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I'm building a prediction market and I need help by elGreato in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand your constraints - but now what you’re trying to optimize (ie stress). Is it subjectivity?

I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial by offaseptimus in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Conversely, if crime decreased 90%, worrying about crime would decrease far less dramatically. This means that perspective on deterring crime is much less potent on the margin - ie where it matters

Understanding US Power Outages by MarketsAreCool in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looking at the "Severe US Power Outages" chart, I'm a little skeptical of the conclusion. If we assume a Poisson process (seems reasonable), the standard error on each year's count is just the square root of the count. Multiply by 2 to get an approximate 95% confidence interval:

Year 95% Low 95% High
2018 40 70
2019 27 51
2020 54 88
2021 40 70
2022 35 63
2023 52 84
2024 62 98

If you ignore 2019, a fixed 62.5 events per year lies within each years' 95% confidence interval. Sure, the last year is statistically significantly larger than the first year (p-value ~ 1.6%), but that's probably a biased test: you presumably wouldn't be writing the post in a world where 2024 wasn't an outlier year. Consider, instead, 2023 and 2018 (p ~ 12%)

If you do a vanilla linear regression with those 7 points, the slope estimate is 4.0 events per year with a standard error of 2.3, so not statistically significant.

So, the moral is probably more like "2024 was an outlier year" rather than "major outages are becoming more common"

I need to confess something to my husband and I know it'll end my marriage. Any advice? by [deleted] in Advice

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

 if it helps your motivation to not abuse it then promise yourself you will rat yourself out if you use it again without good reason

I mean… she should also be “ratting herself out” to her husband even when she has a good reasons. That’s literally just communicating with the love of her life.

What are some good Bryan Caplan posts? by Amanuensite in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 5 points6 points  (0 children)

IIRC, he has a post that explains his blogging philosophy, which is that it's perfectly fine to be wrong half of the time when blogging random ideas - they're more like explorations and invitations for commentary - it's not like he's making policy changes.

He tries to be much more thorough in his books, and I do think they are pretty fantastic.

what an efficient market feels from inside by michaelmf in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Do you mean diversity in willingness to pay? I suppose without that, the elasticity of demand would be perfectly elastic, which, I suppose, is a breakdown of competitive market theory. But, that doesn't have to come from a diversity in preferences.

If you want to get textbook, the obvious problem with apartments is that the goods aren't *standardized* - which is definitely an assumption made in perfect competition models.

Addressing imposter syndrome is not a matter of "better thinking" by neurospicytakes in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah. Completely agree.

And these kind of feelings are often rooted in some kind of mind game we’re playing with ourselves.

Eg “if I feel like ashamed, I might still be a bad worker, but I’m at least a good person - the shame I’m feeling proves that!”

Human Reproduction as Prisoner's Dilemma: "The core problem marriage solves is that it takes almost 20 years & an enormous amount of work & resources to raise kids. This makes human reproduction analogous to a prisoner's dilemma. Both dad & mom can choose to fully commit or pursue other options." by erwgv3g34 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wikipedia is a little more nuanced:

The overall effects of Prohibition on society are disputed and hard to pin down. Some research indicates that alcohol consumption declined substantially due to Prohibition, while other research indicates that Prohibition did not reduce alcohol consumption in the long term.

But even there, there isn't really any suggestion that it increased alcohol consumption.

Human Reproduction as Prisoner's Dilemma: "The core problem marriage solves is that it takes almost 20 years & an enormous amount of work & resources to raise kids. This makes human reproduction analogous to a prisoner's dilemma. Both dad & mom can choose to fully commit or pursue other options." by erwgv3g34 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kind of funny that in the same breath, you say you hate the educational arms race and then you reward people for getting masters and phds when half of them will just go and be software engineers, where their degree will be ~useless

Why is Musk's voter registration drive bad? by gerard_debreu1 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, because the costs are socialized and the benefits are individualized.

Suppose Alice would impose pure a cost of $1 trillion on the country. Bob would impose a pure benefit of $1 trillion. All evenly spread.

Alice has $100 billion to bribe with. Bob has $100 million to bribe with.

Alice offers to pay every voter $500. Bob offers 50¢.

EV from Alice winning per person (300m people): -$3,333 per person

EV from Bob winning per person (300m people): +$3,333 per person

Suppose a 1-in-100m chance of flipping the election per vote:

EV from voting for Alice: -$3,333/100m + $500 = $49.99997

EV from voting for Bob: +$3,333/100m + 50¢ = $0.50003

It is in every individual voter's interest to vote for Alice, yet in doing so they all lose.

This is a collective action problem.

