What's an unconventional opinion or idea that you've encountered which most people might not agree with? [UNLINKED]
37
637
7.9K
10000
93%
Scientific racism is bad, actually. (also it's not scientific)
92%
Sexism and racism, among other forms of prejudice, are responsible for worse health outcomes, and it’s not overly dramatic for people to treat those issues as public health/safety concerns.
86%
Prediction markets are good
84%
Most organized religion are false
84%
Physician-assisted suicide should be legal in most countries
83%
First-past-the-post electoral systems are not merely flawed but outright less democratic than proportional or preferential alternatives
78%
We should be doing much more to pursue human genetic engineering to prevent diseases and aging.
75%
Prolonged school closures because of COVID were socially devastating.
73%
Humans have a responsibility to figure out what if anything we can do about wildlife suffering.
71%
The Fermi paradox isn't a paradox, and the solution is obviously just that intelligent life is rare.
69%
We need a bigger welfare state than we have now.
67%
Pineapple pizza tastes good
67%
It would actually be a good thing if automation eliminated all jobs.
67%
Nuclear power is by far the best solution to climate change. [N]
66%
The way quantum mechanics is explained to the lay public is very misleading.
66%
The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics
64%
We should give every American food stamps, in a fixed dollar amount, with no means testing or work requirements or disqualification for criminal convictions.
64%
Many amphetamines and psychedelics have tremendous therapeutic value when guided by an established practitioner.
64%
Free will doesn't require the ability to do otherwise.
62%
Peeing in the shower is good and everyone should do it

This is inspired by @firstuserhere's market /firstuserhere/what-do-you-believe-that-few-other

Less than a day after it was created, the new option for unlinked free response questions was created. Since that market is meant to gauge what people think on a bunch of independent questions, the unlinked format would have worked better for it, so I decided to make one myself (with permission).

The only difference between this market and the original is the market type and what options are on it. Like with his, this never resolves, it is just a way to see what Manifold thinks of each belief.

Submit any belief that you think is controversial or non-mainstream, especially one that is novel or interesting. Then bet on the options based on whether you agree or disagree with each opinion.

Submitting an answer doesn't mean you believe in it. You can submit an answer you don't believe in to see what others think about it.

You could also buy YES if you think its underpriced and will likely become more popular, doesn't have to indicate belief.

If you submitted an option to @firstuserhere's market before this one was created, and you'd like it to be added, just ask me and I'll submit it for you. I'll probably also do this for people who submit options to his market afterwards, I just included the "before" limitation so that I can't be forced to spend infinite mana.

Get Ṁ200 play money
Sort by:
Governments should not support parents for having children that they cannot take care of

Only if there is free and legal abortion up to first trimester

Most organized religion are false

LOL at “most”. Just mine is true?

Scientific racism is bad, actually. (also it's not scientific)

How is this unconventional?

@JaimeSantaCruz I made it out of annoyance with some scientific racism-based markets on the site.

[*] ...and things will improve in the future

with more widespread bitcoin adoption, this is a certainty

@nick I don't see how more widespread bitcoin adoption is going to make that a certainly, or even more likely. Also, I'm not even convinced that Bitcoin will become mainstream

@PlasmaBallin that’s the kind of thinking that will inhibit adoption

@nick LOL

Peeing in the shower is good and everyone should do it

Better than peeing in the ball pit.

Astrology is a legitimate means of gaining personal insight.

I made this option to see if the reason dream analysis isn't that low is because people actually believe in dream analysis, or if it's because people don't think it has to be based on anything real in order to be a legitimate means of gaining personal insight. (This is, of course, based on the assumption that no one here thinks astrology is real, which I've made a separate option to test.)

bought Ṁ10 of Eating meat is moral... YES

My thought: a rorschach test is a legitimate means of gaining personal insight. Dreams are kind of like a rorschach test, in that they're kind of based on connections your brain makes when less constrained than normal by definitive sense input, so you may have access to things your conscious mind isnt trying to think about. Astrology is, like, saying things about you based on your birthday, which does not seem similar?

I dunno about highly confident statements about what a particular dream means, but "you constantly dream of failing at things, in ways that wouldn't actually happen ---> you have a fear of failing at things, and it's irrational" seems like a fair guess, and those are the sort of things I come up with when I introspect about my dreams. I "believe in" that kind of dream analysis, not whatever Freud or Jung or whoever would have done.

@equinoxhq I guess it depends on how you interpret the option, since I was thinking of the type of thing Freud does when betting it down.

AI art is better than human art

Step 1: Bet YES on this option.

Step 2: Wait for a long time until AI art starts to get good enough that some people think it really is better than human art.

Step 3: Profit

Most organized religion are false

Technically speaking, doesn't almost everyone believe this? There are a lot of organized religions, and they can't all be true.

bought Ṁ25 of Free will doesn't re... YES

Literally just Frankfurt cases, how is this controversial?

@Najawin It's controversial whether Frankfurt cases are valid, and only philosophy nerds have heard of them. I think if I tried to explain to the average person why free will doesn't require the ability to do otherwise, they would find my opinion very unconventional.

@PlasmaBallin Nah, the evidence we have is really robust here. The average person tends to have compatibilist intuitions. https://philpapers.org/rec/NAHIAF (Or much of the rest of Nahmias' work. It depends on the specific framing of the question, but there's no evidence that determinism per se, or the possibility to do otherwise, are the things that people care about.)

@Najawin Interesting, although I think "free will doesn't require the ability to do otherwise," and "free will is compatible with determinism," aren't exactly the same claim. People might find the latter intuitive but the former surprising.

@PlasmaBallin Again, it really depends on the specific framing, is what the research shows, but there's no general tendency towards incompatibilism. I don't believe specifically Frankfurt cases have been tested, but given the rollback universe results I find it near impossible that people would think it too weird.

People who participated in this market will likely enjoy this LW post.

I made a converse version of this:

Free will doesn't require the ability to do otherwise.

No one here knows about Frankfurt cases

sold Ṁ3 of Free will doesn't re... NO

@JosephNoonan ooh, thank you for showing me something new! i've been thinking about free will and determinism a lot lately, so this was very interesting :)

Physician-assisted suicide should be legal in most countries

So, are there any countries where you think they should not be legal?

You said most, not all.

@bohaska The biggest problem with assisted suicide is probably the uncertainty if the person really wants to die or is pressured to do so (either just feels unwanted/rejected or is outright forced). Under the authoritarian regime this might pose even more doubts.

bought Ṁ10 of Communism just wasn'... NO

@bohaska I was just copying this option from the other question, but all implies most.

More related questions