(2021-12-24) Make Covid Predictions Take My Money On Zvi Bets And Taking Ideas Seriously

Applied Divinity Studies: Make COVID Predictions, Take My Money: On Zvi, Bets and Taking Ideas Seriously. Zvi and Holden are betting on when Covid ends. I am taking Zvi’s side and offering the same bet, except 10x larger. (2021-12-23) Karnofsky Bet With Zvi About Omicron

There are two issues to discuss:
Why am I doing this, and why for so much money?
Why did Holden and Zvi do this, and why for so little money?

If you think about it for more than a second, you would ask: What on earth could possibly prevent Zvi from working on this full time? What could possibly prevent him from hiring a research assistant?

As it turns out, the reasons are mostly his own opportunity cost and neuroses.

To be clear, I’m not claiming that Zvi is acting poorly, and certainly not that he’s acting unethically

My view is that we should be grateful for the work he is doing.

But it is bad, not in the sense of blameworthiness or even ethical harm, but bad in the sense that as I complain about incessantly, we are, as a civilization, squandering our potential, and in particular our human capital.

Which brings us to the question of betting. Holden’s payout if he loses is just $40. As a reminder, he’s the co-CEO of a foundation that disburses around $300 million annually, which makes the bet just hilariously small, especially given that he recently called a related Omicron question his “Candidate for ‘highest-stakes question of the next several months’”.

Using bets to hold yourself accountable is like using a hammer to crush graham crackers for your pie crust. It’s an acceptable use, but far from the tool’s potential.

If Holden and Zvi really want more people working seriously on high-stakes questions, they shouldn’t hold a trivial bet with each other, they should place really big bets publicly and allow anyone to gamble against them

At this point, you’re probably wondering: isn’t this just a prediction market?

Kalshi has some good omicron questions, as does Metaculus.

What I’m really saying is that prediction markets are public goods, and so they should be subsidized. Zvi is actually the one who wrote the post on Subsidizing Prediction Markets, and doesn’t have to be convinced on this point.

But from Holden’s grantmaking perspective, what I’m really arguing is: If you think these questions are critical, and you think there’s a high moral value of information at this particular moment, then this is the time to enact those proposed subsidies.