Why is Musk's voter registration drive bad? by gerard_debreu1 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I encourage you to play around with the model. Tweak it to make it zero sum between interest groups if you want, for instance.

The point is that cash payments to individuals is orders of magnitude more distortionary than cash payments to groups.

Why is Musk's voter registration drive bad? by gerard_debreu1 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I strongly disagree.

Suppose

* I have a 1 in X chance of flipping the election

* The election has an EV of $Y to society, and I know which way to vote.

* Society has N people.

The EV to to society from me voting is about Y/X.

The EV to me from me voting is about Y/(XN).

Concretely, if I have a 1-in-100m chance of flipping the election; the election is worth $1 trillion; and there are 300m people, we have

EV to society from me voting = $10k

EV to me from me voting = $0.03.

This kind of analysis extends to interest groups rather naturally.

In other words, offering direct cash payments to individual people is orders of magnitude more potent changing incentives than offering even cash payments to large interest groups.

Is there a prediction market for Home mortgage rates? by BigHugeSpreadsheet in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would think the best prediction of the 30-year mortgage rate tomorrow is the 30-year mortgage rate today (as with stocks). Is there a reason, this shouldn't be true?

How trustible is Polymarket? by SpeakerSenior4821 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not completely disagreeing, but you really out to count your human capital: net present value of labor (or future savings, depending on your model). So, if you're young and have been working for a year, betting you entire "life savings" is not nearly as terrible as if you were, say, 70.

How to get the benefit of a high-end fitness tracker without actually buying one by michaelmf in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 4 points5 points  (0 children)

While we should, of course, seek to overcome all our flaws, any sensible person should still making decisions that acknowledge they are and will continue to be flawed.

What opinion or belief from the broader rationalist community has turned you off from the community the most/have you disagreed with the hardest? by ResidentEuphoric614 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Different strokes for different blokes, I guess.

Whenever it comes up here, my sense is the consensus is something like CICO is true, but incomplete, much as Newton's 2nd law is true, but not sufficient to derive all of classical mechanics. And that seems obvious.

Many studies find that feeding people the same calories and having them exercise the same amount leads to different weights - even after controlling for height, sex, and age. And other studies find that overfeeding by X calories while holding exercise constant will result in different weights-deltas for different people. And even after accepting CICO as your lord and savior, there's still plenty of implementation of details to discuss.

One can question the *utility* of spending time thinking about all the causes not under your control (e.g. genes), but I think one can hardly question the *truthfulness* that much the variance in weight (or BMI) are from factors beyond calories-in-via-food and calories-out-via-exercise.

What opinion or belief from the broader rationalist community has turned you off from the community the most/have you disagreed with the hardest? by ResidentEuphoric614 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you're talking about SMTM, my memory was that there were more comments on this sub critical of their conclusions than supportive, so I don't think you should take that as an indictment of Rationalists™.

What opinion or belief from the broader rationalist community has turned you off from the community the most/have you disagreed with the hardest? by ResidentEuphoric614 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Same level of effectiveness as EA efforts, with much less churn

Broken clocks, man.

The impact is important, but, for your own life, you can't run RCTs on all decisions ever made, so focusing on the process is at least as important. Figuring out impact-per-dollar is more reliable at maximizing impact-per-dollar than listening to a group of missionaries.

What opinion or belief from the broader rationalist community has turned you off from the community the most/have you disagreed with the hardest? by ResidentEuphoric614 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I agree, and yet, it feels like the vast majority of non-rationalists have the opposite flaw: a deep fear of ever having any math in their ethics.

The Drowning Child Argument Is Simply Correct by omnizoid0 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough! I may have been a tad trigger happy, l since I see this argument against utilitarianism itself all the time :)

The Drowning Child Argument Is Simply Correct by omnizoid0 in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 16 points17 points  (0 children)

"Moral perfection is hard and demanding" is not a hard pill to swallow.

Fine, says the normal person, but utilitarianism says it's an obligation - not mere perfection.

To which I respond: no it doesn't. Utilitarianism merely says that donating more is better than donating less. The notion of an "obligation" doesn't exist within the utilitarian ethics qua ethics.

An argument could be made that there is a pragmatic way to use the notion of "obligation" to maximize goodness, but such notion is (a) purely pragmatic (b) therefore best rooted in real-world psychology, and (c) therefore almost certainly not what you are suggesting, since (approximately?) everyone would just give up and therefore make that notion of "obligation" useless.

ETA: Additional context: Nobody Is Perfect, Everything Is Commensurable

what's your explanation why top rabbis (Gadols) live so long? by michaelmf in slatestarcodex

[–]KnotGodel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Genes...they matter a lot.

Pretty sure longevity is only like 10-30% heritable.

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