217 Comments
Comment deleted
Nov 15, 2021
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Family Feud also incentivizes contestants to pick popular answers.

Expand full comment

It seems to me that this is just recreating the incentives that exist now for pundits--if you say what everyone else is saying, you're a sensible fellow who gets to keep being heard from; if you disagree with everyone else, you're some kinda nutcase who shouldn't be heard from anymore.

Expand full comment

>I think the advantage of iterating it this way is that you can amplify small changes. Suppose that right now, the market thinks there’s a 50% chance that America will beat China in 2100. But I am a great economic analyst who knows things the market doesn’t, which allow me to determine that the real chance is 52%. Leaving money in a market for five years to make 4% return doesn’t sound great. So we could do something like make people bet on whether the 2025 market would be <40%, 40 - 45%, 45-50%, 50-55%, 55-60%, or >60%. This way if you’re even directionally right you can double your money in five years. I bet there are more clever mathematical ways to do this which would give you finer-grained resolution.

Look into https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leaps.asp

Essentially these are stock options with fairly high premiums dated anywhere from one to three years. These exactly solve your issue of amplifying small changes, as the price of an existing options contract automatically reflects changes in market consensus.

As an example, a Ford 01/24 20C will cost you $4.8 https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/f/option-chain in premium, while a 01/23 20C runs you $3.65. If you think Ford will go up more than decay by, say, 06/22 (fairly low over these time periods) you can buy one of these options and, if Ford goes up, sell for more than you bought it for whenever you want to, regardless of the actual expiry date.

Expand full comment

The general answer to that issue is leverage, options is just one form of it.

Expand full comment

What Scott is really talking about is best represented by an option fence https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fence-options.asp. Its and option strategy such that it pays out if an underlying security is within and range but pays nothing outside it.

With a liquid enough market in options with a wide range of strikes you can essentially define the market's view of the probability that an asset being in any range at a given point in time.

If you make the fence size small enough you approximate an Arrow-Debreu security which is a contract that only pays out in one state of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_prices

Expand full comment

Wow that was a lot of typos. You could also get at something like what Scott is talking about (probably a little better) with a Butterfly options strategy as well. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/butterflyspread.asp

Expand full comment

There's the possibility for a party-destroying primary in 2024 if Biden walks away. Harris is "in line" and is a treasured symbol to the activist identitarian wing that has taken over so much of the party; she's also one of the least popular politicians in the country. If she's nominated she'll likely be crushed by Ron Desantis or whoever, and it would essentially be a do-over of 2016 - nominating a deeply unpopular candidate who is constantly defended along identitarian lines. But if the opposition coalesces around Buttigieg then you'll get the Bernie Bro vs Hillary Stan war again, only much harsher. Not great!

Expand full comment

> a treasured symbol to the activist identitarian wing

Is she? Basically all of the leftists I know, both online and in person, hate her because of her prosecutorial background and the fact that she’s fairly centrist. I’d predict that they would coalesce around Elizabeth Warren more than around her, though of course she’s in a great position to start with because she’s the VP.

Expand full comment

Yeah in the primary she topped out at what, 5%? It doesn't seem like there's much of a constituency that's particularly attached to her. Being VP will help but I'm not sure it's enough to lead to the situation Freddie is describing.

Expand full comment

I don't think many of the people who supported Biden in the last primary were particularly "attached" to him either. But he had plenty of establishment backing, which made him the default option. It feels like Harris is going to receive that establishment backing in 2024, and many of those same types of people will support her because of that, if not explicitly.

All the leftists I know, both online and in person, also hate her for her prosecutorial background and centrist economic tendencies, but I don't presume to think that the leftists I know are representative of democratic voters. The leftists I know mainly supported Bernie, with some going for Warren, or possibly Yang. Clearly they weren't representative last time. As of right now, if Harris wants the nomination, it seems like it's hers, unfortunately. Unless the field is small and progressives can unite behind another non-establishment figure.

Expand full comment

My point wasn't that there's no way she could win, it's that if she runs and loses in a close race I wouldn't expect her supporters to be sore losers in the way Freddie was implying. That kind of support seems more likely to coalesce around whoever her opposition ends up being, although I have trouble seeing it for Buttigieg either- the "activist identitarian wing" didn't seem to like him much either. Ocasio-Cortez seems most plausible but who knows if she even runs.

Expand full comment

Gotcha. I think people are using the terms "activist identitarian wing" and "leftist" differently here. I would not describe Bernie as an identitarian. To me, AOC fits the bill, but she's also got a good amount of support from the "economically progressive non-identitarian wing" - closer to what I consider "leftists". It seems to me like conservatives tend to conflate these two camps. Harris is obviously an activist identitarian, but I also think that what I consider to be the activist identitarian wing views Buttigieg favorably. As such, I think a head-to-head between Harris and Buttigieg would be very different from the Bernie vs Hillary war. Not much ideological difference there.

Hard to predict who will represent the "leftist" camp in the 2024 primary. AOC is the main person who comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure she'd get destroyed in a general election. Pramila Jayapal and Sherrod Brown might be better options.

Expand full comment

"Identiterian", he said.

