It might be argued that [rewarding participants for publishing analyses that move our subjective estimates significantly away from the our current views] makes the prize encourage people to have views different from those presented here. This seems hard to avoid, since we are looking for information that changes our decisions, which requires changing our beliefs.
However, an analysis that reassures you that your current estimates are correct can make your beliefs more resilient, and in turn change some of your decisions. For example, such an analysis can make you donate a larger fraction of your assets now, since you expect your beliefs to change less in the future than you did before. It can also make you less willing to run these prize contests, since they are less likely to change your views (or make them even more resilient). So I wonder if you should have instead rewarded participants for either moving your estimates significantly away from your current views or for making your current views significantly more resilient.
Thanks for the feedback! I think this is a reasonable comment, and the main things that prevented us from doing this are: (i) I thought it would detract from the simplicity of the prize competition, and would be hard to communicate clearly and simply (ii) I think the main thing that would make our views more robust is seeing what the best arguments are for having quite different views, and this seems like it is addressed by the competition as it stands.
This is a very exciting development!
In your third footnote, you write:
However, an analysis that reassures you that your current estimates are correct can make your beliefs more resilient, and in turn change some of your decisions. For example, such an analysis can make you donate a larger fraction of your assets now, since you expect your beliefs to change less in the future than you did before. It can also make you less willing to run these prize contests, since they are less likely to change your views (or make them even more resilient). So I wonder if you should have instead rewarded participants for either moving your estimates significantly away from your current views or for making your current views significantly more resilient.
Thanks for the feedback! I think this is a reasonable comment, and the main things that prevented us from doing this are:
(i) I thought it would detract from the simplicity of the prize competition, and would be hard to communicate clearly and simply
(ii) I think the main thing that would make our views more robust is seeing what the best arguments are for having quite different views, and this seems like it is addressed by the competition as it stands.