Will Bryan Caplan be funny tonight?
19
36
Ṁ100
resolved Aug 2
Resolved
YES

Tonight, Bryan Caplan will be making a comedy debut in the New Jokes show at Comedy Cellar in NYC. I'll be there, as will some of my friends. Will he kill?

This market resolves to yes if Bryan gets at least one of (Me, my friends there, the room in general) to laugh either (A) at least as much as the median presenter or (B) enough to kill, regardless of everyone else.

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predicted YES
@ZviMowshowitz how did he do? He might perform his set at Capla-Con in a couple of weeks https://www.facebook.com/events/561058779091038/
@MatthewBrooks He spent the first minute dying and was clearly fraying, but then he recovered, and his other bits were very good given it was his first time. I gave it to him. He needs his jokes to be more economic though!
predicted NO
@ZviMowshowitz My understanding of the resolution criterion was that this description would satisfy a NO resolution, and it was approximately what I was expecting to happen (the vast majority of people do worse than average their first time, but are often still better than expected). When you say “his bits were very good given it was his first time”, are you implying that they were better than the median presenter? Maybe I don’t know what killing means in this context, and that section applies here?
@BionicD0LPH1N I laughed a lot in the later parts and so did the room so I decided it counted as being good enough irrespective of the median (e.g. it failed A but made B). I thought it was reasonably close.
predicted YES
@BionicD0LPH1N Also, you probably didn't know but it was a "New Jokes" night. So it was for comedians to try new content, not pull out their hits. This would have made it a much more fair competition than a standard night at the comedy cellar.
predicted NO
@ZviMowshowitz @MatthewBrooks Alright, that’s fair. Thanks for the reply
New jokes was key, I think - standard night at the cellar with that material I think he dies outright. Good to remember if I ever get a chance to try it out! My guess is I could do it but not without a lot of work.
If it’s a debut he’s probably not going to do well? The median presenter at comedy cellar is presumably pretty good! Caplan does seem like he would be a good comedian based on his writing though. Wish I had data like “what comedy/public speaking experience he has”. Ahh except the question resolves positively if he doesn’t do well but you laugh a lot because he’s ingroup and the other comedians weren’t. So the market doesn’t actually seem super mispriced.
But is he presenting at the end of the night or beginning of the lineup? What I'm asking is how drunk can we expect the audience to be at the time Bryan Caplan goes up.
@ScottOwens He doesn't know and neither do we.

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