Both of these are environments in which people participate in something very similar to betting. In the first case they are competing pretty directly for internet points, and in the second they are competing for monetary prices.
Those two institutions strike me as great examples of the benefit of having a culture of betting like this, and also strike me as similarly likely to create offense in others.
Iâm extremely confident a lot more opprobrium attaches to bets where the payoff is in money versus those where the payoff is in internet points etc. As you note, I agree certain forecasting questions (even without cash) provoke distaste: if those same questions were on a prediction market the reaction would be worse. (Thereâs also likely an issue the money leading to a question of ones motivationâif epi types are trying to predict a death toll and not getting money for their efforts, it seems their efforts have a laudable purpose in mind, less so if they are riding money on it).
I agree with you that were there only the occasional one-off bet on the forum that was being critiqued here, the epistemic cost would be minor. But I am confident that a community that had a relationship to betting that was more analogous to how Chiâs relationship to betting appears to be, we would have never actually built the Metaculus prediction platform.
This looks like a stretch to me. Chi can speak for themselves, but their remarks donât seem to entail a ârelationship to bettingâ writ large, but an uneasy relationship to morbid topics in particular. Thus the policy I take them to be recommending (which I also endorse) of refraining making âmorbidâ or âtastelessâ bets (but feel free to prop bet to heartâs desire on other topics) seems to have very minor epistemic costs, rather than threatening some transformation of epistemic culture which would mean people stop caring about predictions.
For similar reasons, this also seems relatively costless in terms of other perceptions: refraining from âmorbidâ topics for betting only excludes a small minority of questions one can bet upon, leaving plenty of opportunities to signal its virtuous characteristics re. taking ideas seriously whilst avoiding those which reflect poorly upon it.
refraining from âmorbidâ topics for betting only excludes a small minority of questions one can bet upon
This is directly counter to my experience of substantive and important EA conversation. All the topics Iâm interested in are essentially morbid topics when viewed in passing by a âperson on the streetâ. Here are examples of such questions:
How frequently will we have major pandemics that kill over N people?
How severe (in terms of death and major harm) will the worst pandemic in the next 10 years be?
How many lives are saved by donations to GiveWell recommended charities? If we pour 10-100 million dollars into them, will we see a corresponding decline in deaths from key diseases globally?
As AI gets more powerful, will we get warning shots across the bow that injure or kill <10,000 people with enough time for us to calibrate to the difficulty of the alignment problem, or will it be more sudden than that?
Like, sometimes I even just bet on ongoing death rates. Someone might say to me âThe factory farming problem is very small of courseâ and Iâll reply âI will take a bet with you, if youâre so confident. You say what you think it is, Iâll say what I think it is, then weâll use google to find out whoâs right. Because I expect youâll be wrong by at least 2 orders of magnitude.â Iâm immediately proposing a bet on number of chickens being murdered per year, or some analogous number. I also would make similar bets when someone says a problem is big small e.g. âAgeing/âgenocide/âcancer is/âisnât very importantâ â âIâll take a bet on the number of people whoâve died from it in the last 10 years.â
All of your examples seem much better than the index case I am arguing against. Commonsense morality attaches much less distaste to cases where those âin perilâ are not crisply identified (e.g. âhow many will die in some pandemic in the futureâ is better than âhow many will die in this particular outbreakâ, which is better than âwill Alice, currently ill, live or die?â). It should also find bets on historical events are (essentially) fine, as whatever good or ill implicit in these has already occurred.
Of course, I agree they your examples would be construed as to some degree morbid. But my recommendation wasnât ârefrain from betting in any question where we we can show the topic is to some degree morbidâ (after all, betting on GDP of a given country could be construed this way, given its large downstream impacts on welfare). It was to refrain in those cases where it appears very distasteful and for which thereâs no sufficient justification. As it seems Iâm not expressing this balancing consideration well, Iâll belabour it.
#
Say, God forbid, one of my friendâs children has a life-limiting disease. On its face, it seems tasteless for me to compose predictions at all on questions like, âwill they still be alive by Christmas?â Carefully scrutinising whether they will live or die seems to run counter to the service I should be providing as a supporter of my friends family and someone with the childâs best interests at heart. It goes without saying opening a book on a question like this seems deplorable, and offering (and confirming bets) where I take the pessimistic side despicable.
Yet other people do have good reason for trying to compose an accurate prediction on survival or prognosis. The childâs doctor may find themselves in the invidious position where they recognise they their duty to give my friendâs family the best estimate they can runs at cross purposes to other moral imperatives that apply too. The commonsense/âvirtue-ethicsy hope would be the doctor can strike the balance best satisfies these cross-purposes, thus otherwise callous thoughts and deeds are justified by their connection to providing important information to the family
Yet any incremental information benefit isnât enough to justify anything of any degree of distastefulness. If the doctor opened a prediction market on a local childrenâs hospice, I think (even if they were solely and sincerely motivated for good purposes, such as to provide families with in-expectation better prognostication now and the future) they have gravely missed the mark.
