Krantz Mechanism Demonstration
Mini
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115
2100
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Manifold should consider these changes.
34%
P(doom) is less than 0.1.

This prediction is aimed at demonstrating the function of the krantz mechanism.

The krantz mechanism is an abstract format for storing information. Similar to 'the set of integers', it does not exist in the physical world. To demonstrate the set of integers, we make physical approximations of the abstract idea by writing them down.  Humans have created symbols that point to these elements and have shared them with each other (to ensure the process of decentralization) and agreed to use the same ones so nobody gets confused.

To demonstrate the krantz mechanism, we make a symbolic approximation of the abstract idea, by writing down elements of the form ('Any formal proposition.', confidence=range(0-1), value=range(0-1)).

My claim is that the krantz mechanism is an operation that can be applied to approximate a person's internal model of the world.  Much how LLMs can infinitely scale to approximate a person's model of the language itself, krantz aims to compress the logical relation of observable truths that language points at.

For this demonstration, I will not be using value=range(0-1) and will only be using ('This is a proposition.', confidence=range(.01-.99)) (due to limitations of the current Manifold system).   If I were working at Manifold, I would recommend creating a secondary metric for expressing the degree to which the 'evaluation of confidence' is valuable.  This will later play a critical role in the decentralization of attention.

A proposition can be any expression of language that points to a discrete truth about the user's internal world model.  Analytic philosophers write arguments using propositions.  Predictions are a subset of propositions.  Memes and other forms of visual expression can also be true or false propositions (They can point to an expression of the real state of the observable Universe). 

Things that are not discrete propositions:  Expressions that contain multiple propositions, blog posts, most videos, or simple ideas like 'liberty' or 'apple'.

 

Each proposition (first element of the set) must have these properties.

(1) Is language.

A language can be very broad in the abstract sense of the krantz mechanism, but for this posting, we will restrict language to a string of characters that points to a proposition or logical relation of propositions.

(2) Is true or false.

Can have a subjective confidence assigned to it by an observer.

(3) Has value.

Represents a market evaluation of how important that idea is to society.  This is distinct from representing the value the idea has specifically to the user.  It is aimed to represent roughly what a member of society would be willing to pay for that truth to be well accepted by society.  One example of this would be taxes.  Ideally, we pay our taxes because we want someone to establish and become familiar with the issues in our environment that are important to us, make sure people know how to fix them, make sure society will reward them if they do and make sure society understands the need to reward the individuals that do resolve the problems.  We pay our taxes, so people will do things for us.  We do this on social media with likes and shares.  We give up attention to the algorithm to endorse and support other ideas in society because we believe in investing value into directing attention to it.  We do this in education and professional careers.  Our economy is driven because it rewards those that succeed in figuring out how to do what society needed done and direct the energy to do it. We give our children rewards for doing their homework because it is important for engineers to understand math.  Soon all that will be left is learning and verifying where to direct the abundant energy to accomplish the tasks that we should.  It is a way of pointing the cognitive machinery of the collective consciousness.

 

Propositions as logical relations:

Since propositions can be written as conditionals, like 'If Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.' or as nested conditionals, like 'If all men are mortal, then 'If Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.'.', it follows that the work of analytic philosophers can be defined within a theoretical object like the krantz mechanism.  For example, every element of the Tractatus is a member of the krantz set.  Every logical relation defined by the outline of the Tractatus is a member of the krantz set.  As a user, you can browse through the Tractatus and assign a confidence and value to each element (explicit and conditional) and create a market evaluation of the ideas contained.  If hundreds of other philosophers created works like the Tractatus (but included confidences and values), then we would be able to compile their lists together into a collective market evaluation of ideas.  A collective intelligence.

Society seemed to enjoy continental philosophy more, so we ended up with LLMs instead of krantz functions.

It is important to note, that philosophy is quite a wide domain.  The content in the krantz set can range from political opinions, to normative values, to basic common sense facts (the domain approximated by CYC), to arguments about the forefront of technology and what future we should pursue.  We could solve philosophy.  We could define our language.  If @EliezerYudkowsky wanted to insert his full Tractatus of arguments for high p(doom) into such a system, then we could create a market mechanism that rewards only the individuals that either (1) identify a viable analytic counterargument that achieves greater market support or (2) align with his arguments (because, assuming they are complete and sound, it would allow for Eliezer to exploit the market contradiction between propositions that logically imply each other).  For example, if Bob denies 'Socrates is mortal' but has accepted 'Socrates is a man.' and 'All men are mortal.', both with confidence(.99), then he will create a market variance by wagering on anything lower than the product of those confidences.  So, why would Bob wager in the market of 'Socrates is mortal.'?  Liquidity. 

Somebody that wants Bob to demonstrate to society that he believes 'Socrates is mortal' injected it.

Limitations of the current incentive structure in Manifold and what I'd recommend considering to change:

There is a fundamental difference between Manifold and Metaculus.  The difference is in whether or not capital is needed to be put down in order to earn points.  Metaculus embraces a mechanism that is beneficial for the user with no capital, but insight into the truth.  Manifold uses a mechanism that requires capital investment, but attracts more participation.  Both concerns can be addressed by handling liquidity injection as the primary driver of incentives. 