I read that as Neoliberals, rather than leftists.

The "more *clap* female *clap* drone operators!" crowd.

Expand full comment

The identitarian wing is very, very distinct from the leftist wing.

Expand full comment

The people who love her aren't leftists. They are identitarian liberals of the type who dominate New York and other large blue cities.

Expand full comment

Are there any people who love her? The primary results suggest not in significant numbers.

Expand full comment

"Party destroying" or they'll just lose an election or two and continue as normal? I think you're putting this anti-identitarian posturing over an actual Marxist analysis.

Expand full comment

How about "party-tanking"?

Expand full comment

"Tank" for how long? 4 years? I don't see why Marxist such as myself and DeBoer should really care about bourgeois horserace politics.

Expand full comment

"An election or two" was your timeframe. And while it's hardly a settled issue within Marxism, Marxists have participated in bourgeois horserace politics for a long time.

Expand full comment

I don't really understand why a Marxist like Freddie DeBoer would care so heavily about jostling within the Democratic party which is not a Marxist party and never will be.

Even within that very narrow framework it's baffling to me to see hyperbole like "party destroying" or "tank" when Kamala Harris would probably lose an election by a fairly narrow margin (just like Hillary) and then the Democratic Party itself would probably be back within 4 or 8 years.

Let's try to be more specific, is Freddie DeBoer predicting a Carter vs Reagan or Mondale vs Reagan style collapse in a presidential election featuring Kamala Harris? If so, would it take more than 12 years (i.e. the rise of Bill Clinton to presidency) to come back from the "party-destroying" event? These are the historical precedents that we can already look at.

Expand full comment

There are certainly scenarios in which the Democratic Party in its current form ceases to exist. #1 is nuclear war, since political affiliation of the dead would massively slew Democratic and also they're typically in favour of cutting military spending which would discredit them. #2 is that the Democrats do something treasonous on the level of the Confederacy and get consigned to the political black hole in the aftermath (I know they weren't after the literal Confederacy, but AIUI it wasn't too far from happening).

I'm having a hard time seeing a line from the 2024 Democratic primary to #1, though. #2 seems slightly more plausible, but still far from clear.

Expand full comment

Communists have run for office across Europe, with much success in the past. Particularly in France and Germany. The Die Linke party in Germany is a successor to the East German communists, and the Russian communists are the second party in Russia.

Marxists who don’t want to engage in bourgeois politics tend to be tiny sectarians, or entirely online.

Expand full comment

The important difference is that the Marxists you are referring to all have their own parties. They don't sit around and complain that such-and-such functionary in one of the major bourgeois parties is too "identitarian" and that they will lead to the demise of the party.

Expand full comment

Don’t they? I know Marxists in France are anti-Identitarian. I was responding to your jive about “bourgeois horse race politics” (elections)-communists do engage in that. And in the US too, with little success.

US online Marxists seem to lack any organisational power whatsoever.

Expand full comment

I need to start checking Metaculus more. I was hoping to find something about Rittenhouse on Polymarket, but it didn't come up. Watching the trial has been rough. I'm not looking forward to the news following the results of the trial.

Expand full comment

See also https://metaforecast.org/?query=Rittenhouse . It's a search tool for predictions.

Expand full comment

Tell me about it.

Prosecution fucked it, defense fucked it, judge fucked it. Pure clown shoes in trial form.

Expand full comment

The prosecution had their work cut out for them given that pretty much the entire event was captured on video and clearly supported the self-defence argument.

The prosecutor was reduced to claiming that the defendant's desire to protect himself was unreasonable which strikes me as a tough sell.

Expand full comment

There were other things they could have done; more charges than murder or negligent homicide.

I'm not a lawyer and I've only done enough research to not accidentally commit a crime with my guns, but I wouldn't have done what he did.

He's a minor, he crossed state lines with a gun, the gun was being carried illegally (Fuck off with that hunting bullshit, the judge himself was fine with that charge until the cameras were rolling), Brandishing, it's every crime you can commit by having a gun except for stealing it in the first place or concealing it.

The thing I have trouble with is attempting to disprove the self defense claim, because I don't actually know anything about what qualifies you. My instinct (and the lectures I got about it) tell me this shouldn't be a covered offence.

If I drove across state lines to the Texas Republican Convention and stood their strapped and shittalking until someone did something and then shot them, that is NOT self defense.

Expand full comment

AIUI, the weapon was legally carried due to the length of the barrel, which disposes of *that* charge.

I am not sure what evidence you have that Rittenhouse was 'shittalking', but even if he were I am not sure that justifies a physical assault on him.

What is the relevance of 'crossing a state line' in this context?

Expand full comment

Well it can't be a *state* level charge anyway, it would have to be a Federal charge.

Expand full comment

He carried the gun legally, that's clear. Crossing state lines means nothing, it was a 15 minute drive anyway. Brandishing maybe- not sure what you mean by that. Just carrying an assault weapon around strapped to your body is not brandishing, in many states that is perfectly legal and people do it. If he was pointing his gun at people that may be an issue and the prosecution tried to make that argument.