Of the options available, âbringing moneyâ into it generally looks more ghoulish the closer the connection is between âsomething horrible happeningâ and âpayday!â. A mere prediction platform is better (although still probably the wrong side of the line unless we have specific evidence it will give a large benefit), also paying people to make predictions on said platform (but paying for activity and aggregate accuracy rather than direct âbet resultsâ) is also slightly better. âThis familyâs loss (of their child) will be my gain (of some money)â is the sort of grotesque counterfactual good people would strenuously avoid being party to save exceptionally good reason.
#
To repeat: the it is the balance of these factorsâwhich come in degreesâwhich is determines the final evaluation. So, for example, Iâm not against people forecasting the ânCoVâ question (indeed, I do as well), but the addition of money takes it the wrong side of the line (notwithstanding the money being ridden on this for laudable motivation). Likewise Iâm happy to for people to prop bet on some of your questions pretty freely, but not for the ânCoVâ (or some even more extreme versions) because the question is somewhat less ghoulish, etc. etc. etc.
I confess some irritation. Because I think whilst you and Oli are pressing arguments (sorryâânoticing confusionâ) re. there not being a crisp quality that obtains to the objectionable ones yet not the less objectionable ones (e.g. âYou say this question is âmorbidâ - but look here! here are some other questions which are qualitatively morbid too, and we shouldnât rule them all outâ) you are in fact committed to some sort of balancing account.
I presume (hopefully?) you donât think âchild hospice sweepstakesâ would be a good idea for someone to try (even if it may improve our calibration! and it would give useful information re. paediatric prognosticiation which could be of value to the wider world! and capitalism is built on accurate price signals! etc. etc.) As youâre not biting the bullet on these reductios (nor bmgâs, nor others) you implicitly accept all the considerations about why betting is a good thing are pro tanto and can be overcome at some extreme limit of ghoulishness etc.
How to weigh these considerations is up for grabs. Yet picking each individual feature of ghoulishness in turnand showing it, alone, is not enough to warrant refraining from highly ghoulish bets (where the true case against would be composed of other factors alongside the one being shown to be individually insufficient) seems an exercise in the fallacy of division.
#
I also note that all the (few) prop bets I recall in EA up until now (including one I made with you) werenât morbid. Which suggests you wouldnât appreciably reduce the track record of prop bets which show (as Oli sees it) admirable EA virtues of skin in the game.
Iâm extremely confident a lot more opprobrium attaches to bets where the payoff is in money versus those where the payoff is in internet points etc. As you note, I agree certain forecasting questions (even without cash) provoke distaste: if those same questions were on a prediction market the reaction would be worse. (Thereâs also likely an issue the money leading to a question of ones motivationâif epi types are trying to predict a death toll and not getting money for their efforts, it seems their efforts have a laudable purpose in mind, less so if they are riding money on it).
This looks like a stretch to me. Chi can speak for themselves, but their remarks donât seem to entail a ârelationship to bettingâ writ large, but an uneasy relationship to morbid topics in particular. Thus the policy I take them to be recommending (which I also endorse) of refraining making âmorbidâ or âtastelessâ bets (but feel free to prop bet to heartâs desire on other topics) seems to have very minor epistemic costs, rather than threatening some transformation of epistemic culture which would mean people stop caring about predictions.
For similar reasons, this also seems relatively costless in terms of other perceptions: refraining from âmorbidâ topics for betting only excludes a small minority of questions one can bet upon, leaving plenty of opportunities to signal its virtuous characteristics re. taking ideas seriously whilst avoiding those which reflect poorly upon it.
This is directly counter to my experience of substantive and important EA conversation. All the topics Iâm interested in are essentially morbid topics when viewed in passing by a âperson on the streetâ. Here are examples of such questions:
How frequently will we have major pandemics that kill over N people?
How severe (in terms of death and major harm) will the worst pandemic in the next 10 years be?
How many lives are saved by donations to GiveWell recommended charities? If we pour 10-100 million dollars into them, will we see a corresponding decline in deaths from key diseases globally?
As AI gets more powerful, will we get warning shots across the bow that injure
or kill <10,000 people with enough time for us to calibrate to the difficulty of the alignment problem, or will it be more sudden than that?
