🏅 Top traders

@Manifold

@SirCryptomind Yeah, I’m kind of emotionally invested too at this point. How did things end up, @zubbybadger?

@1941159478 Lol. Not sure what the answer is here. I was given a check for the prize money and that's it. When I spoke to Hanania, he did say that I would be on the Salem Center website, but I haven't heard anything from them, and honestly as far as I'm concerned, I'm happy with the current outcome. Based on that, I personally would resolve No, but up to you guys of course.

@zubbybadger I asked him at manifest whether the #1 place prize had passed the interview. He had said something like "Yup, he was a good candidate." I could be misremembering the exact question I asked or answer he gave. Is the research fellowship still supposed to be part of the prize? If you want it... try pinging him?

@zubbybadger Cool. Seems like a clear NO to me. I'm resolving it now then. If we get any other update we can always re-resolve it.

@Manifold Was there a successful hire?

The entire tournament was ostensibly an attack on, "fake science," with, "fake science," being defined as researchers being encouraged to falsify results, yet they themselves falsify one of their markets (e.g. there being fewer than 100,000 daily COVID cases in China, which they incorrectly resolved as NO). So what is the definition of suitable? Basically anyone who will cash the check, right?

They might pick me which would be total shit so you know I'm voting no

@ussgordoncaptain then why did you buy yes shares?

@DavidChee misclicking for the loss

Most “competitions” are very clear about winner criteria—usually formal papers, presentations, and the like.

Leaving it ambiguous (two weeks or fifty-two weeks? One blog post about winning or thinking they’re actually getting a grad student slave for less than a doordasher makes) is very odd.

My guess is the credential is borderline worthless and perhaps they find someone from Myanmar who needs a visa and it’s a match made in heaven, but otherwise the gap between skill measured (trading) and what they want (publishing/writing at borderline illegal wages) is enormous, as is the ambiguity of whether the prize is actually an albatross hung around whoever’s neck to be their assistant.

Seems likely to find 5 people skilled in day-trading (predicting sentiment shifts rather than actual events) and with too much time on their hands.

Note that you have to fill out a demographics survey to be eligible for winning. If considering the top 5 eligible candidates, it's more likely that one research-y person is among them that could be hired.

(Even playing the strategic game of taking the right amount of risk to win top 5 takes skill. You also become much more likely to win if you have good judgement.)

seems quite likely to find 5 smart people who don't want to quit their jobs to earn $25k working at a university in Texas

thought about it some more and doubling down, lots of reasons for this to fail, few to succeed.

@Adam Do they need to quit their jobs? Or is it "here's $25k to fund any prediction work you feel like doing in your spare time"

@Adam tournament rules: "This position will pay $25,000 and not require teaching or in-person residency. Rather, it will provide an academic job and financial support for a researcher to do whatever they want with their time, in order to advance their career or work on other projects."

You could absolutely take the prize and just keep doing whatever you were already doing, plus maybe some extra forecasting since you've already proven yourself; in fact I think they expect that situation.

I think Noah Kreuter's comment on the tournament announcement could be correct without reducing odds on this market at all? In fact the resolution criteria seems so general it's difficult to say what would cause a hire to fall through.

@GavrielK I'd be willing to edit the resolution criteria if you think it would be helpful?

I agree there are so many random variables with how the resolution criteria is currently set up that maybe it doesn't really address the interesting questions worth voting on. I just wasn't sure when making it how to better set up the question.

I think ideally the resolution of this market should mostly aim to reflect Noah's criticism of the project failing due to it being won by people who are lucky and employ high variance strategies as opposed to experts/ppl good at researching.

@DavidChee I think this is an inherently tough market to frame bc the tournament is so experimental! I don't know if I have a good edit idea for you. The interesting question to me is something like "Will Salem/CSPI agree that whoever they hire for the fellowship is a legitimately good forecaster?" which doesn't really make a good market question.

(If you found a reasonable edit I'd probably sell my yes shares, though!)

I mean I think you really want longer-term corroboration from another platform, like does the person who winds up as the research fellow also wind up with a good Metaculus score, or something.

@GavrielK Why would they hire someone who wants to take the money and continue doing their day job and not being an academic?

@Adam It’s an experiment and I honestly couldn’t say I see an obvious outcome. A couple of options as I see it:

1) You wouldn’t be asked to quit your job for $25k, the $25k is an inducement to participate and it will attract some people who, out of the research fellow pipeline, actually do want to become academics, but later, at a salary above $25k. They expect these people to pursue an academic path using the fellowship as a set-up but nobody will be immediately pressured to quit their jobs.

2) They’re setting up the beginning of a pipeline that will become an alternative to accreditation, and they need proof-of-concept. Maybe they want some claim on your time way below what a full-time job requires, like maybe the research fellow will be asked to continue making testable predictions to prove the success of the program, and then from there they’ll want to expand the program to some kind of higher-level hiring?

3) Same accreditation alternative idea, but it’s not a prelude to revised academic hiring practices at all, it’s just about getting people to recognize expertise outside of academics. They don’t care about getting more people into academia, they care, more nebulously, about creating a system from scratch that lets people publish articles saying “you should listen to me because I’m a good forecaster.” In that case, “research fellow” is an easy title to put on the beginning of this process.

The announcement explains that this is about how we measure expertise and I think it’s experimental probably in both procedure and goals. I don’t know if the “why would they want this” matters that much—it just seems pretty explicitly stated that they aren’t trying to drag people away from other stuff. $25k isn’t enough to attract a person away from other knowledge/academia-adjacent jobs, and they’re not trying to pretend it is.