become unproductive and
distract from the primary issue being debated.  The purpose of debate,
after all, is to help everyone to achieve a better understanding of
the issues, by presenting challenges to the arguments from all sides.
A challenge to an irrelevant argument wastes everyone's time.

Some years ago someone here suggested a mechanism to reduce the incidence
of such distractions.  That is to go back into the archives and to
quote, as much as possible, from the original postings.  If you do want
to characterize something that was said, fine, but do so only in the
context of also posting a direct quote.  Then when you characterize it,
readers can judge the accuracy of the characterization.  There is still
the problem of quotes taken out of context, but if you quote at least
a paragraph or so then that should address most context issues.

As an example, in the debate about the effectiveness of futures markets,
one issue which has come up is what exactly the question is.  Is it about
the effectiveness of futures markets generally vs other institutions?
Or is it about the narrow issue of the Iowa Electronic Markets?

Harvey originally posted, from
http://www.lucifer.com/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-December/012182.html :

> Has anyone gotten any evidence that futures markets really can predict 
> the future?  I keep hearing the Iowa markets referenced as predicting 
> political elections, but I can't see it in their historical data.  
> Everything I found seems to show bad results or regular flip-flopping 
> to the point that they don't predict anything.  I would sure love to 
> see real historical data showing predictions.  My experience with 
> future prediction in general is that it is wrong more often than not.

This was the basis from which the debate started.  It looks to me like
this is a relatively open question which goes beyond the specific issue
of the IEM.

Hal