Like, sometimes I even just bet on ongoing death rates. Someone might say to me âThe factory farming problem is very small of courseâ and Iâll reply âI will take a bet with you, if youâre so confident. You say what you think it is, Iâll say what I think it is, then weâll use google to find out whoâs right. Because I expect youâll be wrong by at least 2 orders of magnitude.â Iâm immediately proposing a bet on number of chickens being murdered per year, or some analogous number. I also would make similar bets when someone says a problem is big small e.g. âAgeing/âgenocide/âcancer is/âisnât very importantâ â âIâll take a bet on the number of people whoâve died from it in the last 10 years.â
All of your examples seem much better than the index case I am arguing against. Commonsense morality attaches much less distaste to cases where those âin perilâ are not crisply identified (e.g. âhow many will die in some pandemic in the futureâ is better than âhow many will die in this particular outbreakâ, which is better than âwill Alice, currently ill, live or die?â). It should also find bets on historical events are (essentially) fine, as whatever good or ill implicit in these has already occurred.
Of course, I agree they your examples would be construed as to some degree morbid. But my recommendation wasnât ârefrain from betting in any question where we we can show the topic is to some degree morbidâ (after all, betting on GDP of a given country could be construed this way, given its large downstream impacts on welfare). It was to refrain in those cases where it appears very distasteful and for which thereâs no sufficient justification. As it seems Iâm not expressing this balancing consideration well, Iâll belabour it.
#
Say, God forbid, one of my friendâs children has a life-limiting disease. On its face, it seems tasteless for me to compose predictions at all on questions like, âwill they still be alive by Christmas?â Carefully scrutinising whether they will live or die seems to run counter to the service I should be providing as a supporter of my friends family and someone with the childâs best interests at heart. It goes without saying opening a book on a question like this seems deplorable, and offering (and confirming bets) where I take the pessimistic side despicable.
Yet other people do have good reason for trying to compose an accurate prediction on survival or prognosis. The childâs doctor may find themselves in the invidious position where they recognise they their duty to give my friendâs family the best estimate they can runs at cross purposes to other moral imperatives that apply too. The commonsense/âvirtue-ethicsy hope would be the doctor can strike the balance best satisfies these cross-purposes, thus otherwise callous thoughts and deeds are justified by their connection to providing important information to the family
Yet any incremental information benefit isnât enough to justify anything of any degree of distastefulness. If the doctor opened a prediction market on a local childrenâs hospice, I think (even if they were solely and sincerely motivated for good purposes, such as to provide families with in-expectation better prognostication now and the future) they have gravely missed the mark.
Of the options available, âbringing moneyâ into it generally looks more ghoulish the closer the connection is between âsomething horrible happeningâ and âpayday!â. A mere prediction platform is better (although still probably the wrong side of the line unless we have specific evidence it will give a large benefit), also paying people to make predictions on said platform (but paying for activity and aggregate accuracy rather than direct âbet resultsâ) is also slightly better. âThis familyâs loss (of their child) will be my gain (of some money)â is the sort of grotesque counterfactual good people would strenuously avoid being party to save exceptionally good reason.
#
To repeat: the it is the balance of these factorsâwhich come in degreesâwhich is determines the final evaluation. So, for example, Iâm not against people forecasting the ânCoVâ question (indeed, I do as well), but the addition of money takes it the wrong side of the line (notwithstanding the money being ridden on this for laudable motivation). Likewise Iâm happy to for people to prop bet on some of your questions pretty freely, but not for the ânCoVâ (or some even more extreme versions) because the question is somewhat less ghoulish, etc. etc. etc.
I confess some irritation. Because I think whilst you and Oli are pressing arguments (sorryâânoticing confusionâ) re. there not being a crisp quality that obtains to the objectionable ones yet not the less objectionable ones (e.g. âYou say this question is âmorbidâ - but look here! here are some other questions which are qualitatively morbid too, and we shouldnât rule them all outâ) you are in fact committed to some sort of balancing account.
I presume (hopefully?) you donât think âchild hospice sweepstakesâ would be a good idea for someone to try (even if it may improve our calibration! and it would give useful information re. paediatric prognosticiation which could be of value to the wider world! and capitalism is built on accurate price signals! etc. etc.) As youâre not biting the bullet on these reductios (nor bmgâs, nor others) you implicitly accept all the considerations about why betting is a good thing are pro tanto and can be overcome at some extreme limit of ghoulishness etc.
How to weigh these considerations is up for grabs. Yet picking each individual feature of ghoulishness in turn and showing it, alone, is not enough to warrant refraining from highly ghoulish bets (where the true case against would be composed of other factors alongside the one being shown to be individually insufficient) seems an exercise in the fallacy of division.
#
I also note that all the (few) prop bets I recall in EA up until now (including one I made with you) werenât morbid. Which suggests you wouldnât appreciably reduce the track record of prop bets which show (as Oli sees it) admirable EA virtues of skin in the game.
Iâm tapping out of this discussion. I disagree with much of the above, but I cannot respond to it properly for now.