There is no evidence of shit-talking that I'm aware of, but I think that could be relevant depending on what exactly you said. Of course the guy he shot was screaming that he was going to kill Rittenhouse and eat his heart and stuff like that...

Expand full comment

"He carried the gun legally, that's clear. "

That's exactly the opposite of clear, which is the point of the judge's actual ruling. Even as a professional with decades of experience in criminal law and many hours studying that particular statute, he professed uncertainty as to what was or was not legal.

*Because* it is unclear, Rittenhouse cannot be prosecuted for it. That's pretty solid in Anglo-American criminal law. But "you can't be prosecuted for X" and "X is legal" are not the same thing.

Expand full comment

See this twitter thread on the paper: https://twitter.com/NunoSempere/status/1458030798255296513 for why the two experiments are not talking about the same thing.

Expand full comment

Essentially I think that what's happening is that for the group of randos in the first experiment, "predict reality", and "predict what superforecasters will predict" don't lead to different predictions. So """"reciprocal scoring"""" performs well compared to scoring against reality for the group of randos. But note that """"reciprocal scoring"""" in the first experiment is not actually reciprocal; the superforecasters get scored against reality, not against the randos.

Expand full comment

This is really different from the reciprocal scoring in the second experiment, which is actually reciprocal.

Expand full comment

Any thoughts or updates on this question Scott?: Will this question be mentioned in an Astral Codex Ten Post in 2021?

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6554/astral-codex-ten-mentions-this-question/

Expand full comment

The lesson I'd want to teach here is "it is impossible to completely predict something that can read your prediction before it does the predicted thing".

(This is part of probably the most important computer-science proof ever - the proof that the halting problem is unsolvable. The proof amounts to: suppose there's an algorithm X that for any input algorithm Y returns, in finite time, "yes" if Y halts in finite time and "no" if it runs forever. Now I make an algorithm Y that goes "feed Y's own source code into X, and do the opposite of what it predicts". By assumption X finishes in finite time for any Y, so Y will always be able to finish in finite time if X predicts it runs forever, and certainly it can spin the wheels forever if X predicts it finishes in finite time. But this is a counterexample to the definition of X, so X doesn't exist.)

Expand full comment

This is a good description of my objections to Newcomb's problem. The existence of the perfect predictor and its prediction power is supposedly a given, but I'm not convinced it's even mathematically coherent, so it may be intractable to actually reason mathematically about.

Expand full comment

A version of Newcomb's paradox in which the boxes were transparent would definitely have this problem, but the normal version doesn't because you don't have access to the predictor's prediction before you act. You could, in theory, physically enforce this; you put the predictor on Mars and run it ~simultaneous with the actual choice (so that light-lag forces the events to be independent) and, instead of having physical objects in the boxes, just agree to the payoff matrix of Newcomb's paradox based on the prediction and on your action.

Expand full comment

Yes, I had exactly this debate on reddit very recently, which I summed up as:

I think this gets to the ultimate point though, which is that Newcomb's paradox is not a single problem but a family of problems whose answers are very sensitive to the specific constraints. If you specify a perfect predictor, then the question is inconsistent. If you reduce the predictor's accuracy to make it consistent, you now open possibilities for two-box solutions. You simply cannot close those loop holes via contrivances on the inputs, because all that does is entail complementary contrivances in the solutions.

So like I said initially, on average you're better off picking one box, but there simply must exist circumstances in which two boxes is the correct answer too. That is, such solutions simply must exist by logical necessity.

Expand full comment

> If you reduce the predictor's accuracy to make it consistent, you now open possibilities for two-box solutions.

How so? The payoff matrix doesn't meaningfully change with arbitrarily high accuracy even if it's short of perfection, so the two-boxer is still expected to walk away with significantly less money.

Expand full comment

"Arbitrarily high accuracy" is just as impossible as perfection.

Regardless, what you're looking at here is akin to zero-determinant strategies for the Prisoner's Dillemma. If you have any knowledge of the predictor's history and/or its internal workings, you have some non-zero chance of winning the two box solution.

Expand full comment

> "Arbitrarily high accuracy" is just as impossible as perfection.

The original formulation gives boxes with the values of $1,000,000 and $1,000. Exactly what do you think is the maximum accuracy prediction possible, and how much does it change the math?

There *are* strategies where the player introduces randomness into their own decision, and this does indeed lower the predictor's accuracy correspondingly. Do any of these improve the player's expected winnings?

>If you have any knowledge of the predictor's history and/or its internal workings, you have some non-zero chance of winning the two box solution.

"Winning" is not defined as being theoretically able to choose to two-box and walk away with $1,001,000. If that non-zero chance is sufficiently close to zero, two-boxing is still a bad idea just as surely as betting on 00 at a roulette table.

Expand full comment

Newcomb's paradox has no issue with the halting problem so long as you can't see Omega's prediction. Its prediction doesn't impact your decision at all, so it can be correct. If you can see what prediction Omega makes, than Omega is solving the halting problem unless you happen to make the same decision regardless. Maybe Omega makes predictions for what everyone passing by would do in each scenario, and only opens the door for those who's actions wouldn't be inconsistent?

