Will my father find the prediction market resources I send him interesting?

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resolved Nov 25

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My dad is a professor of mathematics at UF. I asked him some questions about prediction market math, and he was a bit confused about how such markets worked and what the point of them is. He also seemed a bit put-off by Bayesian approaches to probability and their application to real-world descisions.

So I'm sending him an email with some more information about this area. So far, here's what it contains:

Will he find it interesting enough to spend more than just a few minutes looking into the subject?

Feel free to suggest other resources I can include. He'd likely be most interested in things that touch on the intersection of prediction markets with game theory or other areas of more traditional math. He would likely not be interested in anything super technical about exact market mechanisms, like DPM vs. CFMM or whatever.

Close date updated to 2024-01-01 12:00 am

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predictedNO

I'm gonna go with a NO here. I'm guessing that he hasn't looked into it at all, but doesn't want to hurt my feelings by telling me that, and it doesn't seem fair to NO bettors for me to continue poking him about it.

predictedNO

I asked him, he said "somewhat". I'll need to ask for clarification...

Probably too late but i would suggest a video, like this one from Robin Hanson: https://youtu.be/4yZKGbq1YmA

predictedNO

I sent him an email a few days ago asking for his thoughts, no response yet. He may just be busy.

Also there's no reason this market should be closed, so I'm reopening it until I get an answer from him.

Haven't heard back yet; not promising.

predictedNO

Alright, just sent off the email.

If you're a subscriber of ACX, @ScottAlexander has a prediction-market FAQ (peer review mode) up at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/peer-review-prediction-market-faq

Scott you should publish so Isaac's dad can read it! (I've also got someone I want to share it with)

@citrinitas Yeah, that would be nice, but unfortunately he's not a subscriber.

predictedNO

Just got published today, so I included it.

"Interesting" is a really low bar for someone who already (I have to assume) likes math that much. I have an essentially recreational interest in math and would say I find prediction markets "deeply fascinating" and "cool as hell."

@GavrielK You'd be surprised! There's a wide range of mathematics topics, and people who are interested in one can find others quite boring. (For example, I have next to no interest in calculus.)

I've edited the resolution criteria to be "interested enough to spend more than just a few minutes looking into the subject".

In particular I remember a paper about how multiple sub-agents could use a prediction market and an evolutionary algorithm to comprise a decision algorithm for an artificial intelligence, and this was shown to give optimal results under certain assumptions. But I'm having some trouble finding it.