When a user wants to inject capital into a market, they can inject liquidity into particular propositions directly (this could also be done by assigning a value(0-1) and distributing liquidity proportionally across propositions from a general supply). That liquidity is dispersed evenly across either all or a select group of users as funds that can be wagered only on that proposition.  Think of the liquidity as a 'proxy bet' the house (in this case the individuals injecting liquidity into the market) is letting the user place on what the market confidence will trend to.  If the user fails to place a wager, the free bet may be retracted if liquidity is withdrawn from the fund.  If the user places a wager and loses, the user can no longer place any free wagers on that proposition (unless further liquidity is contributed which then would allow the user to freely invest the difference), but may still choose to wager their own funds up to the amount allocated for the free wager.  If a user places a proxy wager for 100 and the market moves to where they have a value of 1000, they can choose to sell their shares to receive 900 credits and reimburse the proxy liquidity to be used in the future. 

In other words, if you have 500 mana and 10 people, instead of injecting 500 mana of liquidity into a market that 10 people will be incentivized to wager their own funds on, we should give 50 mana in 'proxy wagers' to each person with the expectation that they will have to invest cognitive labor to earn a profit that they get to retain.

The two important principles here are that the liquidity injections (which can be contributed by any users) are (1) what determine the ceiling initial investment in a proposition and (2) the extent of the losses the liquidity will cover.

 

Overall, there are many aspects of this demonstration that would have to come together to provide a true approximation of what I'm trying to convince the open source community to build.

 

1. The function of the system would have to exist decentrally.  This could happen if we truly considered the krantz mechanism an abstract function that various competing markets compete to align.  Much how there are different sports betting applications with different interfaces individuals can choose to use, the actual 'sports odds' are distributed across a network of competitive forecasters and are kept accurate by the market.

2. Each account would need to be humanity verified.  This is biggest hurdle to overcome.  It is important to understand that this would not require restricting users from using bots.  It would only restrict them to having one account that 'speaks on their behalf'.  In other words, as long as we don't have individuals with multiple accounts, we can hold the individuals accountable for the actions of their bot.

3.  It would take an incredible investment of liquidity to see the scaling effects of such a market.  Enough liquidity to incentivize everyone to evaluate/wager on the portions of their own Tractatus that you are willing to pay them to think about.

 

In general, the purpose of this demonstration is to show people a way to directly incentivize others to realize what they might want to think about by providing game theoretic market incentives that require them to wager on their beliefs.

I've written several other questions that demonstrate aspects of this project.

Examples of how we might use this process to align constitutions:

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/if-a-friendly-ai-takes-control-of-h?r=S3JhbnR6 

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/if-the-work-between-anthropic-and-t?r=S3JhbnR6

Wagers on whether a process like this is viable:
https://manifold.markets/Krantz/is-establishing-a-truth-economy-tha?r=S3JhbnR6 

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/if-eliezer-charitably-reviewed-my-w?r=S3JhbnR6

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/this-is-a-solution-to-alignment?r=S3JhbnR6

A paraphrase of the process of recommending propositions to wager on:

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/if-a-machine-is-only-capable-of-ask?r=S3JhbnR6

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/polls-should-able-to-function-like?r=S3JhbnR6

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/define-a-function-that-converts-cap?r=S3JhbnR6

Attention mechanisms:

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/what-is-the-most-important-question?r=S3JhbnR6

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/what-topicsissueevent-should-the-ge?r=S3JhbnR6

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/what-person-should-have-the-most-co?r=S3JhbnR6

https://manifold.markets/Krantz/which-predictions-on-manifold-are-t?r=S3JhbnR6

Please consider finding an argument you think is important for people to understand and map it. I personally think it would be amazing if predominant philosophers could offer other philosophers they disagree with 'free bets' to wager on specific crux issues. It would be a function that turns capital into attention.

@manifold - Please consider implementing these changes.  I'd love for folks that are capable of writing these sorts of arguments to earn a living by writing them while at the same time providing individuals with no capital the opportunity to earn something for paying attention to them.

This market will not resolve and is simply intended to serve as a demonstration of a mechanism for allowing philosophers to wager on what language ought be in a manner that uses the market to lead them to their cruxes. 

*This demonstration does not include the algorithm I keep talking about. It's function is to evaluate the variances between user 'Tractati' (plural of Tractatus??) and recommend inferential trajectories that efficiently surface contradictions within the system.

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I'll admit I haven't read the whole thing yet, and I don't really understand the parts I have read, but according to John Baez's crackpot index:

20 points for naming something after yourself. (E.g., talking about the "The Evans Field Equation" when your name happens to be Evans.)

It's possible this mechanism you propose is a good idea and I simply don't understand it yet, but I would highly recommend against naming it after you, leave that to society in the event that it takes off

Despite the quite extensive description, I still don't understand how the Krantz mechanism is supposed to work or what concrete changes you're hoping for Manifold (or anyone else) to implement.

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