Expand full comment

> Newcomb's paradox has no issue with the halting problem so long as you can't see Omega's prediction

This isn't correct. The Halting problem isn't undecidable just because the program can change its behaviour based on the prediction, that's just the simplest degenerate case. Goedel proved that there are in fact an infinite number of undecidable propositions. Undecidability is fundamental and inescapable.

Since a human can simulate a Turing machine, then Omega must have its own set of undecidable propositions for which predictions simply must be considerably less than certain.

Expand full comment

"Since a human can simulate a Turing machine" [citation needed]

But it's easy to get around that. Just add a provision that says you need to choose within 10 seconds, or else you automatically 1 box it. Though realistically, unless you never choose a box due to an unterminated loop or something, the halting problem shouldn't enter into it anyway.

Expand full comment

I do wonder about the incentives going into those expert predictions in Short #2. Do any of them get any benefit from being right?

Expand full comment

And the distinction between "good forecaster" vs "academic" vs "pundit" seems important too - so-called "experts" are quite often political animals rather than truth-seekers.

Expand full comment

That is to say, in solid agreement with your comment, that in many cases the "experts" aren't even trying to make accurate predictions

Expand full comment

> (this is just the endogeneity problem, but for the future instead of the past!)

Put differently: It would seem that using conditional prediction markets to make decisions might turn you into an evidential decision theorist...

> "Too close to call", reciprocal scoring, Theranos, Ritterhouse, long-termism

Rittenhouse doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body of the post at all?

Expand full comment

> Rittenhouse doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body of the post at all?

The box above "I was wondering when this was going to show up"

Expand full comment

Oops, thanks, seems I missed that.

Expand full comment

> turn you into an evidential decision theorist

Wait, I was just wondering if this considering this problem was how Robin Hanson came to think of futarchy. Doesn't the commitment to picking the choice predicted to be better turn it into causal decision theory?

Expand full comment

I don't think so. In the example, policymakers are trading off the benefits of a mask mandate against other values. The benefits are larger when the pandemic is very bad, so even if you commit to picking the choice predicted to be better you are still more likely to implement mask mandates if the pandemic is bad. So the same problem occurs.

Expand full comment

I'm talking about a changed legal environment where what we now call the authorities have no choice of policy. Their job is to implement the decision which the prediction market made. And this is common knowledge of the participants in the market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy

Expand full comment

Yeah that's what I'm talking about too, that's what I meant when I said "if you commit to picking the choice predicted to be better". Maybe you thought I was talking about a scenario where politicians say that they are going to follow the prediction markets, but still have the ability to do something different?

Expand full comment

The opposite. I model futarchy as: the market estimates (Y1 deaths | do(mask mandate)) and (Y2 deaths | do(no mask mandate)); then the state mandates masks iff expectation(Y1) < expectation(Y2). In this model the decision node (mask mandate? or not?) is screened off from any nodes about the *reasons* for the decision. The betters will have a variety of models of the situation but they'd all share this property (assuming they trust the institutions to work as claimed).

Expand full comment

Actually, the state will mandate masks if the difference in deaths is more than the costs of the mask mandate policy in terms of other variables that the state has pre-defined. If the pandemic is bad then the deaths saved by the mandate are more likely to overcome this threshold, even if the mandate saves lives regardless of how bad the pandemic is. So the state is more likely to implement a mask mandate if the pandemic is bad.

Expand full comment

Re: “Too Close To Call”

The networks basically have three classifications (in a 2-person race): Called for A, Called for B, Too Close to Call. They don't want to deal with things like "favored", and given what we saw in the 2020 presidential election, I'm inclined to agree with them. The NBC and ABC decision desks won't call a race unless they're at least 99.5 confident in the winner. PredictIt and Polymarket weren't at that point yet, although prediction markets can be a little wonky around the extremes.

NBC: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/nbc-news-decision-desk-how-we-call-races-election-night-n1245481

ABC: https://fivethirtyeight.com/videos/the-decision-desk-wont-project-the-winner-of-a-state-until-its-99-5-sure/

Expand full comment

Yeah Scott seems to be missing the fact that in this context "call" is a technical term meaning announcing that a candidate has won, not just saying "this candidate seems to be winning." 98% just *is* actually too close to call by this standard.

Expand full comment

Yes, but giving people lg(101) bits of information is way better than giving them lg(3) bits of information.

Expand full comment

But you're not giving people log(101) bits of information. Information is not conveyed magically from the mind of the reporter to the mind of the reader.

Treat the news as a noisy channel, with reduced information capacity. Headlines magnify that problem since informational (non-clickbait) headlines try to convey information without the benefit of the full article.

Expand full comment

I mean reporting a percentage 0-100%, like the betting markets do, is lg(101) bits of information. News reports compress that range down to just three options: Yes, no, and "too close to call". I'd be happy if the news just quoted the prediction markets.

Expand full comment

This is why the needle is so great!

Expand full comment

In particular, extrapolate it to a 50-state presidential election. If you call each state when it's 98% sure, your chance of getting them all right is .98^50 == .36, so 64% chance at least one is wrong. Let's be more realistic: plenty of states never get as low as 98%. Keep it to the 10 or so "battleground states": now 98% right gets you "only" a 18% chance of getting one wrong. Hope that one wasn't Florida 2000!

