Maybe you are describing a distinction that is more complicated than I am currently comprehending, but I at least would expect Chi and Greg to object to bets of the type “what is the expected number of people dying in self-driving car accidents over the next decade?”, “Will there be an accident involving an AGI project that would classify as a ‘near-miss’, killing at least 10000 people or causing at least 10 billion dollars in economic damages within the next 50 years?” and “what is the likelihood of this new bednet distribution method outperforming existing methods by more than 30%, saving 30000 additional people over the next year?”.
Just as an additional note, to speak directly to the examples you gave: I would personally feel very little discomfort if two people (esp. people actively making or influencing decisions about donations and funding) wanted to publicly bet on the question: “What is the likelihood of this new bednet distribution method outperforming existing methods by more than 30%, saving 30000 additional people over the next year?” I obviously don’t know, but I would guess that Chi and Greg would both feel more comfortable about that question as well. I think that some random “passerby” might still feel some amount of discomfort, but probably substantially less.
I realize that there probably aren’t very principled reasons to view one bet here as intrinsically more objectionable than others. I listed some factors that seem to contribute to my judgments in my other comment, but they’re obviously a bit of a hodgepodge. My fully reflective moral view is also that there probably isn’t anything intrinsically wrong with any category of bets. For better or worse, though, I think that certain bets will predictably be discomforting and wrong-feeling to many people (including me). Then I think this discomfort is worth weighing against the plausible social benefits of the individual bet being made. At least on rare occasions, the trade-off probably won’t be worth it.
I ultimately don’t think my view here is that different than common views on lots of other more mundane social norms. For example: I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically morally wrong about speaking ill of the dead. I recognize that a blanket prohibition on speaking ill of the dead would be a totally ridiculous and socially/epistemically harmful form of censorship. But it’s still true that, in some hard-to-summarize class of cases, criticizing someone who’s died is going to strike a lot of people as especially uncomfortable and wrong. Even without any specific speech “ban” in place, I think that it’s worth giving weight to these feelings when you decide what to say.
What this general line of thought implies about particular bets is obviously pretty unclear. Maybe the value of publicly betting is consistently high enough to, in pretty much all cases, render feelings of discomfort irrelevant. Or maybe, if the community tries to have any norms around public betting, then the expected cost of wise bets avoided due to “false positives” would just be much higher than the expected the cost of unwise bets made due to “false negatives.” I don’t believe this, but I obviously don’t know. My best guess is that it probably makes sense to strike a (messy/unprincipled/disputed) balance that’s not too dissimilar from balances we strike in other social and professional contexts.
(As an off-hand note, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve also updated in the direction of thinking that the particular bet that triggered this thread was worthwhile. I also, of course, feel a bit weird having somehow now written so much about the fine nuances of betting norms in a thread about a deadly virus.)
Just as an additional note, to speak directly to the examples you gave: I would personally feel very little discomfort if two people (esp. people actively making or influencing decisions about donations and funding) wanted to publicly bet on the question: “What is the likelihood of this new bednet distribution method outperforming existing methods by more than 30%, saving 30000 additional people over the next year?” I obviously don’t know, but I would guess that Chi and Greg would both feel more comfortable about that question as well. I think that some random “passerby” might still feel some amount of discomfort, but probably substantially less.
I realize that there probably aren’t very principled reasons to view one bet here as intrinsically more objectionable than others. I listed some factors that seem to contribute to my judgments in my other comment, but they’re obviously a bit of a hodgepodge. My fully reflective moral view is also that there probably isn’t anything intrinsically wrong with any category of bets. For better or worse, though, I think that certain bets will predictably be discomforting and wrong-feeling to many people (including me). Then I think this discomfort is worth weighing against the plausible social benefits of the individual bet being made. At least on rare occasions, the trade-off probably won’t be worth it.
I ultimately don’t think my view here is that different than common views on lots of other more mundane social norms. For example: I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically morally wrong about speaking ill of the dead. I recognize that a blanket prohibition on speaking ill of the dead would be a totally ridiculous and socially/epistemically harmful form of censorship. But it’s still true that, in some hard-to-summarize class of cases, criticizing someone who’s died is going to strike a lot of people as especially uncomfortable and wrong. Even without any specific speech “ban” in place, I think that it’s worth giving weight to these feelings when you decide what to say.
What this general line of thought implies about particular bets is obviously pretty unclear. Maybe the value of publicly betting is consistently high enough to, in pretty much all cases, render feelings of discomfort irrelevant. Or maybe, if the community tries to have any norms around public betting, then the expected cost of wise bets avoided due to “false positives” would just be much higher than the expected the cost of unwise bets made due to “false negatives.” I don’t believe this, but I obviously don’t know. My best guess is that it probably makes sense to strike a (messy/unprincipled/disputed) balance that’s not too dissimilar from balances we strike in other social and professional contexts.
(As an off-hand note, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve also updated in the direction of thinking that the particular bet that triggered this thread was worthwhile. I also, of course, feel a bit weird having somehow now written so much about the fine nuances of betting norms in a thread about a deadly virus.)