Encouraging New Users To Bet On Their Beliefs

post by YafahEdelman (yafah-edelman-1) · 2023-04-18T22:10:58.695Z · LW · GW · 8 comments

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[Epistemic Status: I think this post gestures in the right direction and the ideas in it are positive on the margin. However I am uncertain what I would write if I put substantially more time into thinking on the subject and think it plausible that discussion on this post will cause me to change my mind.]

tl;dr: I think LessWrong would benefit from new users betting on predictions at the top of their posts/comments. This might be difficult to do, so in order to encourage it I am offering to subsidize markets created by new LessWrong users on Manifold - a site for betting with play money for free. 

Sometimes it is important to be able to discuss things without exposing them to harsh analytical criticism or being forced into objective stances^[1]. This probably applies even more often to people new to LessWrong who may not be used to the particular epistemic standards here.  However, if you think you are comfortable submitting your ideas to more rigorous scrutiny, one thing you can do is bet on them.

Betting on your beliefs is a major part [? · GW] of the culture of LessWrong^[2]. Beliefs that someone is willing to bet on are taken more seriously and can help ground discussion. Recently, the site Manifold.markets has provided a way to do this for free, using play money called mana to bet on user created (and resolved) markets. They also provide a subsidy feature, where users can subsidize markets to encourage betting on them. 

I think a lot of recent content by new users on LessWrong gestures at concepts sort of vaguely or proposes a theory without communicating the writer's level of confidence, which isn't unreasonable - communicating in a novel way is hard! But this has the unfortunate result of making it difficult to have productive conversations, at least for me, as I often end up feeling like I might disagree with the writer's underlying beliefs but those beliefs aren't made explicitly enough for me to contradict. 

In order to encourage betting by new users, I am offering to subsidize manifold markets new users include within their posts or replies. I intend do this^[3] for all^[4]such markets I see mentioned by new users^[5] that I see (see footnotes for qualifications/details).  I recommend putting the markets in the top of your comment/reply to maximize the chance that I notice them. This should provide an incentive (in mana) to make such markets, as well as increasing the accuracy of those markets by incentivizing betting on them.

Some proposals for markets you can create, ideally with expiry dates in the near future (next few months) with a probability that is not too close to 0% or 100% in your point of view.

• Whether a newsworthy event will happen. It doesn’t need to perfectly capture all of what you are arguing, just “will a major newspaper report in the next year that X happened” works.
•  Whether a decision you are advocating for will be made. 
• Whether there will be a substantial amount of interest in a few months about a topic you think is promising.
• Whether a project you are proposing will be successful, or continue to exist.
• Whether a prominent researcher will publicly agree with something.

1. ^{^}

   I like this post [LW · GW] which discusses that.

2. ^{^}

   This does imply that new users to LessWrong who may lack experience betting are at a disadvantage when betting against users who have been around awhile and have practice betting. This is why I'm offering to subsidize bets users make rather than just offering to bet against them.

3. ^{^}

   How large the subsidy is may vary but I'll start off by defaulting to 100 mana for markets in posts and 20 mana for markets in replies.   

4. ^{^}

   All markets within reason, if someone tries to abuse this I do not intend to subsidize them. 

5. ^{^}

   Where new user includes anyone with a sprout icon next to their name, and possibly other users depending on my personal judgement.

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