Expand full comment

In addition, if you read election day articles, or watch election day TV news coverage, the analysts often say things like "Candidate A is favored", or "Candidate B has an increasingly narrow path to victory. These aren't exactly probabilities but tell the same story as them.

Expand full comment

This is the correct answer. See also the Fox (and eventually AP) call of Arizona in 2020, which was predictably correct at the time it was made but nowhere near the 1/200 threshold it should have been and therefore a bad call.

Expand full comment

“Too close to call” and “too early to call” are not exactly synonyms though.

Expand full comment

Scary detail in that "Expert forecasts vs. reality" tweet that's easy to miss (and complicates the story of systematic mis-calibration a bit): up through 2008 or so the life expectancy projections consistently erred on the low side. Since then they've consistently erred on the high side.

Expand full comment

Related: When one sees these instances of experts repeatedly predicting a trend change and repeatedly being wrong, one is inclined to lambast them saying "They should have seen all these previous predictions of a similar trend change, and how they had always been wrong, so maybe they should have learned the lesson and they should have just predicted that the trend would continue." But in what time frame should they look at the trend? After 2008, should they predict that the long-term trend (one of relatively fast increasing life expectancy) will continue, or the short-term trend (of much slower increase) will continue? Or maybe they should predict that the short-term will continue *on the short term* (but neither prediction is obviously right on the long term)?

Expand full comment

In fairness to traditional media, part of the issue is that their standards of proof are super high. They make hundreds of predictions per election, and they get one wrong maybe once every decade or so. They probably do know that the chance of a particular candidate winning is 98% (or whatever), but by their standard that just isn’t good enough, because that would lead to many more missed calls.

Expand full comment

That's the idealistic take. The cynical take is that they just want you to keep watching, and as soon as they call it one way or the other, half the audience is going to change channels.

Expand full comment

Honestly it’s more realistic to say that they just are really conservative on calling it. If they get even one major call wrong they’ll get lambasted for weeks, and no one is materially better off for knowing the result a couple hours sooner.

Expand full comment

I'm guessing this is what applies to actual "calls", while the keep reading incentive drives horse race coverage in the preceding weeks.

Expand full comment

I have seen the third graphic of XiXiDu from people who claimed that the graphic is nonsense and that XiXiDu got it completely wrong. The many horizontal lines are not predictions. Rather they are summed up plans of governments of various countries on how much solar capacity the governments plan to fund in the next years.

I didn't verify the claim, so if someone can say something about it (or about the other three graphs), that would be nice!

Expand full comment

What does the prediction markets say about Trump running for - and winning - the Republican nomination for US president in 2024?

I ask, since back in 2020 I betted a bottle of good italian wine plus a dinner at a nice italian restaurant that he will run & get the nomination in 2024. (Hedging, really)

More generally, I am worried that if none of the sane US political people pick up obviously sensible policy proposals, like immigration control of irregulars & compensating those who lose out of economic globalisation, then a window opens for the insane to take power. Like in Russia 1917 and Germany 1934. Not as dramatic as there, but still.

May sanity prevail among the not-insane in the US. It is important also for Europeans, and everyone else for that matter.

Expand full comment

PredictIt shows a 40% probability that Trump will win the Republican nomination. But this far out, I wouldn't give it a lot of credence. Primary elections are hard to forecast because the candidates are so similar ideologically.

Expand full comment

Thanks Chipsie and Anna.

My own subjective estimates, for what they are worth, have been 50/50 that he will run, 70/30 that he will win the Republican nomination, and 40/60 that he will win the election. Which gives a probability of .5x.7=.35 that he will win the nomination (enough to bet a bottle of good wine), but only .5x.7x.4=.14 that he will become the next US president. (For Trump himself it would boil down to .7x.4= .28 though.)

All subjective estimates are basically talking-through-one's-hat (as the English say), but on the other hand you often need distance to see things clearly. I never understood my own country better than after having lived a year in the US (the fog lifted after approx. six months), and maybe it works the other way as well.

Expand full comment

Seriously, all the havering from the Democratic side about Trump makes me think they are building him up as a credible candidate in 2024.

While it's to their short-term advantage to keep scaremongering about the Trumpian menace and likely coups, in the long-term they are contradicting themselves about him being powerless and ineffectual and reduced to angry outbursts on social media from his exile in Mar-a-Lago when they and their supporters write lurid pieces about plotting coups:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/14/trump-president-2024-election-coup-republicans

Expand full comment

Good point.

We are in the middle of the defining-the-situation political game (which is at least 80 percent of what media-led political discussions are about, everywhere), and it is always dangerous to run two conflicting narratives/definitions of the situation at the same time (Trump is cunning and clever/Trump is a nutcase).

I have a hard time making up my mind myself. Sometimes I believe he is both, which is the most dangerous kind of politician. I actually hope he is ”only” cunning and clever, since I would much prefer a clever half-crook to occupy the White House (like Nixon), than somebody who - insanely - really believe that the election was stolen from him (plus the old Obama birth certificate nonsense).

With the benefit of hindsight, claiming “the election was stolen from me” is rather clever, if he plans to run again in 2024. The US dislikes a loser. Running like “ last time’s loser tries a second time” is unlikely to cut it. Running like “last time’s winner whose victory was stolen from him tries a second time” is a better narrative, from Trump’s point of view. Not much better perhaps, since he must convince the median voter (who hopefully prefer a sane ruler) that he is not insane enough to actually believe so himself, and only pretends to believe this, because he is very clever and knows it positions him better for a re-run…the message is rather convoluted.

However, if the Democrats mess things up sufficiently, with lack of immigration control, no protection of the US working class against competition from abroad, the likely very costly “green shift”, and fumbled foreign policy, enough voters may hold their nose and take a chance with him again in 2024.

A better strategy for the Democrats would be to instead "steal" many of Trump's policies in the years ahead (packaged a bit differently, of course). If they fail to do this, I’d adjust my prior of him winning in 2024 to 50/50 (if he runs)😊.

Expand full comment

But isn't Trump actually great for them, compared with somebody who is both opposed to them and might have the ability to do something about it? Trump had the majority in both Houses for two years and the only thing he managed to do was slashing some taxes, the apocalyptic-level menace that he is.

Expand full comment

If Biden does no better on COVID (and despite a vaccine it looks pretty similar to me - the restrictions are still in place; more people have died of COVID with Biden in office than Trump), and there are other things that bother people (inflation, Afghanistan, immigration, whatever) that is still an issue approaching 2024, then I think a lot of people will remember the Trump years differently than they would have said at the time. Biden ran as a centrist uniter, but hasn't really governed as such. Trump lost in large part because of COVID, otherwise the very close election could have easily, I would say would have, gone Trump's way.

Trump's years, outside of the Russia allegations and the tweets/self-aggrandizing lies, were actually pretty calm and prosperous. With the Russia allegations looking worse for the media sharing them, Trump's personality and weird lies are the last major issue. People tend to forget over time, or remember more fondly, concerns of the past. With your point that Trump didn't change a whole lot, it may sound to many like a fine alternative in practice, even if Trump himself looks like/is a mess.

Expand full comment

Trump is less likely to win than a moderate Republican, which means he's a better opponent to have in that sense. But the downsides of him winning are larger. In particular if you are concerned about the erosion of democracy, a small chance of never being able to win an election again is worse than a higher chance of losing one now

Expand full comment

Sure, if those are the two options. What the establishment is actually afraid of, it seems to me, is that a much more competent Trump might appear, a populist authoritarian who has a realistic chance to bring about that erosion. If there's an actual demand for this sort of personality on the right, a prominent buffoon already in place seems to be a lesser risk than a vacancy which might get filled by an unpredictable dark horse.

Expand full comment

The IEA estimates have a huge bias against r

Solar. I won’t speculate on why.

(That said I read, independently of this, their reports on wind which was quite gung ho).

Expand full comment

To be honest, I don't see how reciprocal forecasting is supposed to work in game-theoretic sense. Normal prediction market has nice and obvious Nash equilibrium: just predict the probability as best you can. Not so in reciprocal forecasting. From what I can tell, a strategy closest to optimum is to shout at loud as you can "Let's all vote for X" and then vote for X. If it is even possible to do this without communicating with others by forecasting the most trivial outcome, like answer 50% to any question.

Iterative prediction is far more plausible. You don't even need to do the iteration if you ensure two conditions: 1. The stakes are freely tradable at any time. 2. While the prediction stays the same, the value of the stake is growing at least as fast as some default assets like S&P 500. If the second condition is not fulfilled, then unless the market is extremely wrong, long-term it is more profitable to invest in other asserts. This can be achieved by, you guessed it, having the market operator invest the stakes in that very investment product. This could even happen automatically by making the stakes in some cryptocurrency like ETH, if you believe that ETH will continue growing at least as fast as S&P 500.

Expand full comment

It's just a Keynesian beauty contest. You have a strong incentive to coordinate with everyone else, not to be right.

Expand full comment

2) is possible to achieve by availability of leverage. For example, for any sufficiently liquid base contract, one can set up a futures market with risk based margining. Then each long or short participant can invest most of their cash in any asset mix they like at each point in time. This may be easier to implement than to mitigate credit risk on a market investing market operator or agreeing on a single default asset.

Expand full comment

Biden himself has said some things about being a one term president. Mixed with his age and his low approval ratings, it's not surprising that the markets are looking for alternatives.

It's a sad state of affairs that the candidates available are as poor as they are. I don't think any of the listed candidates can beat Trump, let alone a more solid Republican that doesn't make half the country reflexively convulse at hearing their name. Those that excite the base scare the middle, and vice versa. The fact that Hillary Clinton appears in the group is certainly not a great sign for Democrats. It's early yet, though, and maybe some new candidates or a different consensus candidate can still emerge. Or again, maybe Biden turns things around and doesn't get any health issues and decides to run again. Obviously I'm not expecting that to all happen. Even if he does turn around his approval ratings, that might be a great time to retire with a good track record and leave a legacy, rather than chancing that he'll make it to 85 in one of the most grueling jobs in the world.

Biden would likely lose right now to most Republican candidates, though he has a few years to potentially turn around his unpopularity. Harris is riding her own unpopularity as well as Biden's. Interestingly enough is the recent soft takedown articles from left-leaning mainstream news sources. They don't seem to like her either, and may be paving the way to have another candidate in 2024. Buttigieg is not popular with the farther left, and most of the others are multi-time losers who are even older than they were the last time they ran. AOC is too inexperienced to run a nationwide campaign, and too limited in her popularity to unite the Democrats. She's a darling of the far left and young people, but unless she comes sharply to the center, she's going to scare away a lot of the middle and independents.

I read that list as Democrats being in real trouble in 2024. Trump could be divisive enough to give some of them a chance, maybe, but a better candidate seems like a pretty obvious win for Republicans at the moment.

Expand full comment

I think a lot of that list represents unknown unknowns - a similar list in 2013 for the 2016 election wouldn’t have listed Donald Trump at all!

People think that Biden won’t run and Kamala won’t win, so they want to sell Biden and Kamala and without any other reasonable options yet they just list famous Democrats. I don’t think there’s a chance that AOC will make a serious bid, Bernie won’t run because of his age, and Clinton definitely won’t run either.

Buttigieg and Warren are both realistic options (and correspondingly get some predictions on the list) but it’s so far away from the election that it’s still pretty meaningless.

Expand full comment

Buttigieg maybe, in time - he's currently Secretary for Transport so he is getting that experience of being in government under his belt, but he's still young and inexperienced (for a politician) and he's not wired into a political machine like Obama and Chicago.

I think Warren has shot her bolt - she had a chance last time, but since Biden was always going to be the pick that went nowhere, and she kind of has "a great future behind her" - she was touted as going to do great things, but she's been around now for a while and that kind of candidacy never really did happen. I think, to be frank, that by 2024 she will be too stale.

I have no idea who a potential Democratic candidate that is not Harris or Biden might be, though.

Expand full comment

"a similar list in 2013 for the 2016 election wouldn’t have listed Donald Trump at all!"

Yes, the most amusing thing that came out of the 2016 result were the victory videos showing all the pundits confidently predicting "Clinton will win this state, she will take that state, the polls say such-and-such" and on the night, those states went for Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT0AjmeJ_sg

I think everybody enjoys seeing pundits ending up with egg on their faces. The sniffy certitude on display that of course Hillary had it in the bag makes it all the sweeter.

As well as everyone from Lin-Manuel Miranda up to Obama saying "Never gonna happen" and then it did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqEddipbpkw

Expand full comment

I definitely agree that it's too early to rule out other, new candidates. The problem is Biden sucking up the official oxygen by being a first term president. To actively put themselves out there when he hasn't said whether he plans to run again risks going against the party. If he does decide to run, and presuming he hasn't fixed his approval ratings sufficiently, then potential candidates are going to have to really think about whether to run anyway, instead of sitting things out. Tough choice all around, unless he backs off and makes way.

Expand full comment

I definitely agree that if he chooses to run for re-election then he’ll almost definitely win the primary, probably by default.

Expand full comment

If it does turn out to be Biden versus Trump in 2024, I have no idea what will happen.

You would expect that selecting Kamala Harris as Vice President was giving her the chance to build her candidacy for 2024, but there are some odd little stories here and there which whisper at the rift within the lute and dissatisfaction (allegedly) with her performance to date:

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/14/politics/kamala-harris-frustrating-start-vice-president/index.html

Presumably that is why some people are betting a different candidate than Biden (on grounds of age) or Harris could be selected.

Expand full comment

It's funny you say Hillary Clinton being there is a bad sign for Democrats -- I was thinking it's a bad sign for the reputation of prediction markets. There's something about Hillary that drives ~10% of bettors insane, which the only reason her name is even at 2c up there.

Expand full comment

Assuming I were 100% confident that it goes to zero, I'd have to spend $980 right now to make $1000 when the contract resolves in 2.5 years, which turns out to be less than a 1% return.

Scott was talking about trying to bootstrap returns from far future events, but there's only so fast you can bid down something with this small of a return.

Expand full comment

It's not about making money, it's about prediction markets as a means of finding truth, which is what Scott is advocating for in this series. Hillary has nowhere close to a 2% chance of getting the 2024 nomination. She had nowhere close to a 10% chance of being arrested and jailed. She had nowhere close to a 10% chance of getting the 2020 nomination (nor did Yang, for that matter). But those were the chances that the PredictIt markets settled on. You can't expect people to trust odds set by prediction markets when those markets are frequently distorted by cultists and conspiracy theorists.

Expand full comment

I also agree with that, but the prediction markets would have found some other names to say instead if there were realistic candidates. That speaks to the idea that they don't think Biden will be the candidate, but really can't think of someone who makes sense that is actually plausible.

Expand full comment

A lot depends on who emerges into leadership, on both sides, after the Democrats are slaughtered in November '22.

Expand full comment

I'm curious to see if the Reddit prediction feature works. Getting prediction tokens seems like it would be good for clout in a subreddit, but the strength of that incentive probably varies a lot across Reddit. Too bad PredictIt and PolyMarket don't have subreddits. If Reddit can beat a PredictIt market on a question that matters, that would be really surprising, because seeking clout on a subreddit would be a better incentive than money to reveal hidden information and make accurate predictions

Expand full comment

>I’ve heard a lot of stuff about the prosecutor really bungling this one, but mostly from conservatives who I would have expected to hate the prosecutor anyway, so it’s good to get objective confirmation that yeah, this isn’t going anywhere.

I'm not saying the prosecutor is doing a great job, but the main disconnect here is between "he did something bad" vs "he did something illegal." The law sets out specific criteria about what counts as self defence, and I think Rittenhouse both was irresponsible and definitely hits the bar for self-defence here.

Think of it as similar to QI things, where people are shocked cops aren't convicted for doing bad things. We wrote laws/made SCOTUS decisions saying you can do *extremely* bad things without it being a crime. I don't think the prosecutor screwed up, I think he's unconvictable on the merits of the law.

Expand full comment

I agree... but then why proceed with the case? If there's no reasonable prospect of conviction, he bungled it by trying the case

Expand full comment

I think because it was so controversial and trying the case means people can see the adversarial process play out and hypothetically have peace with the outcome, vs it being the prosecutor’s private call.

Expand full comment

And this is very, very important - that justice is seen to be done is arguably more important to public order than actually having just results.

Expand full comment

One possibility is that there's room between "no reasonable chance of conviction" and "conviction at trial is likely". If the prosecutor judged something like a 20% chance of conviction at trial, it might make sense to proceed anyway. If the prosecutor believed Rittenhouse deserved to be punished (either because he's likely in the prosecutor's judgement to be factually and legally guilty even if not necessarily to a reasonable doubt threshold, or because the prosecutor is assessing dessert based on abstract notions of justice or cynical judgement of the needs of public order rather than a faithful adherence to the letter of the law), a 20% chance of conviction is better than a 0% chance if you don't bring charges.

Moreover, the threat of going to trial when there's some chance of conviction but not a great chance is how prosecutors get leverage for the plea bargaining process by which they secure most of their convictions, giving a cynical reason to prosecute a trial you're likely but not certain to lose. It's like being the Dread Pirate Roberts: once word gets out you've gone soft, it's nothing but work work work all the time.

Both of the above are compounded by the possibility that the evidence looked better to the prosecutor before trial. Key testimony from prosecution witnesses seems to have come out more favorable to the defense at trial than the prosecution was expecting, and also the judge made some rulings on evidence admissibility that were likely more favorable to the defense than the prosecution was expecting.

Even if the prosecutor did believe he had no realistic chance at conviction, there are plausible cynical reasons for going to trial anyway. Both for public order considerations and for his own reputation and career.

Going to trial could be an exercise in failure theater. If the prosecutor dropped charges before trial, it's look to members of the public who believe Rittenhouse to be guilty like the prosecutor (and the system he's part of) was complicit in letting a murderer go free. This make the prosecutor himself a villain, further undermines shaky confidence in the system, and risks triggering more violent protests in response to the perceived injustice. Taking the charges to trial gives a chance of shifting perceived blame from the individual prosecutor and the legal system as a whole to the judge and the jury.

There's also a potential angle of "the process is the punishment". Facing murder charges and the possibility of life in prison for a year or so isn't nothing, even if it's enormously preferable to actually being convicted. If the prosecutor believed Rittenhouse deserved punishment, or the public order required Rittenhouse's behavior to be disincentivized, then putting him through the rigours of trial is one way to do that.

Expand full comment

Political aspirations of the prosecutor.

Expand full comment

Apparently, the curfew charge was dismissed because the prosecutor *literally forgot to present any evidence for that charge*.

Expand full comment

Interesting. My impression was that they knew they couldn't win on it (due to a lack of any effort at enforcement), and they brought it just to imply that he was there illegally and add to the perception of his recklessness / lawlessness; and actually arguing the charge would have undermined that perception.

Same with the gun charge, finally thrown out today. The statute in question doesn't apply to the gun he was carrying (not a "short barreled rifle"), nor to him as a 17 year old, I think. (I believe it has an exemption for 16 and 17 year olds.) But the prosecutors brought both these inapplicable charges to better hand-wave at "illegal gun, illegal presence, reckless conduct". Interested if you have a source contradicting that.

Expand full comment

The gun statue is confusingly worded, and both sides think that it obviously applies or doesn't apply to Kyle. From what I've heard, the judge threw it out precisely because it was so confusing.

As for the curfew charge, the impression I got is that they'd have had a slam dunk if they bothered, but I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea how those things actually work.

Expand full comment

Isn't there a problem with the curfew charge, that there were literally hundreds of people actively breaking the curfew, including the people who Kyle shot/was being chased by?

Not very sympathetic to go after Kyle only on a curfew charge. I also find myself wondering if the lack of prosecution of the guy who got shot in the arm for having an illegal weapon there may influence the jury?

Expand full comment